Intensive agricultural practices in Europe and Canada have led to high levels of non-point source nutrient pollution, threatening drinking water quality and contributing to the destruction of aquatic ecosystems. Despite widespread implementation of a range of conservation measures to mitigate the impacts of fertilizer-intensive agriculture, nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) concentrations of inland waters are in many cases remaining steady or continuing to increase. This lack of response to conservation measures is increasingly attributed to the presence of legacy nutrient stores, which cause the long-term release of N and P, hence delaying the expected water quality benefits in receiving water bodies. However, our current knowledge regarding the magnitudes and spatial distributions of legacy nutrients across the landscape, as well as the time scales over which these legacies may contribute to elevated nutrient concentrations in surface and groundwater, remains woefully inadequate. The proposed LEAP project will move beyond a simple focus on nutrient concentrations and fluxes, and instead work towards the explicit quantification of the spatio-temporal dynamics of non-point source nutrient legacies within watersheds and the ongoing and future impacts on water quality. The quantitative understanding of nutrient legacies and the associated legacy-related time lags to achieving improvements in water quality at the project's study sites will allow us to develop an integrated analysis framework and innovative modelling tools to predict agricultural N and P loadings. Due to the strong impacts of nutrient legacies on the time scales for recovery in at-risk landscapes, integration of legacy dynamics into a hydro-economic modelling framework will enable a more accurate assessment of the outcomes of alternative management approaches in terms of both short- and long-term costs and benefits, and the evaluation of temporal uncertainties associated with different intervention strategies. In addition, our mapping of legacy nutrient stores and attention to spatial variations in legacy accumulation will inform the development of targeted, and thus more cost-effective, nutrient mitigation strategies. At a larger scale, our analysis of similarities and differences in agricultural trajectories, and thus differences in legacy nutrient dynamics, across Europe and North America will facilitate the exchange of ideas and perspectives and create new synergies with ongoing EU and Canadian water research and policy development.

It is obvious that the current portfolio of antimicrobial agents and clinical diagnostics will not provide sufficient protection of humans over the long term. This project addresses today’s urgent need for new cellular targets, which will hopefully lead to new antimicrobial drugs that act with novel molecular and cellular mechanisms. Our ambition is to validate cytochrome bd oxidases, a family of multi-subunit membrane proteins, as privileged targets for future antibacterial drugs. Cytochrome bd oxidases, are solely present in bacteria, including several pathogens such as Escherichia coli responsible for several food-induced diseases in Europe, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes the deadliest sickness in Human history and Klebsiella pneumonia often involved in nosocomial infections. The bd oxidases are part of the respiratory chain within these bacteria, however, they are believed to play a crucial role in the protection against oxidative stress, in their virulence, adaptability and antibiotics resistance. No homologues are found in eukaryotes. A comprehensive understanding of the structure, assembly and catalytic mechanism of bd oxidase requires knowledge of their unique structure, the specific reaction mechanism, the interaction with the membrane and possibly the knowledge of chaperones involved in their assembly. Such information is only gained through the integration and combination of a broad range of state-of-the-art analytical techniques. Screening techniques will be set up for medium-to-high throughput methods to search compound libraries for their ability to inhibit the bd oxidase from pathogenic bacteria possibly leading to the development of new antibiotics. The required technical know-how by far exceeds the possibilities of a single research group and international scientific cooperation is imperative. The researchers in this consortium from six countries are working on different aspects of this broad, topical and most important research area, such as the integration of proteins into biological membranes, the structure of membrane proteins, the assembly of multi-subunit complexes in the membrane, the insertion of cofactors, the binding of the substrates, coupling of the redox reaction with charge translocation and with the interactions between the membrane and the embedded bd oxidase. At least two industrial partners have been identified that will support the development of the screening techniques. Establishing and institutionalizing such cooperation within the framework of EU-ITN will not only create a strong research consortium, it will also generate a platform for students to acquire a broad spectrum of skills that will give them a head start on the competitive job market for young scientists.

