ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The aim of the proposed project is to shed light on early childhood gender-differentiated socialization and gender-specific susceptibility to parenting within families in relation to disruptive behaviour in boys and girls in the first four years of life. The popular saying boys will be boys refers to the observation that boys show more disruptive behaviours (e.g., noncompliance or aggression) than girls, a pattern that has been confirmed frequently in scientific research. There is also evidence that parents treat boys differently from girls in ways that are likely to foster boys disruptive behaviour, and that boys are more susceptible to problematic family functioning than girls. The crucial question is whether gender differences in socialization, susceptibility to socialization, and children s behavioural outcomes are also salient when the same parents are doing the parenting of both a boy and a girl. Within-family comparisons are necessary to account for structural differences between families. To this end, families with two children born 22-26 months apart will be recruited from the general population. To account for birth order and gender-combination effects, the sample includes four groups of 150 families each, with the following sibling combinations: girl-boy, boy-girl, girl-girl, and boy-boy. The study has a four-wave longitudinal design, based on the youngest sibling with assessments at ages 12, 24, 36, and 48 months, because gender differences in disruptive behaviour develop during the toddler years. Each assessment consists of two home visits: one with mother and one with father, including observations of both children and of the children separately. Parenting behaviours will be studied in reaction to specific child behaviours, including aggression, noncompliance, and prosocial behaviours.

1 611 970 €

Start date: 2010-02-01, End date: 2015-03-31

CONTEXT - Nanoporous structures are used for application in catalysis, molecular separation, fuel cells, dye sensitized solar cells etc. Given the near molecular size of the porous network, it is extremely challenging to modify the interior surface of the pores after the nanoporous material has been synthesized. THIS PROPOSAL - Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is envisioned as a novel technique for creating catalytically active sites and for controlling the pore size distribution in nanoporous materials. ALD is a self-limited growth method that is characterized by alternating exposure of the growing film to precursor vapours, resulting in the sequential deposition of (sub)monolayers. It provides atomic level control of thickness and composition, and is currently used in micro-electronics to grow films into structures with aspect ratios of up to 100 / 1. We aim to make the fundamental breakthroughs necessary to enable atomic layer deposition to engineer the composition, size and shape of the interior surface of nanoporous materials with aspect ratios in excess of 10,000 / 1. POTENTIAL IMPACT Achieving these objectives will enable atomic level engineering of the interior surface of any porous material. We plan to focus on three specific applications where our results will have both medium and long term impacts: - Engineering the composition of pore walls using ALD, e.g. to create catalytic sites (e.g. Al for acid sites, Ti for redox sites, or Pt, Pd or Ni) - chemical functionalization of the pore walls with atomic level control can result in breakthrough applications in the fields of catalysis and sensors. - Atomic level control of the size of nanopores through ALD controlling the pore size distribution of molecular sieves can potentially lead to breakthrough applications in molecular separation and filtration. - Nanocasting replication of a mesoporous template by means of ALD can result in the mass-scale production of nanotubes.

1 432 800 €

Start date: 2010-01-01, End date: 2014-12-31

Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy in the western male population and the associated socio-economic impact on healthcare is more than worrying. There is one key feature of confined (stage T2) prostate cancer that needs to be addressed with immediate urgency: its true aggressiveness. Not all cancers are life threatening and early diagnosis, although needed to improve outcome, will lead to overtreatment of patients with indolent prostate cancer resulting in unnecessary treatment-related morbidity. Therefore, methods to identify clinically significant forms of prostate cancer have to be developed. To pursue this, the initial assessment of the extent of the disease process (clinical staging) needs to be adequate. Obtaining pre-treatment representative tumor tissue (biopsies) is a major clinical challenge, as the disease is often multi-focal and heterogeneous. Accurate functional in vivo imaging modalities could guide these biopsies. Modern genomics technologies have identified numerous cancer cell-associated genetic markers being expressed in prostate cancer tissue or body fluids. Closing the gap between genomics and a non-invasive metabolic assessment of the in vivo prostate, we propose to identify new in vivo targets/biomarkers indicating confined prostate cancer aggressiveness with the underlying central hypothesis: early functional metabolic differences in different tumor foci determine whether it will grow into life-threatening prostate cancer or not. To track these early metabolic differences, the very latest magnetic resonance methodologies, including 13C MR of hyperpolarized metabolites and 1H- and 31P-MRSI of the in vivo human prostate at a field strength of 7 Tesla, will be further developed and implemented. In the well-established translational research environment at the host institution, potential new biomarkers translate into molecular diagnostics or imaging tools for an accurate individual assessment of cancer aggressiveness.

