Project acronym Mideast Med
Project A regional history of medicine in the modern Middle East, 1830-1960
Researcher (PI) Liat KOZMA
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The purpose of this project is to write a long-term regional history of medicine in the Middle East and North Africa from a transnational and multi-layered perspective. A regional approach will enable tracing both global influences and local specificities, while a long-term perspective (1830-1960) will allow tracing continuity and change from the late Ottoman Middle East through the colonial to the post-colonial periods. Combining archival and published sources in Arabic, French, English, Hebrew, English, German and Ottoman Turkish, it will offer a unique perspective into the formation of the modern Middle East.
Research for this project will revolve around five main cores: First, the global context: global vectors of disease transmission, alongside the transmission of medical knowledge and expertise. Second, the international aspect: how international conventions and international bodies affected the region and were affected by it. Third, the regional flow of both health challenges and proposed solutions, the regional spread of epidemics and the formation of regional epistemic communities. Fourth, the colonial aspect, noting both inter- and intra-colonial influences, and the encounter between colonial bodies of knowledge and locally produced ones. Fifth, the role played by doctors in various national projects: the nahda, namely the Arabic literary revival from the mid-nineteenth century onwards; the Zionist project; Egyptian and Syrian interwar nationalism and, later, Arab nationalism.
This project will portray an intersection between the corporal, the social, the cultural and the technological and trace these interconnections across time and space. Health, medicine and hygiene will be a prism through which to explore large processes, such as colonization and decolonization, national identity and state-building. The scientific development of medicine and the globalization of health-risks and medical knowledge in this period make medicine an ideal case study.
Summary
The purpose of this project is to write a long-term regional history of medicine in the Middle East and North Africa from a transnational and multi-layered perspective. A regional approach will enable tracing both global influences and local specificities, while a long-term perspective (1830-1960) will allow tracing continuity and change from the late Ottoman Middle East through the colonial to the post-colonial periods. Combining archival and published sources in Arabic, French, English, Hebrew, English, German and Ottoman Turkish, it will offer a unique perspective into the formation of the modern Middle East.
Research for this project will revolve around five main cores: First, the global context: global vectors of disease transmission, alongside the transmission of medical knowledge and expertise. Second, the international aspect: how international conventions and international bodies affected the region and were affected by it. Third, the regional flow of both health challenges and proposed solutions, the regional spread of epidemics and the formation of regional epistemic communities. Fourth, the colonial aspect, noting both inter- and intra-colonial influences, and the encounter between colonial bodies of knowledge and locally produced ones. Fifth, the role played by doctors in various national projects: the nahda, namely the Arabic literary revival from the mid-nineteenth century onwards; the Zionist project; Egyptian and Syrian interwar nationalism and, later, Arab nationalism.
This project will portray an intersection between the corporal, the social, the cultural and the technological and trace these interconnections across time and space. Health, medicine and hygiene will be a prism through which to explore large processes, such as colonization and decolonization, national identity and state-building. The scientific development of medicine and the globalization of health-risks and medical knowledge in this period make medicine an ideal case study.
Max ERC Funding
1 867 181 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31
Project acronym MIX-Effectors
Project T6SS MIX-effectors: secretion, activities and use as antibacterial treatment
Researcher (PI) Dor Samuel Salomon
Host Institution (HI) TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), LS6, ERC-2016-STG
Summary Bacteria use various mechanisms to combat competitors and colonize new niches. The Type VI Secretion System (T6SS), a contact-dependent protein delivery apparatus, is a widespread, recently discovered machine used by Gram-negative bacteria to target competitors. Its toxicity is mediated by secreted proteins called effectors, yet the identity of many effectors, the mechanism of secretion of different effector classes, and their toxic activities remain largely unknown. I recently uncovered a widespread class of T6SS effectors that share a domain called MIX. MIX-effectors are polymorphic proteins carrying various toxin domains, many of which with unknown activities.