The Agricultural Water Innovations in the Tropics (AgWIT) partnership will test key management innovations to reduce impacts of agriculture on water resources, improve climate change resiliency and enhance freshwater security. We will evaluate water and carbon use efficiencies for a range of agricultural production systems under current and alternative management scenarios. We will build on a unique network of tropical agricultural water observatories that integrates eddy covariance towers in Brazil and Costa Rica using infrastructure recently established by two projects funded through the Freshwater Security initiative of the Belmont Forum. Optical and thermal monitoring of ecophysiological indicators of plant water stress at multiple scales will be added to the eddy covariance monitoring systems using field-portable analysers, tower-based sensors, sensors integrated with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and data obtained via satellite remote sensing. We will also conduct detailed hydrological and isotopic measurements of these soil-plant-water systems in response to soil and water management strategies._x000D_ _x000D_ We will test the ability of biochar (charcoal derived from waste biomass via pyrolysis) in tropical cropping systems to increase water use efficiencies (from increased soil water storage resulting from biochar additions), increase soil carbon sequestration (through soil application of biochar which has a high carbon content), and improve the water quality of soil leachate (resulting from the filtering effect of biochar, which has very high reactive surface area and exchange capacity). To do this, AgWIT will (i) measure agricultural carbon and water fluxes, crop yields and plant water stress over more than 20 crop cycles in both rainfed and irrigated agricultural systems, (ii) determine using isotopes what portion of water (rainfall and/or irrigation) is used by crops, lost by soil evaporation and percolated beyond the root zone, and (iii) evaluate optimal biochar-based soil treatments to improve crop water use efficiencies._x000D_ _x000D_ Benchmarking volumetric water, carbon and land footprints under different management strategies will be accompanied by AgWIT social scientist stakeholder group consultations in Brazil and Costa Rica. This will allow evaluation of alternative decision pathways to improve agricultural water management, and reduce vulnerability to climate-change impacts within the hydro-social system. We have strong, on-going relationships with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), water management agencies and producer groups in both study regions. These relationships will help to structure strategies for specific decisions concerned with freshwater management choices through structured decision making workshops involving local stakeholders and technical specialists. Scenarios identified by stakeholder groups and water managers will be incorporated into hydrological modelling activities, which will also be used to model biochar impacts at field and landscape scales under realistic management scenarios._x000D_ _x000D_ In sum, AgWIT will develop a globally unique data set of crop responses to biochar amendments, irrigation practices and rainfall patterns. Volumetric water, carbon, land and fertilizer footprints under alternative management scenarios relative to current crop benchmarks are important to producers to aid in water management decision-making. It is also important for the EU because water, carbon, and other resources used in the production of imported agricultural products are indirectly allocated to EU’s consumption. Water and other footprint information will be shared with major life cycle analyses databases in support of the EU’s “single market for green products” initiative.

A major trend in electronics is to become mechanically flexible and reach new areas in packaging, health care, intelligent industries, smart cities. Under the umbrella of internet of everything, new zero-energy devices are created on flexible substrates including an energy harvester, energy storage, Si-microprocessors, displays and sensors. While many developments are in progress to make those devices flexible or small enough to be integrated on a flexible substrate, still one key component is missing: a flexible substrate of high thermal conductivity, with efficient dielectric properties that is made of sustainable materials and production methods. “2D-Paper” proposed to combine the 2D-materials based on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and nanocellulose to create a new thermally conducting paper substrate for flexible electronics. Beside a first targeted 2D-material with h-BN, we will also explore other 2D-material combinations and use artificial intelligence applied to materials to find optimum technical performances. Important technical performances will be about mechanical, dielectric, thermal, electrical properties, even optical and chemical properties will be considered as well as life cycle analysis performances. One key aspect is also the consideration of sustainability in the various parts (synthesis, manufacturing, material choice) but with an emphasises on proposing recyclability routes as those new substrates are intended to be mass produced and interfacing with the environment. In “2D-Paper”, we gather world experts of complementary skills, top notch infrastructure, from both academia and companies from Sweden, France and Slovenia to design, optimize, fabricate, characterize, and set technical specifications for flexible electronics, as well as make a proof of concept of a new thermally conducting paper substrates for flexible electronics; and specifically flexible thermoelectrics as an example of this revolutionary concept. The proposed concept is promising and besides bringing this new technology from TRL1 to TRL4, we intend as an international team to transfer knowledge to a business entity to design a new product. At the end of the project, we will decide together the best strategy to go forward and bring that technology on the market, either through our industrial partners or through a start-up company.

Summary of the project: Owed to their remarkable properties trapped Rydberg atoms and ions are ideal systems for realising quantum simulators and sensors. The strong and long-ranged dipolar interactions between Rydberg matter is the basis for entangling gates. The long lifetime of circular Rydberg states leads to long coherence times, enabling gates with high fidelity and quantum simulation over long times. Large transition dipole moments make Rydberg atoms and ions highly sensitive to electric fields, microwave and terahertz radiation. In this project, we will exploit these unique physical features to build two devices: A Rydberg quantum simulator and a Rydberg-enabled quantum sensor. In particular, we will realise quantum gates based on dipolar Rydberg interaction, and bring their performance to a new level using coherent control methods. We will employ dipolar interactions for realising quantum simulators and apply them to simulate coupled spin and spin-boson systems through digital and analogue approaches. This will enable the investigation of quantum-controlled structural phase transitions as well as the simulation of the motional mode structure of molecules. We will develop highly sensitive probes for electric fields and microwave radiation based on Rydberg-excited ions that can be positioned with nanometre precision and cooled down to micro-Kelvin temperature. This will enable local measurements of electric and microwave fields with high sensitivities that will be further improved through the use of entangled quantum states and dynamical decoupling schemes. Our research will deliver the enabling steps for a future Rydberg-enhanced quantum technology base thereby securing the competitiveness of the European Research Area. Relevance to the topic addressed in the call: In this project, we will apply the quantum technology of trapped Rydberg ions and atoms in the following target areas 2) Quantum simulation, through Rydberg-interacting atoms and ions; We will realise a Rydberg quantum simulator applied to the simulation of coupled spin and spin boson systems, quantum-controlled structural phase transitions, and to the simulation of motional modes in molecules. 5) Quantum metrology, through highly-sensitive localized Rydberg probes; We will implement a Rydberg-enabled quantum sensor capable to measure local electric and microwave fields with highest precision.