Project acronym DEVOCEAN
Project Impact of diatom evolution on the oceans
Researcher (PI) Daniel CONLEY
Host Institution (HI) LUNDS UNIVERSITET
Country Sweden
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE10, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary Motivated by a series of recent discoveries, DEVOCEAN will provide the first comprehensive evaluation of the emergence of diatoms and their impact on the global biogeochemical cycle of silica, carbon and other nutrients that regulate ocean productivity and ultimately climate. I propose that the proliferation of phytoplankton that occurred after the Permian-Triassic extinction, in particular the diatoms, fundamentally influenced oceanic environments through the enhancement of carbon export to depth as part of the biological pump. Although molecular clocks suggest that diatoms evolved over 200 Ma ago, this result has been largely ignored because of the lack of diatoms in the geologic fossil record with most studies therefore focused on diversification during the Cenozoic where abundant diatom fossils are found. Much of the older fossil evidence has likely been destroyed by dissolution during diagenesis, subducted or is concealed deep within the Earth under many layers of rock. DEVOCEAN will provide evidence on diatom evolution and speciation in the geological record by examining formations representing locations in which diatoms are likely to have accumulated in ocean sediments. We will generate robust estimates of the timing and magnitude of dissolved Si drawdown following the origin of diatoms using the isotopic silicon composition of fossil sponge spicules and radiolarians. The project will also provide fundamental new insights into the timing of dissolved Si drawdown and other key events, which reorganized the distribution of carbon and nutrients in seawater, changing energy flows and productivity in the biological communities of the ancient oceans.
Summary
Motivated by a series of recent discoveries, DEVOCEAN will provide the first comprehensive evaluation of the emergence of diatoms and their impact on the global biogeochemical cycle of silica, carbon and other nutrients that regulate ocean productivity and ultimately climate. I propose that the proliferation of phytoplankton that occurred after the Permian-Triassic extinction, in particular the diatoms, fundamentally influenced oceanic environments through the enhancement of carbon export to depth as part of the biological pump. Although molecular clocks suggest that diatoms evolved over 200 Ma ago, this result has been largely ignored because of the lack of diatoms in the geologic fossil record with most studies therefore focused on diversification during the Cenozoic where abundant diatom fossils are found. Much of the older fossil evidence has likely been destroyed by dissolution during diagenesis, subducted or is concealed deep within the Earth under many layers of rock. DEVOCEAN will provide evidence on diatom evolution and speciation in the geological record by examining formations representing locations in which diatoms are likely to have accumulated in ocean sediments. We will generate robust estimates of the timing and magnitude of dissolved Si drawdown following the origin of diatoms using the isotopic silicon composition of fossil sponge spicules and radiolarians. The project will also provide fundamental new insights into the timing of dissolved Si drawdown and other key events, which reorganized the distribution of carbon and nutrients in seawater, changing energy flows and productivity in the biological communities of the ancient oceans.
Max ERC Funding
2 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30
Project acronym e-NeuroPharma
Project Electronic Neuropharmacology
Researcher (PI) Rolf Magnus BERGGREN
Host Institution (HI) LINKOPINGS UNIVERSITET
Country Sweden
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE5, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary As the population ages, neurodegenerative diseases (ND) will have a devastating impact on individuals and society. Despite enormous research efforts there is still no cure for these diseases, only care! The origin of ND is hugely complex, spanning from the molecular level to systemic processes, causing malfunctioning of signalling in the central nervous system (CNS). This signalling includes the coupled processing of biochemical and electrical signals, however current approaches for symptomatic- and disease modifying treatments are all based on biochemical approaches, alone.
Organic bioelectronics has arisen as a promising technology providing signal translation, as sensors and modulators, across the biology-technology interface; especially, it has proven unique in neuronal applications. There is great opportunity with organic bioelectronics since it can complement biochemical pharmacology to enable a twinned electric-biochemical therapy for ND and neurological disorders. However, this technology is traditionally manufactured on stand-alone substrates. Even though organic bioelectronics has been manufactured on flexible and soft carriers in the past, current technology consume space and volume, that when applied to CNS, rule out close proximity and amalgamation between the bioelectronics technology and CNS components – features that are needed in order to reach high therapeutic efficacy.
e-NeuroPharma includes development of innovative organic bioelectronics, that can be in-vivo-manufactured within the brain. The overall aim is to evaluate and develop electrodes, delivery devices and sensors that enable a twinned biochemical-electric therapy approach to combat ND and other neurological disorders. e-NeuroPharma will focus on the development of materials that can cross the blood-brain-barrier, that self-organize and -polymerize along CNS components, and that record and regulate relevant electrical, electrochemical and physical parameters relevant to ND and disorders
Summary
As the population ages, neurodegenerative diseases (ND) will have a devastating impact on individuals and society. Despite enormous research efforts there is still no cure for these diseases, only care! The origin of ND is hugely complex, spanning from the molecular level to systemic processes, causing malfunctioning of signalling in the central nervous system (CNS). This signalling includes the coupled processing of biochemical and electrical signals, however current approaches for symptomatic- and disease modifying treatments are all based on biochemical approaches, alone.
