This is a project for higher education student and staff mobility between Programme Countries and Partner Countries. Please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

The purpose of this project is therefore to compile palaeo-Italic public inscriptions to analyze their use as a means of social communication from the third to the first centuries B.C. Public epigraphy comprises the inscriptions intended for public display regardless of whether they were the result of an official or private initiative. These texts constitute a peculiar form of social communication which was quite typical in the ancient world. They were used for self representation and to spread and perpetuate a series of solemn messages linked to the fundamental values of society, in particular, the values of its élite. The chosen period, prior to the shaping of the so-called imperial epigraphic culture –which began under Augustus and involved an exponential increase in the ‘epigraphic habit’– is characterized by an incipient proclivity to produce public types of texts and, above all, by a diversity of epigraphic cultures, both with regard to language and script. The work plan consists of producing

WHY: The heterogeneity of tumors often makes their diagnosis and treatment a very hard task. A single tumor can have many different diagnostically-relevant molecular markers which can also be used to monitor the efficacy of treatment. Innovative, simple, cost-effective, and quantitative analytical tools for diagnostic and therapeutic applications are urgently needed to ensure rapid and appropriate patient care. WHAT: CO-TRANS-NET project addresses this need by developing synthetic nucleic acid units that can respond to a wide range of tumor biomarkers and can provide innovative tools for biosensing and therapeutics through cell-free in-vitro transcription. HOW: The ground-breaking idea of CO-TRANS-NET is to harness the high programmability of synthetic nucleic acids together with the high sensitivity and versatility of cell-free systems to develop co-transcriptional networks that, in one pot, through nature-inspired recognition mechanisms, can respond to a variety of targets including proteins, small molecules and antibodies and trigger in-vitro transcription of functional RNA. The transcribed RNA can provide a measurable signal or produce a therapeutic drug. CO-TRANS-NET aims to develop single theranostic nanodevices in which cancer diagnosis and theraphy can be simultaneously achieved- This goes beyond the state of the art and represents a breakthrough in the field of diagnostics, biosensing, synthetic biology and nucleic acid-based therapeutics.

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.

Pest-control agent, object and symbol of value in past civilisations, companion animal, and iconic celebrity of the web in the modern society, the domestic cat has an intricate bond with humans. This relationship started more than 10,000 years ago, when cats began scavenging and hunting pests that infested granaries of early farming communities in the Near East. Later in history, cats from Egypt dispersed in the Mediterranean following routes of human trade and connectivity. Cats established a unique and intimate bond with humans, and this, together with their adaptability, determined their global dispersal. Yet, the biological and cultural trajectories behind the development of cat-human interactions, and the implications of the global dispersal and evolutionary success of the domestic cat remain enigmatic. By generating a complementary set of unique and as yet unexplored multidisciplinary data, from paleogenetics, to organic chemistry and microscopy, FELIX will dig deeply into the past of the cat-human relationship by tackling three fundamental variables strongly influenced by the domestication process: genomes, food, and microorganisms. It will unravel how the increasing bond with humans across a wide spectrum of socio-cultural contexts, from prehistoric farming communities to the ancient Egyptian and Medieval societies, shaped the cat genome, leading to behavioural changes that turned cats into pets. It will examine how cats changed their nutritional behaviour while adapting to anthropized ecosystems, and document the temporal trajectories of pathogen infections in cats, shedding light on the rise of zoonotic diseases. This will offer unprecedented evolutionary insights on the debate about animal domestication, and will raise public awareness on the role of the cat as cherished pet, but also as one of the world’s most invasive alien species in natural ecosystems and host of infectious diseases recognized today as public health threats.