Belief in conspiracy theories is on the rise and has been associated with a variety of worrisome attitudes and behaviors, from a diffuse distrust toward institutions to the justification of antisocial behavior and, in some extreme cases, to active involvement in terrorist organizations. Many countries have deployed important means to fight against radicalization, including TV spots and phone centers for families to inform about suspect behaviors among their relatives or friends, which often involve advocacy of conspiracy theories. The aim of the present project is to design and assess responses to the issue raised by conspiracy theories beliefs. This will be achieved by identifying relevant cognitive and personal factors that may favor conspiracy theories endorsement; evaluating already existing attempts to reduce conspiracist ideation to set a benchmark; and developing evidence-based intervention programs.

Eutrophication is a worldwide societal and environmental issue related to nutrient-rich river inputs. Land-sea modeling is an essential tool to understand the non-linear relationships between nutrient loads and eutrophication symptoms, and to investigate prospective trends. If few initiatives have started to develop land-sea modeling since 2000s, more developments are needed to achieve an integrated land-sea model that could be used to take into account the complexity and dynamic of land-sea socio-ecosystems, disentangle the role of direct anthropogenic pressures and climate change in eutrophication trends, and identify the changes in practices/uses/regulation/system necessary to avoid eutrophication in a context of climate change. Aquatic processes are relatively well constrained, but the choice of terrestrial models, where solutions can be implemented, need to be done with stakeholders. Indeed, improving quantitative modeling through transdisciplinary (participatory) approaches is rare but essential to improve models with local knowledge and foster confidence and understanding of models by stakeholders. Participation is also needed to ensure the co-construction and appropriation of knowledge, the facilitation of dialogue between stakeholders, and the implementation of sustainable management strategies and decision making along the land-sea continuum. The objectives of MOQQA are to develop generic methodologies based on a suite of participatory qualitative and quantitative modeling approaches to (1) understand complex land-sea (environmental and social) relationships, (2) increase non-scientific knowledge integration to improve land-sea modeling, (3) model the cascade of impacts on hydro-biogeochemistry, eutrophication symptoms, food webs and marine resources, (4) investigate conditions for sustainable socio-ecosystem trajectories in the future, and (5) foster co-adaptative management along the land-sea continuum. The methodology aims at being transposable to any land-sea socio-ecosystem and will be first developed in a pilot site, the Bay of Brest and its watersheds. Expected results are (1) a shared qualitative model of the land-sea socio-ecosystem around eutrophication issues integrating view points and representations of a wide diversity of stakeholders, (2) a functional land-sea physical-biogeochemical-ecological model adapted to the Bay of Brest and its watersheds and enriched by local stakeholder knowledge, (3) a list of pertinent and consistent interdisciplinary indicators and scales to qualify the ecological status along the land-sea continuum, (4) a set of potential ecosystem trajectories related to different practices or management strategies, and (5) the identification of a series of blocks and levers for action. Overall, MOQQA aims at providing (6) a transposable participatory methodology based on qualitative and quantitative modeling to help to overpass land/sea dichotomy and be more integrative with local stakeholder. The main expected impacts of MOQUA are methodologic, scientific, societal and pedagogic. MOQQA will develop transposable methodologies through deeply inter and transdisciplinary approaches, in order to improve the understanding of complex socio-ecosystems at the land-sea interface. MOQQA will also foster co-adaptative management, including by proposing a transposable approach of local implementation of European directives grids of indicators. Finally, pedagogic and mediation impacts will arise from the creation of innovative pedagogic tools for agricultural scholars and students, the training of early-career scientists and outreach towards the civil society.