Organic bioelectronics has arisen as a promising technology providing signal translation, as sensors and modulators, across the biology-technology interface; especially, it has proven unique in neuronal applications. There is great opportunity with organic bioelectronics since it can complement biochemical pharmacology to enable a twinned electric-biochemical therapy for ND and neurological disorders. However, this technology is traditionally manufactured on stand-alone substrates. Even though organic bioelectronics has been manufactured on flexible and soft carriers in the past, current technology consume space and volume, that when applied to CNS, rule out close proximity and amalgamation between the bioelectronics technology and CNS components – features that are needed in order to reach high therapeutic efficacy.
e-NeuroPharma includes development of innovative organic bioelectronics, that can be in-vivo-manufactured within the brain. The overall aim is to evaluate and develop electrodes, delivery devices and sensors that enable a twinned biochemical-electric therapy approach to combat ND and other neurological disorders. e-NeuroPharma will focus on the development of materials that can cross the blood-brain-barrier, that self-organize and -polymerize along CNS components, and that record and regulate relevant electrical, electrochemical and physical parameters relevant to ND and disorders
Max ERC Funding
3 237 335 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31
Project acronym GLOBEGOV
Project The Rise of Global Environmental Governance:A History of the Contemporary Human-Earth Relationship
Researcher (PI) Sverker SoeRLIN
Host Institution (HI) KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN
Country Sweden
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2017-ADG
Summary 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.
Summary
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.
Max ERC Funding
2 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-30
Project acronym SELF-UNITY
Project The Unity of the Bodily Self
Researcher (PI) Hans Henrik EHRSSON
Host Institution (HI) KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET
Country Sweden
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH4, ERC-2017-ADG
Summary How do we come to experience ourselves as single physical entities? Under normal healthy conditions, we humans always experience a single body as our own physical self, and this bodily self is undivided and perceived as a single whole. But what cognitive processes and brain mechanisms mediate this unity of the bodily self? This fundamental question has long been beyond the reach of experimental studies because of the lack of behavioral paradigms that allow controlled manipulation of basic components of the self-unity. To address this issue, we here propose the use of novel full-body illusion paradigms to “fragment”, “duplicate” or “split” the sense of bodily self during well-controlled behavioral and neuroimaging experiments. By studying the behavioral and neural principles that determine specific illusory changes in perceived self-unity, we can elucidate much about the neurocognitive mechanisms that support the sense of having a single unitary bodily self under normal conditions. Our pioneering behavioral paradigms utilize the newest virtual reality technologies, and these are combined with multimodal neuroimaging using the most advanced analysis methods, such as multivariate pattern recognition. The aims of the project are to unravel (i) how we come to experience a single bodily self as opposed to multiple ones; (ii) how we perceive a coherent bodily self instead of fragmented parts; and (iii) how information from different sensory modalities – including vestibular and interoceptive signals – are integrated to achieve this coherent sense of a singular bodily self. The new basic knowledge generated by this project will be important for future clinical neuroscience research into major psychiatric and neurological disorders with disturbances in self-unity, such as schizophrenia, dissociative disorders and stroke with body neglect, by providing novel ideas for hypotheses about the involved neurocognitive pathophysiology.
Summary
How do we come to experience ourselves as single physical entities? Under normal healthy conditions, we humans always experience a single body as our own physical self, and this bodily self is undivided and perceived as a single whole. But what cognitive processes and brain mechanisms mediate this unity of the bodily self? This fundamental question has long been beyond the reach of experimental studies because of the lack of behavioral paradigms that allow controlled manipulation of basic components of the self-unity. To address this issue, we here propose the use of novel full-body illusion paradigms to “fragment”, “duplicate” or “split” the sense of bodily self during well-controlled behavioral and neuroimaging experiments. By studying the behavioral and neural principles that determine specific illusory changes in perceived self-unity, we can elucidate much about the neurocognitive mechanisms that support the sense of having a single unitary bodily self under normal conditions. Our pioneering behavioral paradigms utilize the newest virtual reality technologies, and these are combined with multimodal neuroimaging using the most advanced analysis methods, such as multivariate pattern recognition. The aims of the project are to unravel (i) how we come to experience a single bodily self as opposed to multiple ones; (ii) how we perceive a coherent bodily self instead of fragmented parts; and (iii) how information from different sensory modalities – including vestibular and interoceptive signals – are integrated to achieve this coherent sense of a singular bodily self. The new basic knowledge generated by this project will be important for future clinical neuroscience research into major psychiatric and neurological disorders with disturbances in self-unity, such as schizophrenia, dissociative disorders and stroke with body neglect, by providing novel ideas for hypotheses about the involved neurocognitive pathophysiology.
Max ERC Funding
2 583 560 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31
