Project acronym 2DTHERMS
Project Design of new thermoelectric devices based on layered and field modulated nanostructures of strongly correlated electron systems
Researcher (PI) Jose Francisco Rivadulla Fernandez
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSIDAD DE SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE3, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Design of new thermoelectric devices based on layered and field modulated nanostructures of strongly correlated electron systems
Summary
Design of new thermoelectric devices based on layered and field modulated nanostructures of strongly correlated electron systems
Max ERC Funding
1 427 190 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-11-01, End date: 2015-10-31
Project acronym ACTIVENP
Project Active and low loss nano photonics (ActiveNP)
Researcher (PI) Thomas Arno Klar
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT LINZ
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE3, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary This project aims at designing novel hybrid nanophotonic devices comprising metallic nanostructures and active elements such as dye molecules or colloidal quantum dots. Three core objectives, each going far beyond the state of the art, shall be tackled: (i) Metamaterials containing gain materials: Metamaterials introduce magnetism to the optical frequency range and hold promise to create entirely novel devices for light manipulation. Since present day metamaterials are extremely absorptive, it is of utmost importance to fight losses. The ground-breaking approach of this proposal is to incorporate fluorescing species into the nanoscale metallic metastructures in order to compensate losses by stimulated emission. (ii) The second objective exceeds the ansatz of compensating losses and will reach out for lasing action. Individual metallic nanostructures such as pairs of nanoparticles will form novel and unusual nanometre sized resonators for laser action. State of the art microresonators still have a volume of at least half of the wavelength cubed. Noble metal nanoparticle resonators scale down this volume by a factor of thousand allowing for truly nanoscale coherent light sources. (iii) A third objective concerns a substantial improvement of nonlinear effects. This will be accomplished by drastically sharpened resonances of nanoplasmonic devices surrounded by active gain materials. An interdisciplinary team of PhD students and a PostDoc will be assembled, each scientist being uniquely qualified to cover one of the expertise fields: Design, spectroscopy, and simulation. The project s outcome is twofold: A substantial expansion of fundamental understanding of nanophotonics and practical devices such as nanoscopic lasers and low loss metamaterials.
Summary
This project aims at designing novel hybrid nanophotonic devices comprising metallic nanostructures and active elements such as dye molecules or colloidal quantum dots. Three core objectives, each going far beyond the state of the art, shall be tackled: (i) Metamaterials containing gain materials: Metamaterials introduce magnetism to the optical frequency range and hold promise to create entirely novel devices for light manipulation. Since present day metamaterials are extremely absorptive, it is of utmost importance to fight losses. The ground-breaking approach of this proposal is to incorporate fluorescing species into the nanoscale metallic metastructures in order to compensate losses by stimulated emission. (ii) The second objective exceeds the ansatz of compensating losses and will reach out for lasing action. Individual metallic nanostructures such as pairs of nanoparticles will form novel and unusual nanometre sized resonators for laser action. State of the art microresonators still have a volume of at least half of the wavelength cubed. Noble metal nanoparticle resonators scale down this volume by a factor of thousand allowing for truly nanoscale coherent light sources. (iii) A third objective concerns a substantial improvement of nonlinear effects. This will be accomplished by drastically sharpened resonances of nanoplasmonic devices surrounded by active gain materials. An interdisciplinary team of PhD students and a PostDoc will be assembled, each scientist being uniquely qualified to cover one of the expertise fields: Design, spectroscopy, and simulation. The project s outcome is twofold: A substantial expansion of fundamental understanding of nanophotonics and practical devices such as nanoscopic lasers and low loss metamaterials.
Max ERC Funding
1 494 756 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-10-01, End date: 2015-09-30
Project acronym FAMILIY POLARIZATION
Project STRATIFIED FAMILY DYNAMICS:
POLARIZING TRENDS IN COUPLE BEHAVIOUR AND PARENTING
Researcher (PI) Gosta Knud Jorgen Esping-Andersen
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2010-AdG_20100407
Summary The project applies a multiple equilibrium framework to understand ongoing transformations in family demography and their consequences for social inequalities. Associated with the changing economic role of women emerge novel family forms that replace the conventional male breadwinner model. The transition is very much in flux, producing multiple equilibria some of which are unstable and associated with inefficient and inequitable couple specialization. Based on long micro panel data for four countries at different stages of the transition, the study will address three parallel issues. One, identifying equilibrium shifts from the traditional towards more gender symmetric family forms, with particular focus on the endogenously driven dynamics that drive populations towards a gender egalitarian equilibrium. Two, analyzing the potentially polarizing demographic correlates of changing family behaviour in particular in terms of marital choice and couple stability. Three, testing hypotheses regarding family polarization with respect to parental investments in children and how these, in turn, influence children’s life chances.
