Adaptation to climate change requires in-depth understanding of climate change driven risks, including their determinants (hazards, exposure and vulnerabilities) and impacts to human, production and natural systems. Integrated Research Infrastructure Services for Climate Change Risks (IRISCC) is a consortium of diverse and complementary leading research infrastructures (RIs) covering disciplines from natural sciences to social sciences, across different domains and sectors. IRISCC provides scientific and knowledge services to foster cutting-edge research and evidence-based policymaking to improve Europe's resilience to climate change. IRISCC ensures a “one-stop-shop” for various user communities on climate change risk related RI services by setting up a dedicated Catalogue of services and related access management system both for granting transnational (onsite and remote) and offering virtual access. The Catalogue of services will be built through three consecutive releases, each delivering increasingly integrated services to its user communities. The IRISCC service integration will include Service Design Labs employing co-design and transdisciplinary action, and Service Demonstrators benchmarking the integrated cross-RI services. In addition to services aimed towards the scientific community, IRISCC will offer knowledge services aimed towards policymakers and other stakeholders. This is done together with risk management platforms. The research enabled by IRISCC contributes to future reports on climate change effects (IPCC, IPBES) as well as policy- and decision-making to meet the targets of climate adaptation strategies. IRISCC contributes to training a new generation of scientists to efficiently use RI services and for data stewardship. Data from IRISCC will be open and made available in compliance with FAIR principles and linked to European initiatives such as EOSC. Strong links will be created between IRISCC and current and future efforts under Horizon Europe.

OLA+ project offers an innovative and sustainable tool to improve efficiency of mobility management thus allowing to cope successfully with constantly increasing numbers of student exchanges. The need for increasing HE student mobility in Europe is a long-standing political priority and the European Higher Education Area is built on structures and tools that aim to foster successful cross-border cooperation, including mobility. In order to achieve the desired results, it is necessary to have access to an adequate range of tools, modern procedures and concrete methodologies to manage the workload effectively. Creating streamlined and less time-consuming mechanisms for universities to manage mobility flows is among the key overall deliverables of the project and the goal of proposed upgrades: the OLA+ tool strives to considerably ease the mobility management of students across the continent. The main objectives of the proposed project are the creation/upgrade of a fully functional online tool enabling HEI staff members to manage/negotiate LAs in an online environment. OLA+ aims as well at eradicating problems of academic recognition by substantially improving the quality of the information students receive when preparing, signing and amending their LAs. In addition, online training material and a toolkit will be made available to illustrate/explain how the OLA+ tool can be best used by the HEI staff members, while also providing good practices on how a LA should be managed for/by students. Both universities (IROs, academic coordinators, university staff involved in the mobility management) and students will be the main beneficiaries of a smoother LA management system, as it aims to ensure full compliance with national procedures between sending and receiving HEIs, therefore facilitating LA management from HEIs and student perspectives. The OLA+ tool is primarily targeted at IROs and Erasmus+ coordinators, who are the key actors involved in facilitating and managing such activities. The project will be implemented by 10 partners: EUF (coordinating institution), 8 universities (University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Lodz University of Technology (Poland), University of Vienna (Austria), University of Marburg (Germany), University of Alcala (Spain), University of Bergen (Norway), Erasmus University of Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Pantheon-Sorbonne University (France) and the Erasmus Student Network, which will account for the student perspective of mobility management. The consortium has a strong institutional commitment to organise quality student mobility. Additionally, there are 21 associate partners (19 universities and 2 university networks). The involvement of large number of universities will allow developing new features and carrying out the testing phases as well as assessing the extent to which the OLA tool addresses the needs of HEIs and complies with their national procedures across Europe. In the long term the tool will enable HEIs to improve the quality of student mobility by re-allocating time and resources to supporting students before, during and after their mobilities. The tool will be available for free to HEIs and students and will accelerate the emergence of a European Higher Education Area where mobility becomes the rule, rather than the exception, hence contributing to the ET2020 framework.

The diaspora of modern humans from Africa into Eurasia and beyond is one of the seminal chapters in the history of our species. Modern humans emerged in Africa by 250-300,000 years ago. Their several subsequent dispersals outwards must have followed one of two routes, the most likely being across the Sinai Peninsula and Levantine corridor. Here, they would have encountered resident Neanderthals and beyond, into Eurasia, the Denisovans. A major dispersal of modern humans by ~50,000 years ago, hypothesised to be linked with the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, is paralleled by further development of aspects of behavioural modernity; the increased presence of symbolic objects, art, new types of technology and the ability to adapt and survive in novel and challenging environments. The Lebanese site of Ksar Akil is the ‘type site’ for the Palaeolithic in the key Levant region. First excavated in the 1930s/40s, and again in the 1970s, it contains a deep ~23m sequence. Sadly, despite its importance, its potential has never been realised, but is clear that it can contribute greatly to our understanding of human presence, climate and environmental changes over the last ~90,000 years. This project plans to reveal this by applying the latest sediment DNA approaches to determine the presence of different hominins through the archaeological sequence, dating the site reliably for the first time, analysing its stone tool remains and generating a paleoenvironmental and climatic history. In parallel we will collate new and unpublished data from a range of similar Palaeolithic sites from across Eurasia, to test hypotheses concerning the movement of early human groups into and out of the region. The project will contribute a strong legacy value, for local Lebanese archaeology and students, as well as internationally in building a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the late period of human evolution.

It has recently been discovered that archaea are promoting ammonia oxidation, an important process in nitrogen cycling. Ammonia oxidizing archaea (AOA) use Cu containing enzymes to oxidize ammonia to nitrate. Therefore, they have an elevated Cu requirement and thus the bioavailability of Cu to archaea may impact the nitrogen cycle. However, the molecular mechanism of Cu uptake by Archaea from terrestrial and aquatic environments remains unknown. Understanding the molecular mechanism of Cu uptake by these archaea will be an important step in understanding Cu acquisition by the Archaea. The first objective of this study will be to determine what types of proteins are potentially involved in Cu uptake under Cu limiting conditions. The hypothesis that low concentrations of Cu will result in expression of Cu acquisition genes will be tested using different strains of AOA originating from soil and hotspring environments and varying the availability of Cu to the AOA. The gene expression of AOA cultures as a function of Cu availability will be monitored using transcriptome illumina sequencing. The hypothesis that soil AOA will secrete extracellular reactive compounds to mobilize Cu as part of a Cu acquisition strategy will be tested. The presence of a strong copper binding ligands using a colorimetric assay and by an electrochemical method. The second objective of this study will be to use different strains of AOA in batch incubation experiments with different previously characterized Cu containing soils and minerals. The hypothesis that AOA isolated from soil environments will have high efficiency Cu uptake systems compared to AOA from the aquatic environment will be tested in batch incubations with AOA cell cultures and different Cu containing soils and minerals. This study will be innovative as this problem has not previously been addressed.