Many bacterial pathogens have acquired resistance to contemporary antibiotic treatments, becoming a public health threat and necessitating the development of novel antibacterial strategies. Thus, as a relatively untapped antibacterial system, studying the T6SS and its MIX-effectors presents a double incentive: 1) previously uncharacterized antibacterial activities of MIX-effectors can illuminate novel cellular targets for antibacterial drug development; 2) the T6SS machinery can be used as a novel toxin delivery platform to combat multi-drug resistant bacterial infections, using polymorphic MIX-effectors.
In this proposal, I will focus on T6SS MIX-effectors and elucidate their activities, mechanism of secretion, and utilization as antibacterial agents, by combining microbiology, molecular biology, genetic, biochemical, and proteomic approaches. Specifically, the goal of this proposal is to utilize T6SSs and MIX-effectors to develop a novel T6SS-based, antibacterial therapeutic platform in which a nonpathogenic bacterium will be engineered to carry a T6SS that can secrete a diverse repertoire of polymorphic antibacterial MIX-effectors. This innovative platform has several advantages over current antibacterial strategies, and can be used as an adjustable tool to combat multi-drug resistant bacteria.
Summary
Bacteria use various mechanisms to combat competitors and colonize new niches. The Type VI Secretion System (T6SS), a contact-dependent protein delivery apparatus, is a widespread, recently discovered machine used by Gram-negative bacteria to target competitors. Its toxicity is mediated by secreted proteins called effectors, yet the identity of many effectors, the mechanism of secretion of different effector classes, and their toxic activities remain largely unknown. I recently uncovered a widespread class of T6SS effectors that share a domain called MIX. MIX-effectors are polymorphic proteins carrying various toxin domains, many of which with unknown activities.
Many bacterial pathogens have acquired resistance to contemporary antibiotic treatments, becoming a public health threat and necessitating the development of novel antibacterial strategies. Thus, as a relatively untapped antibacterial system, studying the T6SS and its MIX-effectors presents a double incentive: 1) previously uncharacterized antibacterial activities of MIX-effectors can illuminate novel cellular targets for antibacterial drug development; 2) the T6SS machinery can be used as a novel toxin delivery platform to combat multi-drug resistant bacterial infections, using polymorphic MIX-effectors.
In this proposal, I will focus on T6SS MIX-effectors and elucidate their activities, mechanism of secretion, and utilization as antibacterial agents, by combining microbiology, molecular biology, genetic, biochemical, and proteomic approaches. Specifically, the goal of this proposal is to utilize T6SSs and MIX-effectors to develop a novel T6SS-based, antibacterial therapeutic platform in which a nonpathogenic bacterium will be engineered to carry a T6SS that can secrete a diverse repertoire of polymorphic antibacterial MIX-effectors. This innovative platform has several advantages over current antibacterial strategies, and can be used as an adjustable tool to combat multi-drug resistant bacteria.
Max ERC Funding
1 484 375 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-02-01, End date: 2022-01-31
Project acronym MODELING TYPOLOGIES
Project Modeling new typologies of economic agents
Researcher (PI) Ariel Rubinstein
Host Institution (HI) TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH1, ERC-2010-AdG_20100407
Summary "Economic theory is in a crisis. In our lifetime, we have witnessed revolutions in the field that have enriched economics with new models and concepts: the information revolution in the 70's, the game theory mania in the 80's and to a lesser extent the emergence of models of bounded rationality in the 90's. But it's been a long time since we've seen any exciting developments in economic theory.
The first part of the project is methodological. I would like to persuade young researchers that the current style of economic theory is one of the factors behind this stagnation. At the core of this part of the project is a future book discussing the style of modeling in economic theory. My plan is to ""re-write"" a sample of top journals papers and to demonstrate that the ideas in those papers could and should have been presented through much simpler models and in far shorter papers.
The above dissatisfaction brings me to the second and more pretentious part of the project. I would like to use my experience in coming up with original models in economic theory in order to construct some truly novel models. I seek a fresh start, to whatever extent that is possible, which would hopefully yield entirely new models based on non-conventional primitives. In particular, I would like to use novel typologies of economic agents.
