The intention of Beasts to Craft (B2C) is to document the biological and craft records in parchment in order to reveal the entangled histories of animal improvement and parchment production in Europe from 500-1900 AD. B2C will lay the foundations for a new approach to the the study of parchment manuscripts —biocodicology— which draws evidence from the overlooked first stages in production, the raising of livestock and the preparation of the skins. 1. Parchment is an extraordinary but overlooked high resolution zooarchaeological record and a molecular archive. Livestock genetics is revealing breed diversity and markers of character traits such as fleece quality. B2C will exploit this new-found knowledge, using progressively older dated archival (sheep) parchments to study the history of improvement 1300 - 1900. Visual examination of the skins will search for direct evidence of disease and fleece quality. 2. Craft skills can be read from parchment and, when combined with chemical data and comparison with modern analogues, will produce the first European wide record of the craft from 500-1900. The size and scope of this the parchment archive means it is one of the largest and most highly resolved records of a specialist medieval craft. We will explore how these skills develop and when and where regional patterns appear and decline. These two remarkable records requires a large interdisciplinary team. However biocodicology draws from and informs upon a wide and diverse spectrum of existing scholarship in conservation, the arts and sciences. A third strand of the project will (i) furnish manuscript scholars with some of the information available to the scribe at time of production (ii) inform and shape attitudes to parchment conservation (iii) provide high resolution biological data on animal management, movement and health and (iv) explore methods to link datasets and promote data reuse.

Medieval books were instrumental in shaping European history, communicating rituals, stories and ideas as they were read, copied and shared. To modern scholars they illuminate trade, craft, religious, social and intellectual networks. Less than 10% of the European corpus survives, and in Scandinavia the situation is far worse. However, by historical accident a very high number of Latin fragments – c. 50.000 – from these precious books have been preserved. CODICUM will study and analyse the Nordic book fragments as sources to medieval book culture and its networks. While parchment fragments are found throughout Europe, the numbers and the randomness of their survival in the Nordic countries lend them a special significance. The time is now ripe for interrogating this promising material as one unique European archive by combining approaches from the humanities and the sciences. How was Scandinavia included in different intellectual networks and how did these networks evolve and overlap? How was book production adapted to the limited resources of the north? What can this cross-national archive teach us about curating textual heritage in the long term? CODICUM is led by PIs from four different fields – palaeography, literature, history, and bio-codicology. This unique blending of research expertise enables an innovative synergy which will expand the perspective of European book history c. 1000-1500, reconnect fragments to each other and digitally ‘reassemble’ medieval books, explore the craftsmanship associated with book production, reveal the relationships between the transmitted manuscripts material and illuminate the international networks linking Northern Europe. Researching medieval book culture on an unprecedented scale, CODICUM will seek to resituate our understanding of the book in shaping the Nordic region and connecting the region to the rest of Europe thereby pushing the poorly known Nordic fragment archive into the fore of European book-historical research.

The post-acute phase (PAP) of COVID-19, occurring ≥4 months after the acute phase, is associated with an increased risk for the development of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The risk of complications in this phase does not depend on the severity of the acute phase. In the EU, more than 183 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported and up to 70% of patients suffer reduced organ function in the PAP. Our conservative estimate it that 5% of people who have suffered COVID-19 are at risk of developing NCDs of the pulmonary, cardiovascular and renal systems due to the PAP. To avoid the significant socioeconomic costs related to this burden, POINT will develop knowledge-based biomarkers for prevention and management of NCDs, a virtual twin model that offers clinical decision support, and clinical guidelines and recommendations for the entire health care value chain with special attention to vulnerable groups. We will fulfil an unmet need for knowledge and tools to minimize the risk factors of the PAP at the optimal point in time, when healthcare systems will have to redirect their focus from the acute phase of COVID-19 to the post-acute phase. The outcomes of POINT will aid the health care value chain already from an early phase of the project. Furthermore, POINT will correlate and promote knowledge on the development of NCDs in general and the risks of PAP from other infectious diseases. POINT will meet the challenges with a holistic approach from a truly interdisciplinary consortium consisting of clinical experts, molecular biologists, behavioural scientists, and computer scientists, who will take advantage of cohorts of more than 6 million Europeans, and cross-sectional biobanks from more than 6000 Europeans. Researchers will work together with standardisation experts, an end-user organization representing >120.000 physicians, as well as a dedicated partner for data management ensuring rapid absorption of the outcomes of the project by all stakeholders.