The severity of the global COVID-19 pandemic poses an urgent need for the development of efficient therapeutic strategies. To complete the available therapeutic arsenal, targeting the SARS-CoV-2 genome by antisense RNA therapy should be deeply investigated. We designed in silico antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) targeting viral genome to block the viral replication and transcription. The objective of the project is to validate the best ASO firstly by in vitro experiments on infected Vero E6 cultures, and secondly to test the best oligonucleotides antisense in vivo on infected animal model to perform a preclinical trial.

Despite the tremendous interest of the scientific community on photovoltaic solar cells based on hybrid perovskites, many physical phenomena are still not fully understood and subject of controversy, such as the role of electrode/perovskite contact quality. The HYPERSOL project intends to introduce new solutions to improve the interface quality of hybrid perovskites solar cells in order to pin the quasi Fermi levels at Ec and Ev so as to extend the open circuit voltage at the thermodynamic limit for a single junction. Because the Voc in such devices is currently between 1 and 1.1V, we can expect an increase of about 30% in the PCE compared to current devices. To this aim, new dopants and customized self-assembled monolayers will be synthesized and introduced into state-of-the-art devices. Advanced characterization techniques will be used to construct a physical model allowing a complete description of the physics of hybrid perovskites solar cells and their optimization.

Every plant cell is surrounded by a wall, which is at the same time sufficiently strong to resist the turgor pressure and extensible to allow growth. Understanding how plants grow requires studying the architecture and the mechanical homeostasis of this polymer network. The objectives of HOMEOWALL are to combine cell biology, structural biology, soft matter physics and computational modeling to elucidate the nano- and mesoscale architecture of the plant cell wall, the phase transitions in wall polymers that underlie the growth process and the dual role of the recently discovered RALF/LRX/CrRLKL1 module in wall architecture and the control of the phase transitions in expanding cell walls. These data are expected to support a paradigm shift in the understanding of plant cell expansion and to provide new insights in the interactions between co-evolved polyelectrolytes, which are potentially of interest for the conception of new intelligent nanomaterials.

Identifying the sources of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) is one of the most pressing questions in high-energy astrophysics. The advent of high-statistics and high-quality data, most prominently obtained by the Pierre Auger Observatory, has radically changed our understanding of the high-energy Universe, though still without disclosing the cosmic-ray sources. The proposed project addresses this question and aims at identifying source classes that correlate best with existing observational data (direction, energy distribution, and primary mass). A novelty of the proposed approach will be a complete study of bursting sources starting from the modeling of selected source classes, including hadronic interactions within the source, and over the propagation down to Earth, to predicting the UHECR sky as a function of energy and primary mass. Ultra-high-energy sources should be able to confine cosmic rays within a sufficiently magnetized and large region to accelerate them up to the highest observed energies, which imposes in turn a minimum magnetic luminosity. Few, if any, astrophysical sources are able to sustain such a luminosity in the electromagnetic band over a long period of time. This pushes the proponents of the MICRO project to investigate further bursting sources hosted by AGN and starburst galaxies. Intermediate-scale anisotropies of UHECRs can inform us on the direction and on the flux of nearby or most luminous source candidates relatively to an isotropic background built up by fainter objects. The latter component can be estimated from constraints on the luminosity functions of source candidates as a function of redshift. The absolute UHECR flux of each resolved source can be in turn determined relatively to its contribution to the all-sky UHECR spectrum, emphasizing the importance of joint constraints from spectral and anisotropy observables. Besides constraints from arrival directions and the all-sky spectrum, composition informs us on the distance distribution of the sources, as the energy-loss length of an UHECR depends on its nature. Thus, the combined fit of transient source models to arrival direction, spectral, and composition data would constrain the direction, distance, and absolute flux of the source candidates. The objectives specifically addressed in the MICRO project will provide important answers to the leading question of identifying the sources of UHECRs (i) how do burst-like signatures (GRBs, AGN-flares) fit the cosmic-ray data, (i) how can we constrain the 3D distribution of sources from available UHECR observables, and (iii) could astrophysical high-energy neutrinos, some high-energy gamma rays, and UHECRs come from the same bursting sources. The MICRO consortium comprises four Institutions with experienced PIs. They bring in the complementary expertise that is needed to successfully address the ambitious goals of the novel project within a time period of three years.

We propose an enhancement of radioactive ion stopping, extraction and neutralization in gas catchers with the aim to extend nuclear-structure studies by in-gas-jet laser spectroscopy. The FRIENDS3 project aims to develop the required neutralization techniques and to design a fast gas cell for studying the short-lived nuclei produced by the Super Separator Spectrometer (S3), which is a fusion-evaporation recoil separator near commissioning at the SPIRAL2 facility of GANIL. The project is set in the context of the S3 - Low Energy Branch (LEB), an experiment which will perform laser spectroscopy, decay spectroscopy and mass spectrometry on the S3 products stopped in a gas cell, neutralized and extracted in a supersonic jet. The current version of the S3-LEB gas cell has an average extraction time around 500 ms, which hinders the study of very short-lived nuclei. In addition, the neutralization efficiency, necessary in order to interrogate the radioactive species with lasers, depends on the S3-beam intensity, which can be a limitation in the case of very rare beams. The general aim of the FRIENDS3 project is to improve the two key gas-cell parameters, fast extraction and efficient neutralization. For the extraction we aim to exploit the fast drift of the ions out of the stopping region in an electrical field, while for maintaining the ability of the gas cell to deliver neutral atoms for laser spectroscopy, we will study a series of neutralization methods to be applied right before the exit of the radioactive species from the cell. The project will undergo a two-fold approach. On the one hand, a series of in-depth simulations of the possible solutions will be performed with state-of-the-art programs. On the other hand, an off-line test bench will be built in simplified geometry, allowing to test the fast extraction and its dependence on the gas-cell operational parameters, to study and characterize the different neutralization mechanisms, as well as to prove the feasibility of the coupling between the two functional components of the gas cell. S3 is set to produce record intensities of neutron-deficient nuclei, offering new opportunities to research isotopes with extreme proton-neutron imbalance and better constrain the nuclear interaction and the evolution of nuclear-structure phenomena in proton-dripline nuclei. FRIENDS3 will significantly improve the S3-LEB setup and realize the full potential of S3 production.