Summary
The project applies a multiple equilibrium framework to understand ongoing transformations in family demography and their consequences for social inequalities. Associated with the changing economic role of women emerge novel family forms that replace the conventional male breadwinner model. The transition is very much in flux, producing multiple equilibria some of which are unstable and associated with inefficient and inequitable couple specialization. Based on long micro panel data for four countries at different stages of the transition, the study will address three parallel issues. One, identifying equilibrium shifts from the traditional towards more gender symmetric family forms, with particular focus on the endogenously driven dynamics that drive populations towards a gender egalitarian equilibrium. Two, analyzing the potentially polarizing demographic correlates of changing family behaviour in particular in terms of marital choice and couple stability. Three, testing hypotheses regarding family polarization with respect to parental investments in children and how these, in turn, influence children’s life chances.
Max ERC Funding
2 098 860 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-06-01, End date: 2016-05-31
Project acronym HEMOX
Project The male-female health-mortality paradox
Researcher (PI) Marc Luy
Host Institution (HI) OESTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary "From the 1960s to the 1980s a common wisdom about differences between males and females in health and mortality emerged which was summarised by the well-known phrase ""women are sicker, but men die quicker"". Recently this wisdom has been increasingly questioned. Nevertheless, the general idea of a paradoxical relationship between health and mortality among women and men persists until today. The purpose of this project is to decisively advance the understanding of the paradox by demonstrating that the reverse relationship between sex on the one side and health and mortality on the other is not as paradoxical as it seems. We hypothesise that two factors are mainly responsible for causing this intuitive contradiction. First, the overall reversal in sex morbidity and sex mortality differentials occurs because conditions that figure importantly in morbidity are not very important in mortality, and vice versa. Second, it is very likely that longevity is directly related to the absolute number of life years in ill health. Thus, women show higher morbidity rates not because they are female but because they are the sex with higher life expectancy. We will test these hypotheses in a ""natural experiment"" by analysing the relationship between health and mortality among Catholic nuns and monks from Austria and Germany in comparison to women and men of the general population. Cloister studies have a long scientific tradition and provided path-breaking knowledge for human medicine and demography, including the applicant s research during the last decade. This project follows the line of this tradition and will investigate the male-female health-mortality paradox in a longitudinal setting that is as close as one can get to an ideal long-term experiment in humans."
Summary
"From the 1960s to the 1980s a common wisdom about differences between males and females in health and mortality emerged which was summarised by the well-known phrase ""women are sicker, but men die quicker"". Recently this wisdom has been increasingly questioned. Nevertheless, the general idea of a paradoxical relationship between health and mortality among women and men persists until today. The purpose of this project is to decisively advance the understanding of the paradox by demonstrating that the reverse relationship between sex on the one side and health and mortality on the other is not as paradoxical as it seems. We hypothesise that two factors are mainly responsible for causing this intuitive contradiction. First, the overall reversal in sex morbidity and sex mortality differentials occurs because conditions that figure importantly in morbidity are not very important in mortality, and vice versa. Second, it is very likely that longevity is directly related to the absolute number of life years in ill health. Thus, women show higher morbidity rates not because they are female but because they are the sex with higher life expectancy. We will test these hypotheses in a ""natural experiment"" by analysing the relationship between health and mortality among Catholic nuns and monks from Austria and Germany in comparison to women and men of the general population. Cloister studies have a long scientific tradition and provided path-breaking knowledge for human medicine and demography, including the applicant s research during the last decade. This project follows the line of this tradition and will investigate the male-female health-mortality paradox in a longitudinal setting that is as close as one can get to an ideal long-term experiment in humans."