This objective is related to the third part of the project, which is motivated by my recent experimental work. My goal is to find correlations in the behavior of subjects and to use them in defining new ""typologies"" of economic agents. The experiments would involve surveys with large samples (obtained through my pedagogical website gametheory.tau.ac.il and media connections), which are essential for such a task; however, at the same time, I intend to use standard experimental procedures in order to minimize any reservations that might arise regarding my experimental methods."
Summary
"Economic theory is in a crisis. In our lifetime, we have witnessed revolutions in the field that have enriched economics with new models and concepts: the information revolution in the 70's, the game theory mania in the 80's and to a lesser extent the emergence of models of bounded rationality in the 90's. But it's been a long time since we've seen any exciting developments in economic theory.
The first part of the project is methodological. I would like to persuade young researchers that the current style of economic theory is one of the factors behind this stagnation. At the core of this part of the project is a future book discussing the style of modeling in economic theory. My plan is to ""re-write"" a sample of top journals papers and to demonstrate that the ideas in those papers could and should have been presented through much simpler models and in far shorter papers.
The above dissatisfaction brings me to the second and more pretentious part of the project. I would like to use my experience in coming up with original models in economic theory in order to construct some truly novel models. I seek a fresh start, to whatever extent that is possible, which would hopefully yield entirely new models based on non-conventional primitives. In particular, I would like to use novel typologies of economic agents.
This objective is related to the third part of the project, which is motivated by my recent experimental work. My goal is to find correlations in the behavior of subjects and to use them in defining new ""typologies"" of economic agents. The experiments would involve surveys with large samples (obtained through my pedagogical website gametheory.tau.ac.il and media connections), which are essential for such a task; however, at the same time, I intend to use standard experimental procedures in order to minimize any reservations that might arise regarding my experimental methods."
Max ERC Funding
999 960 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-06-01, End date: 2017-05-31
Project acronym MONGOL
Project Mobility, Empire and Cross-Cultural Contacts in Mongol Eurasia
Researcher (PI) Michal Biran
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary This project seeks to study the Mongol Empire in its full Eurasian context. It combines a world history perspective with close reading in a huge array of primary sources in various languages (mainly Persian, Arabic and Chinese) and different historiographical traditions, and classifies the acquired information into a sophisticated prosopographical database, which records the individuals acting under Mongol rule in the 13th and 14th centuries. On the basis of this unique corpus, the project maps and analyzes mobility patterns, and the far-reaching effects that this mobility generated. More specifically, it aims:
(a) to analyze modes of migrations in Mongol Eurasia: why, how, when and into where people- along with their ideas and artefacts - moved across Eurasia, portraying the full spectrum of such populations movements from the coerced to the voluntary.
(b) to shed light on the economic and cultural exchange that this mobility engendered, with a stress on the religious, scientific and commercial networks both within and beyond the empire’s frontiers.
(c) to reconstruct the new elite of the empire by scrutinizing the personnel of key Mongolian institutions, such as the guard, the judicial and postal systems, the diplomatic corps, and the local administration.
These issues will be studied comparatively, in the period of the united Mongol empire (1206-1260) and across its four successor khanates that centred at China, Iran, Central Asia and Russia.
The result will be a quantum leap forward in our understanding of the Mongol empire and its impact on world history, and a major contribution to the theoretical study of pre-modern migrations, cross-cultural contacts, nomad-sedentary relations and comparative study of empires. Moreover, the re-conceptualization of the economic and cultural exchange in Mongol Eurasia will lead to a broader and more nuanced understanding of the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern era.
Summary
This project seeks to study the Mongol Empire in its full Eurasian context. It combines a world history perspective with close reading in a huge array of primary sources in various languages (mainly Persian, Arabic and Chinese) and different historiographical traditions, and classifies the acquired information into a sophisticated prosopographical database, which records the individuals acting under Mongol rule in the 13th and 14th centuries. On the basis of this unique corpus, the project maps and analyzes mobility patterns, and the far-reaching effects that this mobility generated. More specifically, it aims:
(a) to analyze modes of migrations in Mongol Eurasia: why, how, when and into where people- along with their ideas and artefacts - moved across Eurasia, portraying the full spectrum of such populations movements from the coerced to the voluntary.
