This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

Incidence of obesity has been steadily increasing for the last few decades. A corresponding rise in the obesity associated co-morbidities such as cardiovascular diseases and type-2 diabetes makes it an acute priority to understand the mechanisms underlying body weight regulation. It is well established that distributed brain circuits tightly monitor and regulate energy stores. Of particular interest, electrical and pharmacological manipulations to ventromedial portion of the hypothalamus (VMH), results in dramatic alterations in food intake, adiposity and glucose homeostasis in animal models. Furthermore, human genetic screens have shown that, at least for a subset of morbidly obese patients, genes that are heavily expressed in VMH are altered. Collectively these observations point to a central role for VMH in driving negative energy balance, yet relatively little is known how VMH neurons achieve this. To identify novel mechanisms for controlling energy balance, we propose to determine the following: 1) identify signals that regulate VMH neuronal activity, this includes synaptic input as well as circulating signals, 2) dissect out immediate downstream and upstream synaptic targets of VMH neurons mediating food intake and glucose homeostasis. To achieve this, we will use state of the art neuronal circuit mapping techniques involving virus based retrograde tracers and optogenetics. By combining functional electrophysiology and morphological approaches we will determine brain regions that has connections to and from VMH and evaluate behavioral and physiological significance each of these connections in-vivo. Understanding the basics of the functional VMH-wiring diagram will help determine how these neuronal circuits change under the conditions of metabolic and feeding disorders and will provide basis of targeted approaches for treatment.

This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

This action supports physical and blended mobility of higher education students and staff from EU Member States and third countries associated to Erasmus+ to any country in the world. Students in all study fields and cycles can take part in a study period or traineeship abroad. Higher education teaching and administrative staff can take part in professional development activities abroad, as well as staff from the field of work in order to teach and train students or staff at higher education institutions.

Motivation: Wireless access is being used extensively in our life. Wireless access enabler, the frequency bands, on the other hand, is very scarce. It is very important that any wireless access system utilizes the frequency at outmost efficiency. One of the poorly utilized wireless bands is the FM Band between 88–108 MHz. The band is being allocated only for relatively high quality audio broadcast around the world. This band has good propagation characteristics and therefore its coverage range and its penetration through buildings are excellent. As FM coverage is so ubiquitous around the world, several applications are already considered to better exploit this useful band: (a) Software defined radios for public safety, (b) New digital audio broadcast services, and (c) the development of an emergency message delivery services. With one of these applications and good propagation characteristics, FM Band can enable a fully connected Europe. It is of significant interest to investigate and characterize channel properties of the FM Band for the potential wireless systems. Therefore, the objective of this novel research is for the first time to develop a complete channel characterization of FM Band and then to perform analytical directional channel modelling. The newly introduced models will then be validated through field trials, and will be able to support the parameters of the contemporary wireless systems with multiple antennae. Approach: The directional channel models will be developed through (i) geometrical (ray tracing) and (ii) tapped delay line (parametric stochastic modelling) approaches by considering 2-D (time and angular) channel impulse response. The models will be based on the specification of directional channel impulse response functions, large and small channel effects. The measurement campaigns will be carried out via channel sounders. Thus, we will have the first standard directional channel models of the FM Band.