Max ERC Funding
999 999 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-09-30
Project acronym LEK
Project The adaptive nature of culture. A cross-cultural analysis of the returns of Local Environmental Knowledge in three indigenous societies
Researcher (PI) Victoria Reyes García
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Researchers debate the role of culture in shaping human adaptive strategy. Some researchers suggest that the behavioural adaptations that explain the success of our species are partially cultural, i.e., cumulative and transmitted by social learning.
Others find that cultural knowledge has often resulted in maladaptive practices, loss of technologies, and societies collapse.
Despite the importance of the debate, we lack empirical, comparative, research on the mechanisms through which culture might shape human adaptation. I will collect real world data to test a pathway through which cultural knowledge might
enhance human adaptive strategy: the individual returns to culturally evolved and environment-specific knowledge. I will direct two post-docs and four PhD students who will collect six sets of comparable panel data in three foraging societies:
the Tsimane (Amazon), the Baka (Congo Basin), and the Penan (Borneo). I will use a culturally-specific but cross-culturally comparative method to assess individual local knowledge related to 1) wild edibles; 2) medicine; 3) agriculture; and 4) weather forecast. I will analyze data using instrumental variables to get rigorous estimates of the returns to knowledge on
a) own and offsprings health and b) nutritional status, and c) farming and d) foraging productivity. Data would allow me to make generalizations on 1) the returns to local environmental knowledge and 2) the conditions under which locally developed
knowledge is adaptive or ceases to be so. The ground-breaking nature of this study lies in its explicit attempt to use empirical data and a cross-cultural framework to provide a first test of the adaptive nature of culturally transmitted information, and to do so by linking cultural knowledge to individual outcomes.
Summary
Researchers debate the role of culture in shaping human adaptive strategy. Some researchers suggest that the behavioural adaptations that explain the success of our species are partially cultural, i.e., cumulative and transmitted by social learning.
Others find that cultural knowledge has often resulted in maladaptive practices, loss of technologies, and societies collapse.
Despite the importance of the debate, we lack empirical, comparative, research on the mechanisms through which culture might shape human adaptation. I will collect real world data to test a pathway through which cultural knowledge might
enhance human adaptive strategy: the individual returns to culturally evolved and environment-specific knowledge. I will direct two post-docs and four PhD students who will collect six sets of comparable panel data in three foraging societies:
the Tsimane (Amazon), the Baka (Congo Basin), and the Penan (Borneo). I will use a culturally-specific but cross-culturally comparative method to assess individual local knowledge related to 1) wild edibles; 2) medicine; 3) agriculture; and 4) weather forecast. I will analyze data using instrumental variables to get rigorous estimates of the returns to knowledge on
a) own and offsprings health and b) nutritional status, and c) farming and d) foraging productivity. Data would allow me to make generalizations on 1) the returns to local environmental knowledge and 2) the conditions under which locally developed
knowledge is adaptive or ceases to be so. The ground-breaking nature of this study lies in its explicit attempt to use empirical data and a cross-cultural framework to provide a first test of the adaptive nature of culturally transmitted information, and to do so by linking cultural knowledge to individual outcomes.
Max ERC Funding
1 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31
Project acronym LUISE
Project An integrated socioecological approach to land-use intensity: Analyzing and mapping biophysical stocks/flows and their socioeconomic drivers
Researcher (PI) Karlheinz Erb
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAET KLAGENFURT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Land-use intensity is an essential aspect of the human use of terrestrial ecosystems. In the course of history, intensification of land use allowed to overcome Malthusian traps and supported population growth and im-proved diets. It can be anticipated that intensification will become even more decisive in the future, in the light of a growing world population, surges in biofuel consumption, and the simultaneous mandate to protect the world’s forests. Despite its importance, there is a lack of comprehensive, consistent, systematic, and spa-tially explicit metrics of land-use intensity. In consequence, the causal understanding of the factors, mecha-nisms, determinants and constraints underlying land intensification is unsatisfactory. This is due to the main-stream in land use research that predominantly operates with nominal scales, subdividing the Earth’s surface into discrete land cover units. This hampers the analysis of gradual changes, in particular those which are not related to changes in land cover. Intensification leads exactly to such changes. The overall goal of LUISE is the conceptualization and quantification of land use intensity and to contribute to an improved causal under-standing of land intensification. By applying and significantly extending existing methods of the material and energy flow analysis framework (MEFA), the full cycle of land intensification will be studied: Socioeco-nomic inputs to ecosystems, structural changes within ecosystems, changes in outputs of ecosystems to soci-ety, and the underlying socioeconomic constraints, feedbacks, and thresholds, from top-down macro perspec-tives as well as applying bottom-up approaches. The anticipated new empirical results and insights can allow further conceptualizations and quantifications of land modifications (land change without land cover change), and improve the understanding of the dynamic and complex interplay of society and nature that shapes spatial patterns as well as changes of land systems over time.