(b) to shed light on the economic and cultural exchange that this mobility engendered, with a stress on the religious, scientific and commercial networks both within and beyond the empire’s frontiers.
(c) to reconstruct the new elite of the empire by scrutinizing the personnel of key Mongolian institutions, such as the guard, the judicial and postal systems, the diplomatic corps, and the local administration.
These issues will be studied comparatively, in the period of the united Mongol empire (1206-1260) and across its four successor khanates that centred at China, Iran, Central Asia and Russia.
The result will be a quantum leap forward in our understanding of the Mongol empire and its impact on world history, and a major contribution to the theoretical study of pre-modern migrations, cross-cultural contacts, nomad-sedentary relations and comparative study of empires. Moreover, the re-conceptualization of the economic and cultural exchange in Mongol Eurasia will lead to a broader and more nuanced understanding of the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern era.
Max ERC Funding
1 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym MONOTOMACRO
Project Studying in vivo differentiation of monocytes into intestinal macrophages and their impact on gut homeostasis
Researcher (PI) Steffen Jung
Host Institution (HI) WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS6, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary Monocytes are central players in inflammation. Progress in understanding their differentiation in target tissues bears potential to manipulate their activities for therapeutic purposes. Here we propose to study the generation of intestinal macrophages (MΦs) as a paradigm, taking advantage of a unique experimental system to elucidate in vivo monocyte fates.
The intestine hosts billions of bacteria that assist food uptake, but also pose a challenge, as we have to tolerate these beneficial commensals, yet rapidly mount immune responses to invading pathogens. Failure to maintain this balance causes inflammatory bowel disorders (IBD). Gut resident MΦs are key players in gut homeostasis and inflammation. Here we will study molecular parameters governing their generation from monocytes, as well as their interactions with the immediate tissue surrounding under pathological conditions. We focus on the molecular mechanisms leading to education of monocytes in small and large intestine using genome wide profiling of gene expression, chromatin state and transcription factor binding of monocytes and MΦs. Secondly, we will investigate epithelial and microflora-derived instructing cues, as well as sensory molecules on the MΦs that drive the education. Thirdly, we will study the impact of MΦs that fail to be trained and their role in the development of inflammation. Finally, we will use the insights gained to develop monocyte manipulation strategies that could aid the future development of IBD therapies.
Our experimental system allows to follow the in vivo differentiation of engrafted monocytes, as physiological precursor cells, that acquire in a rapid synchronized development in the gut tissue physiologically relevant fates. Expected include (1) fundamental insight into the acquisition and maintenance of MΦ identities in a complex tissue context, (2) progress in our understanding of gut homeostasis and IBD, and (3) guiding insights for future monocyte-targeted therapy.
Summary
Monocytes are central players in inflammation. Progress in understanding their differentiation in target tissues bears potential to manipulate their activities for therapeutic purposes. Here we propose to study the generation of intestinal macrophages (MΦs) as a paradigm, taking advantage of a unique experimental system to elucidate in vivo monocyte fates.
The intestine hosts billions of bacteria that assist food uptake, but also pose a challenge, as we have to tolerate these beneficial commensals, yet rapidly mount immune responses to invading pathogens. Failure to maintain this balance causes inflammatory bowel disorders (IBD). Gut resident MΦs are key players in gut homeostasis and inflammation. Here we will study molecular parameters governing their generation from monocytes, as well as their interactions with the immediate tissue surrounding under pathological conditions. We focus on the molecular mechanisms leading to education of monocytes in small and large intestine using genome wide profiling of gene expression, chromatin state and transcription factor binding of monocytes and MΦs. Secondly, we will investigate epithelial and microflora-derived instructing cues, as well as sensory molecules on the MΦs that drive the education. Thirdly, we will study the impact of MΦs that fail to be trained and their role in the development of inflammation. Finally, we will use the insights gained to develop monocyte manipulation strategies that could aid the future development of IBD therapies.
