• Canada
• 2019 close

Communication is one of the necessary condition to develop intelligence in living beings. Humans use several modalities to exchange information: speech, written text, both in many languages, gestures, images, and many more. There is evidence that human learning is more effective when several modalities are used. There is a large body of research to make computers process these modalities, and ultimately, understand human language. These modalities have been, however, generally addressed independently or at most in pairs. However, merging information from multiple modalities is best done at the highest levels of abstraction, which deep learning models are trained to capture. The M2CR project aims at developing a revolutionary approach to combine all these modalities and their respective tasks in one unified architecture, based on deep neural networks, including both a discriminant and a generative component through multiple levels of representation. Our system will jointly learn from resources in several modalities, including but not limited to text of several languages (European languages, Chinese and Arabic), speech and images. In doing so, the system will learn one common semantic representation of the underlying information, both at a channel-specific level and at a higher channel-independent level. Pushing these ideas to the large scale, e.g. training on very large corpora, the M2CR project has the ambition to advance the state-of-the-art in human language understanding (HLU). M2CR will address all major tasks in HLU by one unified architecture: speech understanding and translation, multilingual image retrieval and description, etc. The M2CR project will collect existing multimodal and multilingual corpora, extend them as needed, and make them freely available to the community. M2CR will also define shared tasks to set up a common evaluation framework and ease research for other institutions, beyond the partners of this consortium. All developed software and tools will be open-source. By these means, we hope to help to advance the field of human language.

Synthetic biology is an exciting new discipline which offers the potential to bring many benefits to human health and welfare. One near-market example is the use of engineered genetic networks to make biological sensors, or biosensors, which can rapidly detect toxins and harmful microorganisms. However, most synthetic biology systems are based on living genetically modified cells, and due to safety concerns and regulatory issues, they can not be used outside of a specially approved laboratory, whereas the greatest unmet need for biosensors is in the field, for 'point-of-use' and 'point-of-care' tests for health hazards. The laboratory of Professor James Collins recently reported a remarkable breakthrough, using non-living biological systems based on genetic components dried onto strips of paper. These systems can be prepared very cheaply, can be stored stably for long periods, and, since they are not alive and can not replicate, they pose no risks to the environment. This technology is therefore ideal for further development of sensors for human health. In addition, these cell-free systems can be prepared in large numbers very rapidly, in a matter of hours, and tested rapidly, in a matter of minutes, whereas living cell based systems may take weeks to prepare and days to test. This makes the new technology ideal for 'rapid prototyping' of genetic circuits. Many designs can be rapidly generated and tested, and the most successful can then be used to generate cell-based systems for applications where this is required, such as engineered metabolic pathways for manufacturing pharmaceuticals and other valuable compounds. In this project, we will further develop these remarkable systems and create new tools which will make it even easier to design and develop them. Firstly, we will create new computational tools which can be used to design genetic circuits for many applications. These will be made available on-line for the benefit of the research community. Secondly, we will establish methods for rapid automated assembly and testing of new circuits, allowing many thousands of variants to be generated and tested in a very short time with minimal human effort. Thirdly, we will seek to improve the basic technology, to improve the performance of the cell-free devices, and also develop low cost open-source electronic readers which can easily be used in the field along with the sensors we develop. Fourthly, we will demonstrate the usefulness of the technology by generating sensors which can rapidly and sensitively detect various external inputs. All of our new inventions will be made available to the research community. In addition to the other advantages mentioned above, this technology also makes it easy for users to develop their own assays simply by adding appropriate DNA components to a basic mixture, using standard protocols. Such devices can be manufactured and distributed cheaply on a very large scale. In conjunction with low-cost readers, ubiquitous mobile devices equipped with GPS and time data, and cloud-computing, this will offer the possibility to detect health hazards with unprecedented levels of speed and detail, with potentially huge effects on human health and welfare. Furthermore, these devices are ideal for use in education, allowing users to design and test their own genetic circuits without the issues inherent in using living cells. For these reasons, our proposal offers tremendous benefits and represents a step change in the real-word applicability of synthetic biology.

EMPHASIS is a participatory research project addressing native and alien pests threats (insect pests, pathogens, weeds) for a range of both natural ecosystems and farming systems (field crops, protected crops, forestry, orchards and amenity plants). The overall goal is to ensure a European food security system and the protection of biodiversity and of ecosystems services while developing integrated mechanisms of response measures (practical solutions) to predict, to prevent and to protect agriculture and forestry systems from native and alien pests threats. The specific objectives are the following: 1.Predict, Prioritize and Planning: pest management challenges and opportunities will be evaluated according to stakeholder-focused criteria and through pathway analysis; 2.Prevent: practical solutions for surveillance in different pathways to enhance preparedness will be provided to end-users, and monitoring tools following outbreaks and eradication will be developed; 3.Protect: practical solutions for managing native and alien pests in agriculture, horticulture and forestry will be developed, their technical and economic feasibility will be demonstrated and their market uptake will be enhanced. 4.Promote: a mutual learning process with end-users will be developed, and the solutions identified by the project will be promoted through training and dissemination. The project is in line with EU policy framework (Plant Health Dir. 2000/29/EC, EU Biodiversity strategy to 2020, Dir. 2009/128/EC on sustainable use of pesticides, Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe) and its future developments (Reg. on protective measures against pests of plants, Reg. on Invasive Alien Species). The project is not focused on a single management systems but the plant/pest ecosystems dealt with are treated with a multi-method approach to design true IPM methodology that will be developed for key systems with portability to other similar systems, thereby having a large impact.