Summary
Land-use intensity is an essential aspect of the human use of terrestrial ecosystems. In the course of history, intensification of land use allowed to overcome Malthusian traps and supported population growth and im-proved diets. It can be anticipated that intensification will become even more decisive in the future, in the light of a growing world population, surges in biofuel consumption, and the simultaneous mandate to protect the world’s forests. Despite its importance, there is a lack of comprehensive, consistent, systematic, and spa-tially explicit metrics of land-use intensity. In consequence, the causal understanding of the factors, mecha-nisms, determinants and constraints underlying land intensification is unsatisfactory. This is due to the main-stream in land use research that predominantly operates with nominal scales, subdividing the Earth’s surface into discrete land cover units. This hampers the analysis of gradual changes, in particular those which are not related to changes in land cover. Intensification leads exactly to such changes. The overall goal of LUISE is the conceptualization and quantification of land use intensity and to contribute to an improved causal under-standing of land intensification. By applying and significantly extending existing methods of the material and energy flow analysis framework (MEFA), the full cycle of land intensification will be studied: Socioeco-nomic inputs to ecosystems, structural changes within ecosystems, changes in outputs of ecosystems to soci-ety, and the underlying socioeconomic constraints, feedbacks, and thresholds, from top-down macro perspec-tives as well as applying bottom-up approaches. The anticipated new empirical results and insights can allow further conceptualizations and quantifications of land modifications (land change without land cover change), and improve the understanding of the dynamic and complex interplay of society and nature that shapes spatial patterns as well as changes of land systems over time.
Max ERC Funding
887 121 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-10-01, End date: 2016-06-30
Project acronym NANOPHYS
Project Nanophysiology of fast-spiking, parvalbumin-expressing GABAergic interneurons
Researcher (PI) Peter Jonas
Host Institution (HI) INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGYAUSTRIA
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS5, ERC-2010-AdG_20100317
Summary In the present proposal, we plan to examine the dendrites, axons, and presynaptic terminals of fast-spiking, parvalbumin-expressing GABAergic interneurons using subcellular patch-clamp methods pioneered by the PI, imaging techniques, and computational approaches.
The goal is to obtain a quantitative nanophysiological picture of signaling in this key type of interneuron. By incorporating realistic BC models into dentate gyrus network models, we will be able to test the contribution of this important type of GABAergic interneuron to complex functions of the dentate gyrus, such as pattern separation, temporal deconvolution, and conversion from grid to place codes. The results may lay the basis for the development of new therapeutic strategies for treatment of diseases of the nervous system, targeting interneurons at subcellularly defined locations.
Summary
In the present proposal, we plan to examine the dendrites, axons, and presynaptic terminals of fast-spiking, parvalbumin-expressing GABAergic interneurons using subcellular patch-clamp methods pioneered by the PI, imaging techniques, and computational approaches.
The goal is to obtain a quantitative nanophysiological picture of signaling in this key type of interneuron. By incorporating realistic BC models into dentate gyrus network models, we will be able to test the contribution of this important type of GABAergic interneuron to complex functions of the dentate gyrus, such as pattern separation, temporal deconvolution, and conversion from grid to place codes. The results may lay the basis for the development of new therapeutic strategies for treatment of diseases of the nervous system, targeting interneurons at subcellularly defined locations.