Our experimental system allows to follow the in vivo differentiation of engrafted monocytes, as physiological precursor cells, that acquire in a rapid synchronized development in the gut tissue physiologically relevant fates. Expected include (1) fundamental insight into the acquisition and maintenance of MΦ identities in a complex tissue context, (2) progress in our understanding of gut homeostasis and IBD, and (3) guiding insights for future monocyte-targeted therapy.
Max ERC Funding
2 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-01-01, End date: 2018-12-31
Project acronym MultiLevelLandscape
Project Multilevel Selection for Specificity and Divergence in Bacteria
Researcher (PI) Avigdor Eldar
Host Institution (HI) TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), LS8, ERC-2016-COG
Summary The evolution of specificity between interacting biological molecules underlies the diversification and expansion of biological pathways. A shift in specificity poses a serious theoretical problem; it requires coordinated mutations in the interacting partners, but mutation in one partner may lead to loss of interaction and functional failure. While some theoretical suggestions were proposed to solve this 'specificity valley crossing' problem, it remains a challenge to study this problem empirically at the molecular level. In bacteria, there are numerous divergent evolving pathways. Many of these pathways are involved in mediating conflicts between selfish genes, cells and populations. We and others have speculated that such multilevel selection can facilitate pathway divergence. Here we propose to study this link using the Rap-Phr cell-cell communication system, which has diversified to ~100 specific systems in the B. subtilis lineage. These systems consist of a receptor (Rap) and its cognate peptide pheromone (Phr) that influence multiple levels of selection. They promote their own horizontal transfer, modulate core cellular pathways, and manipulate cooperation between cells. Combining modelling with deep mutational scanning, competition assays and time-lapse microscopy we will quantitatively study all these levels of selection and their implication for diversification on a large fitness landscape. Specifically, we will (1) map the Rap-Phr interaction landscape at unprecedented resolution, constructing and screening libraries of ~106 Phr peptide variants and ~104 Rap variants. (2) Quantify the fitness effects of these systems at multiple levels of selection in biofilms. (3) Theoretically generate and experimentally verify predictions about how Rap-Phr co-evolve and diversify. Our work will pioneer the study of fitness landscapes under multilevel selection and provide a direct, quantitative, and predictive framework for understanding the evolution of specificity.
Summary
The evolution of specificity between interacting biological molecules underlies the diversification and expansion of biological pathways. A shift in specificity poses a serious theoretical problem; it requires coordinated mutations in the interacting partners, but mutation in one partner may lead to loss of interaction and functional failure. While some theoretical suggestions were proposed to solve this 'specificity valley crossing' problem, it remains a challenge to study this problem empirically at the molecular level. In bacteria, there are numerous divergent evolving pathways. Many of these pathways are involved in mediating conflicts between selfish genes, cells and populations. We and others have speculated that such multilevel selection can facilitate pathway divergence. Here we propose to study this link using the Rap-Phr cell-cell communication system, which has diversified to ~100 specific systems in the B. subtilis lineage. These systems consist of a receptor (Rap) and its cognate peptide pheromone (Phr) that influence multiple levels of selection. They promote their own horizontal transfer, modulate core cellular pathways, and manipulate cooperation between cells. Combining modelling with deep mutational scanning, competition assays and time-lapse microscopy we will quantitatively study all these levels of selection and their implication for diversification on a large fitness landscape. Specifically, we will (1) map the Rap-Phr interaction landscape at unprecedented resolution, constructing and screening libraries of ~106 Phr peptide variants and ~104 Rap variants. (2) Quantify the fitness effects of these systems at multiple levels of selection in biofilms. (3) Theoretically generate and experimentally verify predictions about how Rap-Phr co-evolve and diversify. Our work will pioneer the study of fitness landscapes under multilevel selection and provide a direct, quantitative, and predictive framework for understanding the evolution of specificity.
