The precipitation of alkaline-earth carbonates in silica-rich alkaline solutions yields nanocrystalline aggregates that develop non-crystallographic morphologies. These purely inorganic hierarchical materials, discovered by the IP of this project, form under geochemically plausible conditions and closely resemble typical biologically induced mineral textures and shapes, thus the name ‘biomorphs’. The existence of silica biomorphs has questioned the use morphology as an unambiguous criterion for detection of primitive life remnants.

The transition to a low carbon economy needs to achieve multiple aims: competitiveness, protection of the environment, creation of quality jobs, and social welfare. Thus policy-makers and other key stakeholders require tools that need to focus beyond the energy sector by including these other domains of economy, society and the environment. Currently, most available tools lack integration of these important areas despite being tightly connected to the energy sector.

European aquaculture production provides direct employment to 80,000 people and a 3-billion € annual turnover. Parasites cause severe disease outbreaks and high economic losses in finfish aquaculture. The overarching goal of ParaFishControl is to increase the sustainability and competitiveness of European Aquaculture by improving understanding of fish-parasite interactions and by developing innovative solutions and tools for the prevention, control and mitigation of the major parasites affecting Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, common carp, European sea bass, gilthead sea bream and turbot.

The complexity of the problem of banning discards and bringing all unwanted catches to land makes it necessary to follow a multi-actor approach, whereby scientists, fisheries technologists, fish producers and NGOs work collaboratively to provide the scientific and technical basis to achieve the gradual elimination of discards in European marine fisheries.

The main objective of YPACK is the pre-industrial scale up and validation of two innovative food packaging solutions (thermoformed tray and flow pack bag) based on PHA, with active and passive barrier properties. New packaging will use food industry by-products (cheese whey and almond shells), assure the biodegradability and recyclability, and reduce food waste, in the frame of the EU Circular Economy strategy.

A group of New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBT) has opened unprecedented opportunities in agriculture. Those NPBTs are at least as efficient and often more precise than previous traditional and GM techniques, while circumventing the introduction of heritable transgenes from distant species in the plant genome. Properly communicated, NPBTs are expected to gain wide acceptance, especially when applied to breeding objectives which are seen as beneficial for the society.

The EN-ACTI2NG program (European Network on Anti-Cancer Immuno-Therapy Improvement by modification of CAR and TCR Interactions and Nanoscale Geometry) emanates from the recent clinical evidence that T cells expressing engineered tumor-specific immune receptors can eradicate certain tumors that do not respond to conventional treatment. To obtain T cells with reactivity to a wider array of tumors and to improve efficiency and on- and off-target toxicity are current challenges Therefore the EN-ACTI2NG program aims

Peritoneal dialysis (PD) is an underused life saving renal replacement therapy for end-stage kidney disease. Nevertheless, PD patients remain at high risk for poor outcome, most notably excessive risk of cardiovascular disease. There is an unmet need for a risk-adjusted individualized PD approach. The IMPROVE-PD consortium provides 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in 11 partner institutes located in 7 different countries a state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary and intersectoral pan- European training programme including input from academic, clinical and industrial stakeholders.

Environmental microbial surveys have revealed a remarkable diversity of microeukaryotic life in most ecosystems, the majority of which had previously escaped detection. From an ecological point of view this work highlighted our ignorance of critical microbial players in natural environmental processes, including primary production, biogeochemical cycling and trophic interactions such as parasitism and grazing. Consequently, our understanding of community function is partial, limiting our ability to study environmental change.

A fundamental feature of the developing neural circuits is their ability to change in response to sensorial experience. This phenomenon has been particularly observed during the generation of cortical maps, where altering the pattern of sensory experience changes the spatial organization of sensory representations. The mechanisms underlying this form of plasticity include synaptic modification such as long-term potentiation and long-term depression, classically referred to as Hebbian-based rules.