- Current language: en
South East England
PolarClean
Advanced methods for the removal and monitoring of polar organic contaminants
Brighton
Climate and environment
The aim of the project is to develop advanced methdologies for the decontamination and monitoring of emerging polar contaminants in wastewaters and drinking waters.
There are no known technologies for cleaning e.g. endocrine disruptors, molluscicides, acrylamide, which are major problems affecting the quality of drinking water world-wide and can degrade aquatic ecosystems. Methods based on micro- and nano-composite materials and heterogeneous catalysis with superior cleaning properties will be developed and applied to achieve efficient and environmentally friendly remediation technologies. The decontamination strategy will be further developed as a new high throughput analytical tool for monitoring trace amounts of pollutants in water.
The project will tailor the structure of micro and nano-size carbon beads; nanotubes and graphene oxides to trap highly polar contaminants from water whose removal is not feasible today; embed the most effective structures in a polymeric matrix; and develop a process to decontaminate the material by means of heterogeneous catalysis where the adsorbent will act as catalyst in the degradation reaction. The carbon-based composites developed for water remediation will be optimised for use in analytical processes.
The outputs of the research will contribute to the betterment of ecosystems and human health through the improvement of water treatment technologies, and science with new methodologies to trap, degrade and monitor highly polar contaminants from water. Removal and monitoring highly polar small-size molecules from water is a significant challenge and an urgent need of today.
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99092_en.html
http://about.brighton.ac.uk/set/research/projects/PolarClean.php
eSMART
Randomised controlled trial to evaluate electronic Symptom Management using the Advanced Symptom Management System (ASyMS) Remote Technology for patients with cancers
Guildford
Health
The eSMART programme of work will demonstrate the effects of a real-time, mobile phone based, remote patient monitoring intervention on key patient outcomes and delivery of care provided to people with cancer during and after chemotherapy. Utilising the remote patient monitoring system, the Advanced Symptom Management System (ASyMS), will reduce the symptom burden experienced by patients receiving chemotherapy, improve their quality of life (QoL) during acute treatment and survivorship, and result in changes in clinical practice and improved delivery of care for patients with cancer. eSMART involves 11 European and one American partner as well as cancer care clinicians from all partner countries. A two-group, multicentre, repeated-measures randomised controlled trial (RCT) will be conducted across 16 sites in Europe, 1108 patients will be recruited. Adult (>18 years) patients diagnosed with breast, colorectal cancer or haematological cancers, commencing first-line chemotherapy and planned to receive at least 4 cycles of chemotherapy will be invited to participate. Work will take place in four consecutive phases. Members of the European Cancer Patient Coalition have an integral role as advisors at every stage of the programme to provide advice and feedback and ensure that work is conducted in line with patients’ perspectives and needs. eSMART will demonstrate how delivering patient focused, anticipatory care via technology can improve outcomes for people with cancer whilst simultaneously addressing the increasing demands on acute services across Europe by; enhancing patient outcomes and quality-of-life improvement; promoting of advances in cancer care; reducing social and economic barriers in cancer care; accelerating interoperability and collaboration across Europe and enhancing the economic stimulation of the National Health markets.
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/109341_en.html
Consortium on Organ Preservation in Europe (COPE)
Oxford
Health
The discrepancy between organ supply and demand remains the biggest challenge facing the transplant community today. In order to increase the amount of available donor organs, transplant specialists are increasingly turning to sub-optimal donor organs. Organs from such donors, usually have normal or near normal function before death, but retrieval, storage and transplantation cause progressive injury to the organ. Injury is predominantly caused by inadequate or absent delivery of oxygen and nutrients, either in the warm or cold preservation environment.
New techniques to improve organ preservation are being developed and the COPE consortium including:
• Normothermic liver machine perfusion (NMP)
• Hypothermic kidney machine perfusion (HMP)
• Novel additives for preservation solutions
These strategies are all directed to the vital period that starts at the time of circulatory arrest and extends to the point of transplantation. Specifically, they will tackle the following challenges:
• Exposure of donor organs to ischaemic injury whilst the organs remain in the donor.
• Progressive deterioration of the organ during conventional organ preservation.
• Repair of the organ during preservation using perfusate and pharmacological interventions.
• Identification of reliable predictors of organ viability using biological and other pre-transplant parameters.
