The 'Spatialising Career Interventions for Inclusivity and Sustainability' (SpaCIIS) project aims to address rural sustainability through the unusual perspective of career education and guidance (CEG) provision. Existing research shows that rural CEG provision can encourage young people to leave their rural communities and the project aims to ask whether CEG provision can be reimagined to more fully meet the needs of rural young people and their communities. The project takes an interdisciplinary approach applying insights into place-conscious practice, and place and social justice, developed in the field of rural education to rural CEG provision. Utilising Research Circles (RCs) (a form of participatory research), the project engages three rural Danish communities in researching the needs of their communities and co-designing place-conscious CEG interventions. The project contributes to scholarship in CEG by: developing a new conceptualisation of social justice for CEG including consideration of spatial aspects of inequality, and developing a new model(s) of place-conscious CEG provision. The project also extends rural development scholarship by exploring the role specifically of CEG provision in economic and population sustainability of rural communities. Contributing to rural education scholarship, the project highlights the role of CEG provision within community-education linkages and explores the value of RCs as an innovative way to bring together different perspectives and generate community led innovations in this provision. Practical outputs include the development of tools for delivering place-conscious career education that can be adapted for use across different rural communities, CEG services and CEG practitioners. Through these outputs the project seeks to improve the quality and efficiency of rural CEG services.

Virus-induced type I interferons (IFN) have classically been considered to constitute the first line of defense against virus infections However, recent work by us and others has identified early antiviral actions that occur independently of inducible type I and III IFN expression and sometimes even prior to IFN action (e.g. Iversen,...., Paludan. Nature Immunology, 2016; Paludan. Trends in Immunology, 2016). These discoveries challenge the current thinking in the field that IFNs constitute the first line of defense. Hence, there is an urgent need for more detailed understanding of the immediate antiviral defense mechanisms. Most importantly, we remain to identify key players in IFN-independent antiviral responses, we completely lack insight into the mechanisms that govern these responses, and we also lack information on the importance of this layer of defense in mice and humans. In accord with this, my proposal follows four aims: (i) Identification of mechanisms of virus detection at epithelial surfaces, (ii) elucidation of the role of tonic IFN signaling in antiviral defense, (iii) identification and characterization of novel restriction factors, and (iv) deciphering the mechanisms that govern induction of the first wave of IFNs at epithelial surfaces. In addition, I will also explore the interactions between the early antiviral actions. To achieve the goals, I will combine unbiased genome-wide screens with hypothesis-driven approaches, and will integrate molecular biology/genetics/biochemistry with advanced cell culture systems, animal science and analysis of patient material. Strong preliminary data have been generated for all four aims, and world-leading collaborations are in place, hence minimizing the risks, and allowing fast progress. Our findings will (i) change the thinking in innate immunology by uncovering a novel layer of antiviral defense and (ii) provide new avenues for therapeutic modulation of immune responses.

Hearing is an essential part of human life. We communicate through the voice, use sounds to navigate in the world and enjoy listening to music. On the other hand noise pollution in living and working environments causes serious health problems impacting millions of people and many neurological or psychiatric conditions are accompanied by sensory symptoms. The personality concept of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) describes a continuum from hyper- to hyposensitivity profiles even in the healthy population. However, the underlying neural mechanisms are unknown and an objective acoustic tool to assess auditory SPS is missing. This groundbreaking, interdisciplinary action will adress this gap by combining methods from cognitive and computational neuroscience, acoustics and psychology. I will compute mathematical models to characterize auditory performance, unravel the biological imprint of SPS using neuroimaging, and ultimately provide the scientific community with a much-needed acoustic battery to assess SPS differences objectively. Predictive coding, a general theory of neural function inspired by research in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and systems neuroscience, will provide the theoretical framework for the computational models. The interdisciplinary environment at the Center for Music in the Brain (MIB) at Aarhus University, has as its primary goal to investigate predictive coding of music. Therefore, it is the perfect location for this work and my training in psychology, auditory neurosciences and music make me the ideal person for this action. At MIB I will enhance my neuroscience (MEG), computational and programming skills. During a secondment at Oxford University I will extend the analyses to whole-brain approaches. Overall the action will foster my development as an indepent researcher capable of leading my own research group with groundbreaking potential for academia and industrial fields of application.

This project will pursue an interdisciplinary methodology to analyse how and why the early medieval European deltas became primary gateways for interaction between sea and inland territories, and how they influenced the new socio-economic scenario after the fall of the Roman economic system. I will compare two Mediterranean cases, the Rhone and the Po deltas, with the North Sea cases of the Rhine and Elbe deltas between the 6th-10th centuries AD. Historical document and archaeological analyses in one of the most-active research clusters of early medieval Europe (UrbNet) will be paired for the first time in these areas with new cutting-edge remote-sensing technologies and network modelling analysis, allowing to: a) reconstruct the early medieval delta’s landscape; b) understand how deltas’ environment influenced the form and development of socio-economic networks; c) assess what kind of impact people and goods had on deltas and related societies; and d) identify and, possibly, define a ‘delta identity’ establishing a new research trend. De.ltas, through its interdisciplinary approach and the support of leading scholars in both archaeological (Sindbæk) and landscape (Kristiansen) analysis of wetland environments, has the potential to highlight the crucial socio-political and economic role of interaction in delta areas, reassessing the opinion of an early medieval socio-economic stagnation in the Mediterranean in this phase. Moreover, the case-study areas, at the borders of the post-Roman ‘European Union’ under the Franks, will allow me to investigate the permeability of delta societies engaging with migration, cultural integration and self-definition, and the anthropic interaction with climate change and environmental threats which are pressing contemporary issues. Finally, this project will fill a research gap concerning the development of early medieval socio-economic systems linked to river deltas, an overdue research question not yet fully tackled.