The Triptic-H project aims to develop an aftertreatment solution for particulate emissions from stoichiometric spark ignition engines with direct fuel injection in connection with electrically hybridized vehicle applications. This type of engine is now known to emit a very large number of particles, mainly in the preferred modes of the hybrid application. The project anticipates the need of a treatment of these particles to reach the levels concerning the particulate number that will be required for the Euro 7 step. Moreover, this normative step will rely on a new test cycle more demanding than the current European test cycle NEDC, since it will be more transitory and covering an extended operating range. To achieve the objective of the project, a consortium is built, bringing together major players in the field of automotive manufacturing, of catalysis and of filtration of exhaust gases from combustion engines for automobiles, and of evaluation and optimization of engine / aftertreatment coupled systems. Two main technologies need to be explored to ensure the achievement of the objective assigned. The first complements a three-way catalyst and aims a high filtration efficiency, particularly for very fine particles, and the continuous oxidation of particles in gas containing small amounts of oxygen through a catalyst without precious metals. The second targets the simultaneous and synergistic treatment of particulate and gaseous emissions, within a single brick thus facilitating its integration in the vehicle. The project structure first aims to precise the knowledge of emissions to be treated through the use of advanced techniques of characterisation, then the joint development of innovative filter substrates and innovative catalytic phases tailored to the specific particles and gases identified. Core size prototypes will be manufactured and evaluated first at a laboratory scale, then full-size samples will be made for the most relevant solutions and evaluated coupled to an engine. Dedicated engine control strategies will lastly be developped to promote the continuous oxidation with no soot loading in the filter.

The objective of the project is to reach the maximum laser pulse energy that can be stacked inside a very high finesse Fabry-Perot cavity and to implement the cavity in the electron accelerator ATF of the KEK Laboratory (Japan) in order to produce the highest gamma-ray beam flux ever achieved from laser-electron Compton scattering. ATF is an accumulation ring test facility built to test all the damping ring technologies which allow reaching extremely low emittances and to stabilize the extracted beam in the nanometric range. To reach our objective we propose to develop a pulsed high average power laser beam (more than 200W, 1 ps @ 178.5 MHz) and to lock it to a high gain (10000) optical resonator in order to store the MW average power level. This will allow a huge increase in the available pulse intensity in Compton collisions once the cavity and laser system will be installed at ATF/KEK. Depending on the energy of the impinging electron beam, the proposed technology will have a fundamental impact on both fundamental and applied research. In fact, Compton scattering is, by far, the physical effect that most efficiently boosts the photon energy (i.e. gamma rays production). In the past it has been exploited in very specific applications due to the extremely low value of its cross section. But, at present, the impressive increase in lasers and electron sources technologies allows to explore this domain for different possible applications in the field of fundamental and applied physics like the polarised positron sources for the future linear colliders and the applied medical, nuclear, material and biochemical sciences. The success of the project will open new areas of applications of X/gamma rays production with electron-laser Compton scattering.

This project is about the evolution and transformation of settlement systems over a long time span (several millennia). The observation of recurrent regularities motivates a modelling approach, which both summarizes existing knowledge, and allows testing new hypotheses. Our research recognizes a growing global awareness of the role of strong environmental constraints on the worldwide spread of human settlements. In fact it is another illustration, on a global level, of how such constraints could have played a very strong role locally in small-scale societies, while becoming almost negligible during the astonishing urban developments of the last two decades as social self-organizational processes became salient in urban formation. Cities have become strongly interdependent by means of multiple communication networks connecting them with each other while producing innovations through the emulation fostered by such interactions, but they once again might see their trajectory hindered by material limitations. We thus propose modelling the dynamics of settlement patterns in the long run through their spatial expressions and temporal paces. Simulation models can improve our understanding of the relative roles of such intermingled factors as environmental constraints, innovations, and social interactions in shaping how the Earth’s surface is occupied. These non-linear interactions are marked both by stable trajectories and by transitions with varying levels of local and regional path dependencies. We shall test several kinds of modelling on generic processes in various parts of the world and at various periods of time, so as to distinguish comparable evolutions from those tied to a particular context. The scientific challenge consists in identifying the appropriate level of abstraction at which these comparisons are meaningful. The main objective is to develop a toolbox of models, from the most general to the most specific, and to explicate their complementarities. The project combines knowledge and models from several social sciences disciplines with natural and computer sciences from both sides of the Atlantic. It assembles the outcomes of innovative work from both European and American research networks. Geographers, archaeologists, historians, linguists, ecologists, statisticians, and computer scientists jointly elaborate their modelling based on vast databases for establishing a catalogue of stylized facts and model-types dealing with the evolution of settlement systems at various spatial and time scales. The project is composed of three main tasks. In the first we propose to complete and improve simulation models of the space-time organisation of urban networks during the industrial era, taking into account circulation networks and certain environmental variables, while developing a modular platform, and testing the applicability of these models to continents other than Europe or North America. In the second we propose to transfer and adapt these models in a way appropriate to examining the network dynamics of pre-industrial settlements observed by archaeologists in various periods and places. In the last one, we will examine the models’ ontologies, to produce a conceptual – and, if possible, practical modelling – approach revealing the spatial and temporal specificities characteristic of each main period of human history, explanatory of the main transitions observed.