The COPE consortium is the official organ preservation task force of ESOT and consists of a number of European transplantation centers, front running transplantation research groups and a number of SMEs involved in developing perfusion fluids and technology. Together, they will be able to generate the statistical power and protocols necessary to test, validate and promote these new organ preservation techniques and increase the number of available solid donor organs.
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/106192_en.html
PENGUINAV
Group dynamics and navigation in king penguin chicks (Aptenodytes patagonicus)
Oxford
Climate and environment
How animals make decisions in groups and coordinate their movements when travelling together has recently emerged as a hotly debated topic in behavioural science. Yet in spite of a strong theoretical framework, empirical studies of group decision-making remain limited. Here, we suggest a new model system, focusing specifically on collective decision-making during group navigation – king penguins. These birds make excellent subjects since they have both a clear tendency to group and a strong motivation to return to a specific location within the colony. We propose a series of field experiments on king penguin chicks to investigate mechanisms of group navigation and to test three central hypotheses: 1) navigational efficiency increases with group size; 2) the presence of experienced individuals affects navigational efficiency of the group; and 3) the size of navigational conflict affects the outcome of decision-making during group navigation. During the experiments, king penguin chicks will be displaced from their crèches and released in groups of different sizes and compositions. Subjects’ movements will be monitored at high spatial and temporal resolution by miniature GPS logging devices attached non-invasively to individual birds. Experimental data will be supplemented by field observations of natural crèche movements. We will use quantitative techniques developed by my host and her collaborators for an extensive and fine-grained comparative analysis of paths, and for exploring the dynamics of decisions made by individuals navigating both solo and in groups. Models of group navigation by king penguins will be developed and their outcome will be compared to the empirical data. In addition, during this project in collaboration with the Engineering Science department at Oxford, we will develop remotely detachable GPS loggers. Our results will provide important validation of the theories and new methodology for the studies of group navigation.
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/98730_en.html
http://apnesterova.wix.com/anna-p-nesterova
LIFE+ CEMs - Circular Economy Metrics
Cowes
Research and innovation
The concept of a Circular Economy offers a practical alternative to the linear approach but, at present, there is no way of measuring how effective a product or company is in making the transition from 'linear' to 'circular', nor are there any supporting tools. This project provides companies with a methodology and tools to assess how well a product or company performs in the context of a circular economy, allowing companies to estimate how advanced they are on their journey from linear to circular. In the project Circularity Metric is demonstrated both on product and company levels, and creates an online tool to improve performance of participating organisations.
http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/programmes/insight/circularity-indicators
LIFE REBus - Developing Resource Efficient Business Models
Banbury
Research and innovation
The project aims to deliver 10 Resource Efficient Business Model (REBM) pilots with major organisations and 20 with SMEs with the aim of achieving 15% resource savings in the project lifetime in comparison with the business as usual approach. It measures and monitors the impact of each REBM pilot against these targets to allow the extrapolation of the potential EU wide impact.
Another objective is to identify requirements for applying REBMs in public procurement by stimulating the demand side of business to motivate the production side to offer resource efficient products.
http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/rebus
Dyslexia and Additional Academic Language Learning
Bracknell
Education
This project helped teachers and parents to support the multilingual dyslexic individual in learning an additional curriculum language. That is, for example, in the UK a child may have Welsh as their first language, use English in the classroom, but also have to learn French.
In terms of the Call for Proposals, it addresses:
- Awareness raising activities, e.g.: promotion of languages; information about language learning opportunities; improvement of access to language learning facilities. The main target group is people with little or no experience of language learning, or who are reluctant language learners. Projects that address this area, either wholly or partly, must therefore give people the information, the motivation and the support they need to go and learn a language. Projects should also include partners who are capable of reaching a broad and often reluctant target audience and convincing them of the benefits of language learning.
- Development and dissemination of language learning materials, e.g.: creating, adapting, refining or exchanging one or more of the following products: educational media/materials for foreign language teaching; methods and tools designed to recognize/evaluate language skills; curricula and language learning methodologies.
This new project aims to: Develop an accredited online learning environment in not only partner languages, but also some of the languages of the learners that may be outside the language of the partnership. That is, the language of the partnership is English, there are six main classroom languages in the partnership (EN, BG, IT, HU, RO, TR, Welsh).