Max ERC Funding
2 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-03-01, End date: 2022-02-28
Project acronym NEEM
Project The New Ecology of Expressive Modes in Early Modern South India
Researcher (PI) David Dean Shulman
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2017-ADG
Summary Southern India in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries comprised a single, strongly interwoven, multilingual cultural world that generated innovative literary, musical, theatrical and visual masterpieces as well as a theoretical erudite literature that explored the aesthetic and philosophical bases of these new works. New literary genres such as the compact, self-contained prabandha narratives crossed linguistic boundaries, emerging in and rapidly coming to dominate Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and the trans-local languages of Sanskrit, Persian, Marathi and Dakhni. Such texts, seen together with major genres evolving in the other expressive domains (the early varnams and kirttanas in music, the great mural paintings of the Tamil and Karnataka regions, Kudiyattam drama), were building blocks of an eco-system whose rules, themes, forms, and intertextual relations have never been studied as a whole. We propose to explore this large corpus in relation to the new grammars of language, poetics, music, drama, and painting that evolved at the same time. Among major themes common to all these traditions are the interiority and states of mind of the individual human person, the question of how such a person is created and fashioned, the problem of the fate or destiny that a person faces or generates out of himself or herself, and the autonomy of the natural world within which he or she lives and acts. All the major expressive domains, with their thematic and theoretical continuities, give voice to a historic shift in the dynamics and underlying axioms of south Indian civilization at the start of the modern age; this shift becomes fully articulate and apparent only when we see the expressive eco-system as a whole.
Summary
Southern India in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries comprised a single, strongly interwoven, multilingual cultural world that generated innovative literary, musical, theatrical and visual masterpieces as well as a theoretical erudite literature that explored the aesthetic and philosophical bases of these new works. New literary genres such as the compact, self-contained prabandha narratives crossed linguistic boundaries, emerging in and rapidly coming to dominate Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and the trans-local languages of Sanskrit, Persian, Marathi and Dakhni. Such texts, seen together with major genres evolving in the other expressive domains (the early varnams and kirttanas in music, the great mural paintings of the Tamil and Karnataka regions, Kudiyattam drama), were building blocks of an eco-system whose rules, themes, forms, and intertextual relations have never been studied as a whole. We propose to explore this large corpus in relation to the new grammars of language, poetics, music, drama, and painting that evolved at the same time. Among major themes common to all these traditions are the interiority and states of mind of the individual human person, the question of how such a person is created and fashioned, the problem of the fate or destiny that a person faces or generates out of himself or herself, and the autonomy of the natural world within which he or she lives and acts. All the major expressive domains, with their thematic and theoretical continuities, give voice to a historic shift in the dynamics and underlying axioms of south Indian civilization at the start of the modern age; this shift becomes fully articulate and apparent only when we see the expressive eco-system as a whole.
Max ERC Funding
2 009 153 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-30
Project acronym NEGEVBYZ
Project Crisis on the margins of the Byzantine Empire: A bio-archaeological project on resilience and collapse in early Christian development of the Negev Desert
Researcher (PI) GUY HAIM BAR OZ
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary This project proposes an innovative, integrative and data-intensive approach to understand the parameters for long-term sustainable functioning of complex societies under vulnerable conditions. The broad aim of the research is to explore contexts of collapse and resilience in an ancient society with high levels of socio-political complexity and technological ingenuity within a resource-limited environment. It focuses on the Byzantine early Christian urban centres of the Negev Desert (4th-7th cent. AD) disclosing both the triumph of human ingenuity in conquering the desert through large-scale human settlement and agricultural development as well as a striking and as yet ambiguous case of wholesale systemic collapse. To test hypotheses regarding social disintegration, economic stress, environmental degradation due to climatic or anthropogenic causes, and the question of plague the project integrates approaches in the archaeology of households, landscapes and garbage through use of biomolecular, botanical, zoological, geological, chronometric, artifactual and contextual sources of data.
Dealing with societal vulnerability in marginal regions is timely and relevant in a world where accelerating development rapidly expands such problems, previously localized, to global levels. Although it is a risky endeavour to engage the record of past societies to inform the present and forecast the future due to the typically underdetermined nature of historical and proxy data, this project offers substantial gain to theoretical and empirical research on societal vulnerability in two main avenues: (1) providing an opportunity to critically re-evaluate the current state of knowledge in the field based on an extensive corpus of new, high-quality data and (2) drawing more nuanced and informed broad generalizations regarding limiting states for human ingenuity in reconciling social and economic development with sustainable management of the environment and its resources.