1 800 209 €

Start date: 2010-03-01, End date: 2015-02-28

The world's languages differ substantially from each other. Yet, all children learn the language(s) they are born into quite easily. A major scientific question in language has been to what extent follows a universal trajectory based on an innate design for language, and to what extent it is shaped by specific properties of the language that is being learned. By comparing the acquisition of a spoken language with a language that uses a visuo-spatial format, namely signed languages, a unique window of opportunity is created for investigating this fundamental question. Compared to spoken languages, signed languages represent spatial relations in an analogue way rather than arbitrarily. The proposed study will use a novel approach to investigate whether these differences influence the trajectory of how deaf versus hearing children learn to express spatial relations in their native languages (i.e., Turkish Sign Language versus Turkish). Spatial language development of deaf children will be compared with spoken language development as well as to the co-speech gestures of hearing children as the first time. Thus the proposed study will bring together state-of-the-art research in language acquisition, sign language, and gesture studies in a unique and ground-breaking way. Furthermore gathering data on acquisition of less studied and typologically different signed and spoken languages is critical to test some of previous research results based on Western languages. Due to spread use of cochlear implants fewer deaf children learn sign languages in European countries. The context in Turkey provides an unprecedented opportunity to conduct such a study with many participants before cochlear implants are also widespread in Turkey.

1 159 000 €

Start date: 2010-01-01, End date: 2014-12-31

Proline and related secondary amines were found to be efficient organocatalysts of aldol, alkylation, Michael addition, and other challenging bond-forming reactions. The design of even more efficient systems that would allow extending this remarkable catalytic strategy to a useful and environmentally benign synthetic methodology would be highly desirable. This proposal aims to develop a new class of biocatalysts that use the powerful proline-based enamine mechanism of organocatalysts but that take advantage of the water solubility and stereochemical control available with enzymes. As a scaffold for engineering, we will exploit the active-site template of the tautomerase superfamily proteins, the only known group of enzymes that has the unique feature of using a N-terminal proline in catalysis. By systematically screening tautomerases for promiscuous carbonyl transformation activities, we aim to demonstrate that Pro-1 residues within these tautomerases can react with carbonyl compounds to give enamine intermediates, and thus may facilitate various bond-forming reactions. The most promising enzymes will be used in directed evolution experiments to enhance the desired activities to a practical level. For this, new screening and selection methods will be developed that allow the efficient passage through protein sequence space. Furthermore, unnatural secondary amines will be introduced by total chemical synthesis. In this way, we envision to generate superior biocatalysts for carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions. The idea of using a protein scaffold in which a catalytic proline is present as nucleophile and that has a unique reactivity to form enamines would be a completely new approach to making carbon-carbon bonds. It does not copy something in Nature, but is based on the synthetic requirements of the desired bond-forming reactions. I believe that this type of approach is the future of enzyme engineering and is the key to more application of biocatalysis in industry.

2 000 000 €

Start date: 2010-05-01, End date: 2015-04-30

Tropical forests cover just 7% of the Earth s surface, but store 25% of the global terrestrial carbon pool. Since they are so rich in carbon, net loss or uptake of carbon by tropical forests has important implications for atmospheric CO2 levels. Thus, tropical forests can speed up climate change by net emission of CO2 or slow it down by net sequestration. The rise in atmospheric CO2 level since the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the resulting climatic changes have certainly affected tropical forest dynamics. Understanding the impacts of these changes so far is crucial to predict future responses. Recent studies have shown that tropical forests have acted as carbon sinks over the last decades. However, it is unclear whether these forests have accumulated biomass already over the longer periods of time during which CO2 levels have risen and climate has changed. It is also unknown what has caused the observed biomass increase. The proposed study has the objective to detect, explain and predict long-term climate change effects on tropical tree dynamics. To this end, I will apply three techniques which are new to this field: tree ring analysis, stable isotope measurements and tree growth modelling. This is the first pan-tropical study that analyses centennial-scale tree growth. The study will be conducted at three sites (Bolivia, Cameroon, Thailand) and includes 15 tree species. I will test for gradual changes in long-term tree growth using tree ring data. Stable isotopes (C, O) will be measured to reconstruct past climate and detect responses to CO2 rise. The influence of changes in forest dynamics on tree growth will also be assessed. Finally, I will develop and apply physiological tree growth models and population models to unravel the complex interactive effects of climatic changes, CO2 rise and light climate on tree growth and population dynamics.

1 729 200 €

Start date: 2010-02-01, End date: 2015-01-31