Max ERC Funding
2 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-06-01, End date: 2017-02-28
Project acronym TERATOMO
Project Near-field Spectroscopic Nanotomography at Infrared and Terahertz Frequencies
Researcher (PI) Rainer Hillenbrand
Host Institution (HI) Asociacion - Centro de Investigacion Cooperativa en Nanociencias - CIC NANOGUNE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE3, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Fundamental understanding and engineering of composite materials, biological structures and building
blocks for electrical and optical devices of nanoscale dimensions necessitate the availability of advanced
microscopy tools for mapping their local chemical, structural and free-carrier properties. But while optical
spectroscopy, particularly in the infrared (IR) and terahertz (THz) frequency range, has tremendous merit in
measuring such properties optically, the diffraction-limited spatial resolution has been preventing IR and
THz microscopy applications for the longest time to be used in nanoscale materials and device analysis, bioimaging,
industrial failure analysis and quality control.
During the last years we pioneered the field of IR and THz near-field microscopy, which allows twodimensional
(2D) spectroscopic IR and THz imaging of a sample surface with nanoscale spatial resolution,
independent of the wavelength. Key achievements of our work are the nanoscale resolved near-field mapping
of chemical compositions of polymer blends, mechanical strain fields in ceramics and free-carrier
concentrations in doped semiconductor transistors.
The core objective of this proposal is to develop a three-dimensional (3D) spectroscopic imaging method in
a wide spectral range between infrared (IR) and terahertz (THz) frequencies with nanoscale spatial
resolution, a method that does not and not even nearly exist today. Our approach will be based on scatteringtype
scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM), even though s-SNOM is generally considered to be a
surface mapping technique. Instead of scanning the surface, it is proposed to scan a volume above the sample
surface. By using appropriate reconstruction methods, the three-dimensional structure of the sample volume
below the sample surface could be obtained in principle. We recently conducted a theoretical study, which
confirmed the fundamental feasibility of this novel approach that shall be experimentally realized within this
proposal.
The proposed method of IR and THz nanotomography could become a new paradigm in nanoscale optical
imaging. Near-field nanotomography will have the potential to open new and even unexpected avenues for
optical characterization throughout all nanosciences, such as non-invasive, chemical identification of single
(biological) nanoparticles in complex 3D-nanostructures or the measurement of the local free-carrier
concentration and mobility in semiconductor nanowires or devices with 3D-architecture.
Summary
Fundamental understanding and engineering of composite materials, biological structures and building
blocks for electrical and optical devices of nanoscale dimensions necessitate the availability of advanced
microscopy tools for mapping their local chemical, structural and free-carrier properties. But while optical
spectroscopy, particularly in the infrared (IR) and terahertz (THz) frequency range, has tremendous merit in
measuring such properties optically, the diffraction-limited spatial resolution has been preventing IR and
THz microscopy applications for the longest time to be used in nanoscale materials and device analysis, bioimaging,
industrial failure analysis and quality control.
During the last years we pioneered the field of IR and THz near-field microscopy, which allows twodimensional
(2D) spectroscopic IR and THz imaging of a sample surface with nanoscale spatial resolution,
independent of the wavelength. Key achievements of our work are the nanoscale resolved near-field mapping
of chemical compositions of polymer blends, mechanical strain fields in ceramics and free-carrier
concentrations in doped semiconductor transistors.
The core objective of this proposal is to develop a three-dimensional (3D) spectroscopic imaging method in
a wide spectral range between infrared (IR) and terahertz (THz) frequencies with nanoscale spatial
resolution, a method that does not and not even nearly exist today. Our approach will be based on scatteringtype
scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM), even though s-SNOM is generally considered to be a
surface mapping technique. Instead of scanning the surface, it is proposed to scan a volume above the sample
surface. By using appropriate reconstruction methods, the three-dimensional structure of the sample volume
below the sample surface could be obtained in principle. We recently conducted a theoretical study, which
confirmed the fundamental feasibility of this novel approach that shall be experimentally realized within this
proposal.
The proposed method of IR and THz nanotomography could become a new paradigm in nanoscale optical
imaging. Near-field nanotomography will have the potential to open new and even unexpected avenues for
optical characterization throughout all nanosciences, such as non-invasive, chemical identification of single
(biological) nanoparticles in complex 3D-nanostructures or the measurement of the local free-carrier
concentration and mobility in semiconductor nanowires or devices with 3D-architecture.
Max ERC Funding
1 455 600 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-11-01, End date: 2015-10-31
