De novo mutations (DNM) are novel alterations in DNA, which provide substrates for evolution and can cause sporadic diseases. Hence, better understanding of when and where DNM arise and what causes their emergence is crucial. Recently, sequencing technologies unraveled intrinsic mutational drivers, namely sex and age effects. However, to what extent extrinsic factors, e.g. assisted reproductive technology (ART), which is increasingly popular in human and livestock reproduction alike, drives DNM, remains to be investigated. My previous results showed that ART exerts a strong impact on de novo structural variants in cattle, but it is unknown whether this is universal for other variants. Also, whether ART-embryos, which often lead to reproductive failure during development, have different mutational landscapes than liveborn ART-offspring, is unclear. I will use state-of-the-art sequencing data in ART-produced cattle and embryos to study how mutational processes are affected by ART. I will investigate the mutational processes of diverse DNM and how they differ depending on developmental stages (e.g., liveborn cattle vs. embryos). A better understanding of ART impacts on DNM is timely and urgent for increasing use of ART in humans and animals alike, and results of this work may lead to optimal use of animal resources.

Communication is an essential element of human interaction. In the so-called locked-in syndrome, fully conscious and aware patients have lost the ability to communicate as a consequence of a severe motor paralysis. To help affected patients in this fateful condition, motor-independent communication through brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) has been suggested and implemented. However, until now, none of the existing BCI communication systems is applied at patients homes on a regular basis. The proposed research aims at filling this gap by developing novel individualized communication BCIs, based on mental imagery tasks and portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy, that are suited for daily use

To regenerate ?mature? European cities, urban transformation of e.g. brownfield sites, inner-city shopping areas, waterfront and dockland areas and post-war social housing neighborhoods has become a powerful, but often also problematic strategy. Effective governance and value capturing strategies, particularly those that promote private-private collaboration, are important to improve the results of these projects. International policy transfer of successful strategies and tools seems attractive, but is not without problems. The main objectives of this project are therefore to investigate internationally (1) the effectiveness of self-organizing governance and finance strategies for urban transformation and (2) the possibilities for policy transfer of effective strategies and tools. The project will build on the results of a number of recently finished and on-going (international) research projects focusing on innovations in governance and finance strategies for land and property development and structural changes in the structures of building provision. Behavioral game-theoretical simulations and experiments will be applied, to test strategies that promote private-private collaboration in urban transformation. The project will develop a new 2.0 version of the global online experimental platform (GXP) for analyzing both cross-country policy transfer of these strategies within Europe and institutional and cultural factors that may block a successful transfer.

An estimated 60% of the presently observed sea level rise is attributed to melting glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets. The contribution of Arctic glaciers and especially the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) has more than doubled over the period 1961-2008, and is likely to increase further when global temperature increases over the coming century. A first order effect of increasing temperatures on the glacier mass budget is an increase in surface melt. However, not all melt contributes to mass loss via runoff, because part of the meltwater refreezes in the cold snow. For the GrIS, an estimated 30-50% of all meltwater refreezes. Infiltration of water and subsequent refreezing is not well included in existing mass balance models, and estimates of refreezing are not well validated due to a lack of observations. Given the importance of refreezing for the mass budget of Arctic glaciers, in this proposal we focus on improving refreezing estimates for the GrIS and therewith other Arctic ice masses, by using a combined observational and modelling approach. Existing satellite and in-situ observations, complemented with detailed snow temperature observations to be carried out in western Greenland (K-transect), will be used to evaluate the mass balance terms and refreezing modelled with the regional climate model RACMO2, which includes a multi-layer snow model. After improvements to the snow model have been implemented and evaluated, RACMO2 will be run for the period 1958-present-2100 in order to study the role of refreezing in the mass balance of the GrIS in a changing climate.