Summary
This project proposes an innovative, integrative and data-intensive approach to understand the parameters for long-term sustainable functioning of complex societies under vulnerable conditions. The broad aim of the research is to explore contexts of collapse and resilience in an ancient society with high levels of socio-political complexity and technological ingenuity within a resource-limited environment. It focuses on the Byzantine early Christian urban centres of the Negev Desert (4th-7th cent. AD) disclosing both the triumph of human ingenuity in conquering the desert through large-scale human settlement and agricultural development as well as a striking and as yet ambiguous case of wholesale systemic collapse. To test hypotheses regarding social disintegration, economic stress, environmental degradation due to climatic or anthropogenic causes, and the question of plague the project integrates approaches in the archaeology of households, landscapes and garbage through use of biomolecular, botanical, zoological, geological, chronometric, artifactual and contextual sources of data.
Dealing with societal vulnerability in marginal regions is timely and relevant in a world where accelerating development rapidly expands such problems, previously localized, to global levels. Although it is a risky endeavour to engage the record of past societies to inform the present and forecast the future due to the typically underdetermined nature of historical and proxy data, this project offers substantial gain to theoretical and empirical research on societal vulnerability in two main avenues: (1) providing an opportunity to critically re-evaluate the current state of knowledge in the field based on an extensive corpus of new, high-quality data and (2) drawing more nuanced and informed broad generalizations regarding limiting states for human ingenuity in reconciling social and economic development with sustainable management of the environment and its resources.
Max ERC Funding
1 445 151 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym NeuroCompSkill
Project A neuro-computational account of success and failure in acquiring communication skills
Researcher (PI) Merav Ahissar
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH4, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary Why do most people acquire expertise with practice whereas others fail to master the same tasks? NeuroCompSkill offers a neuro-computational framework that explains failure in acquiring verbal and non-verbal communication skills. It focuses on individual ability of using task-relevant regularities, postulating that efficient use of such regularities is crucial for acquiring expertise. Specifically, it proposes that using stable temporal regularities, acquired across long time windows (> 3 sec to days) is crucial for the formation of linguistic (phonological, morphological and orthographic) skills. In contrast, fast updating of recent events (within ~ .3- 3 sec), is crucial for the formation of predictions in interactive, social communication. Based on this, I propose that individuals with difficulties in retaining regularities will have difficulties in verbal communication, whereas individuals with difficulties in fast updating will have difficulties in social non-verbal communications. Five inter-related work packages (WP) will test the predictions that: (WP1) behaviourally – individuals with language and reading difficulties will have impoverished categorical representations, whereas individuals with non-verbal difficulties will be slow in adapting to changed statistics. (WP2) developmentally – poor detection of relevant regularities will be an early marker of related difficulties. (WP3) computationally – profiles of impaired inference will match the predicted time window. (WP4) neuronally – dynamics of neural adaptation will match the dynamics of behavioural inference. (WP5) structurally – different brain structures will be associated with the different time windows of inference. NeuroCompSkill is ground-breaking in proposing a unifying, theory based, testable principle, which explains core difficulties in two prevalent developmental communication disorders. Its 5 WPs will lay the foundations of a comprehensive approach to failure in skill acquisition.