Recent work shown that pedagogical activities based on sketching have positive effects on the quality of learning of scientific concepts, especially when the learner is guided in this activity. If the activity is carried out on a pen-based tablet, then innovative guidance based on artificial intelligence can be designed. This project will focus on sketching within the framework of learning in anatomy. Its objective will be to design an intelligent tutoring system that is capable of analyzing in real time the actions of the learner during the freehand elaboration of a complex scientific sketch. By comparing these sketches to the teacher's model, this system will be able to provide real-time guidance and feedback to learners. In order to optimize their effects on learning, these supports will be evaluated in a series of studies involving several hundred paramedical training students.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disease characterized by mild to moderate intellectual disability (ID), a heterogeneous cognitive profile, an atypical social behavior, and an unusual acoustic hypersensitivity to noise. The very specific profile of people with WS is probably at least partly attributable to the inherent characteristics of the pathology: their sounds hypersensitivity could lead to high-level Phonological Short Term Memory (PSTM). Unfortunately, the impact of the acoustic hypersensitivity on language development is difficult to establish. The hyperacousis is clearly more subjective experience than scientific evidence: most studies used questionnaires to probe the auditory experiences of people with WS and too few used physiological measurements. Therefore, it is important to conduct new studies to determine possible relationships between hyperacusis, linguistic and non-linguistic skills (such as PSTM). A way to test these hypotheses is to conduct cross-syndrome studies. In the literature, WS is often compared to Down syndrome (DS) because both of these neurodevelopmental diseases are characterized by an equivalent moderate ID level. All studies appear to show that structural aspects of language in people with WS are definitely at a higher level than in people with DS. The strong mastery of these structural aspects of language could be due to the very good PSTM present in WS. Moreover, the excessive reliance on PSTM could explain that people with WS produce more words than they comprehend as if they were only memorizing and using phonological forms without their semantic underpinnings. Specifically, there would be an abnormal imbalance between phonological and semantic processing in people with WS. Language development would rely more on PSTM and less on lexical-semantics. This phonology-semantics imbalance hypothesis contrasts with the conservative hypothesis which argues that language skills are simply in line with developmental age. In compliance with these two hypotheses, the present project aim at investigating a possible effect of hyperacusis on language development of individuals with WS. We hypothesize that their acoustic particularities could increase their interest on phonology and then lead to a high level of PSTM. To test this hypothesis, we will assess objectively their hyperacusis creating appropriate tools including physiological measures (EEG-NIRS protocol), questionnaires, and psychometric measures (prosody, phonological awareness). We will use various standardized tests and original experimental tasks to assess cognitive development (verbal and non-verbal) and language (receptive vocabulary, qualitative aspects of language). To better understand the link between acoustic hypersensitivity and PSTM, a full assessment of PSTM skills (nonword repetition task, serial order STM) will be conducted. Finally, we will specifically test the link between phonology and semantic skills via a minimally verbal task using a priming paradigm. The performance of people with WS will be compared to those of participants with DS and TD participants of same developmental age. Our study will provide new additional support on WS and DS phenotype and will allow us to characterize the disorder group’s trajectory. It will also contribute to better understand the impact of acoustic sensitivity on language development of people with WS. For clinicians, families and children, these issues are particularly important: language and communicative skills are crucial in the development of subsequent cognitive and social abilities.

Global change has a critical effect on biological and socio-cultural diversity leading to a strong demand for the development of sustainable food-agro-ecosystem. In this context, a better understanding of these diversities in the bakery food chain would facilitate development of more sustenance in this food chain. Hence, the objectives of BAKERY are to provide a detailed description of biological and socio-cultural diversity to enable a better understanding of the interactions and services in an organic or low input “Wheat/Human/Sourdough” food-agro-ecosystem. The aim is to develop a pluridisciplinary and participatory research project aiming at (i) describing socio-cultural diversity of bakers’ practices and consumers’ representations, (ii) studying the effects of wheat varieties, terroir and bakers’ practices on the diversity of sourdough microbiome, sensorial and nutritional bread quality as well as consumers preferences, (iii) analyzing the nature of the sourdough microbial interaction (complementation or selection) and their consequence on the sourdough fermentation and bread quality, (iv) integrating all the data to find determinants of the biological and socio-cultural diversity in the bakery chain, and (v) propose strategies for the conservation of biological and socio-cultural diversity in bakery. We will survey 30 French bakers and farmers/bakers who make sourdough breads, using flours resulting from agro ecological practices and distribute their production locally. Information on bakers’ practices as well as wheat seeds’ origin (for baker/farmers), flour, sourdough and bread samples will be collected. In addition we will interview thoroughly a total of thirty consumers of some of the surveyed bakers. The wheat seeds, flour and sourdough microbiome will be analyzed using metagenomic pyrosequencing and phylogeny analysis of rDNA loci. Biochemical characterization as well as sensorial analysis will be performed for sourdoughs and breads. This will delineate sourdough biodiversity, bread quality, and also the diversity of baker practices and consumer representation and implementing an integrated database. Simultaneaously taking advantage of previous works of the project partners on participative wheat breeding, we will use control experiments for analyzing the effect of terroir, of bread wheat varieties (ancient vs modern) and bakers’ practices on the sourdough microbiome and bread quality. Furthermore, we will study the sourdough microbial interaction by analyzing fermentation and population dynamic in reconstituted communities composed of lactic acid bacteria and yeast species. This approach will allow the characterization of the nature of the microbial species interaction (ecological facilitation or selection) and their consequences on the sourdoughs services (dough characteristics and bread quality). Thus, the analysis of these controlled experiments will provide candidate determinants of the diversity in “Wheat/Human/Sourdough” food-agro-ecosystem. The BAKERY project will allow us: (i) to increase our knowledge on the diversity of bakers’ and farmers/bakers’ practices and consumer representation of sourdough breads, (ii) to characterize and to conserve the microbial diversity of French sourdoughs, (iii) to better understand the impact of different determinants on the biodiversity and functioning of the “wheat/Human/Sourdough” food-agro-ecosystems, (iv) to think about the complementarity of ex situ and in situ conservation of wheat and microbial genetic resources and (v) to identify action promoting sustainable bread making practices. This ambitious project is based on the integration of innovative approaches and advanced tools (participatory research, pluridisciplinary interactions, mathematical modeling, post-genomic data) and will benefit from the strong complementarity between partners.