Summary
Why do most people acquire expertise with practice whereas others fail to master the same tasks? NeuroCompSkill offers a neuro-computational framework that explains failure in acquiring verbal and non-verbal communication skills. It focuses on individual ability of using task-relevant regularities, postulating that efficient use of such regularities is crucial for acquiring expertise. Specifically, it proposes that using stable temporal regularities, acquired across long time windows (> 3 sec to days) is crucial for the formation of linguistic (phonological, morphological and orthographic) skills. In contrast, fast updating of recent events (within ~ .3- 3 sec), is crucial for the formation of predictions in interactive, social communication. Based on this, I propose that individuals with difficulties in retaining regularities will have difficulties in verbal communication, whereas individuals with difficulties in fast updating will have difficulties in social non-verbal communications. Five inter-related work packages (WP) will test the predictions that: (WP1) behaviourally – individuals with language and reading difficulties will have impoverished categorical representations, whereas individuals with non-verbal difficulties will be slow in adapting to changed statistics. (WP2) developmentally – poor detection of relevant regularities will be an early marker of related difficulties. (WP3) computationally – profiles of impaired inference will match the predicted time window. (WP4) neuronally – dynamics of neural adaptation will match the dynamics of behavioural inference. (WP5) structurally – different brain structures will be associated with the different time windows of inference. NeuroCompSkill is ground-breaking in proposing a unifying, theory based, testable principle, which explains core difficulties in two prevalent developmental communication disorders. Its 5 WPs will lay the foundations of a comprehensive approach to failure in skill acquisition.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 888 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-08-01, End date: 2024-07-31
Project acronym NEXTGENBIM
Project NEXT-GENERATION BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING TO SUPPORT EVALUATION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR IN BUILT ENVIRONMENTS
Researcher (PI) Yehuda Kalay
Host Institution (HI) TECHNION - ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH3, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary This proposal argues that current building modeling tools, including popular BIM (Building Information Modeling) systems, provide a poor, inadequate representation of buildings: they represent only the physical and material characteristics of buildings. Buildings, unlike other products, cannot be understood independently of their context, of their intended use, and of their intended users.
This shortcoming hinders the ability of current building models to support evaluations other than those based on physical and material characteristics of the building, such as lighting, energy consumption, and structural stability. In particular, the impact of a building that has not yet been built on the life and activities of its future users—a key element in determining whether or not the proposed building will meet the needs of its intended users—is not afforded by current building models. To afford comprehensive prediction and evaluation of future buildings, we also need to model the purpose and function of the building, and the social, cultural, and economic profile of the people who will use it.
Although predicting users' behavior in a built environment and their interaction with the building and with other people is a highly complex task, vast research exists that is devoted to analyzing and explaining human behavior in built environments. Still, due to the shortcomings of building models, this knowledge rarely make into the practice of architectural design, at the time buildings are being designed.
The proposed research aims at remedying that shortcoming by developing a more a comprehensive building modeling method, which will include form, function, and use information. A better model will lead to better designed buildings. In an era when the irrevocable impact of the built environment on the cost, quality, and perhaps even possibility of life on earth has been recognized, the need to make every effort to improve the tools used by building designers is self-evident.
Summary
This proposal argues that current building modeling tools, including popular BIM (Building Information Modeling) systems, provide a poor, inadequate representation of buildings: they represent only the physical and material characteristics of buildings. Buildings, unlike other products, cannot be understood independently of their context, of their intended use, and of their intended users.
This shortcoming hinders the ability of current building models to support evaluations other than those based on physical and material characteristics of the building, such as lighting, energy consumption, and structural stability. In particular, the impact of a building that has not yet been built on the life and activities of its future users—a key element in determining whether or not the proposed building will meet the needs of its intended users—is not afforded by current building models. To afford comprehensive prediction and evaluation of future buildings, we also need to model the purpose and function of the building, and the social, cultural, and economic profile of the people who will use it.
Although predicting users' behavior in a built environment and their interaction with the building and with other people is a highly complex task, vast research exists that is devoted to analyzing and explaining human behavior in built environments. Still, due to the shortcomings of building models, this knowledge rarely make into the practice of architectural design, at the time buildings are being designed.
The proposed research aims at remedying that shortcoming by developing a more a comprehensive building modeling method, which will include form, function, and use information. A better model will lead to better designed buildings. In an era when the irrevocable impact of the built environment on the cost, quality, and perhaps even possibility of life on earth has been recognized, the need to make every effort to improve the tools used by building designers is self-evident.
Max ERC Funding
1 629 370 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-12-01, End date: 2018-11-30
