The Joint Laboratory LETRA (Laboratory of Technical Studies and Research on Hearing) based on the research and development of technological innovations designed to improve safety and accessibility to public buildings (ERP). These innovations are dedicated to all groups of people, especially people with disabilities. Research areas of joint lab LETRA are 1) non-speech sound signaling systems and 2) the improvement of speech understanding in public address systems. The ERP market is well known by ARCHEAN Technologies, our industrial partner. Innovations and patents resulting from this collaboration will allow: - The company ARCHEAN Technologies to increase its competitiveness and maintain its local production (and its jobs) ; - The MSHS-T (especially PETRA Facilities) to strengthen its scientific influence at national and international level, as well as to maintain and develop its scientific expertise. The Joint Laboratory LETRA is made of the CNRS Unité de Service et de Recherche MSHS-T USR3414 and the ARCHEAN Technologies Company. The MSHS-T is involved in LETRA through the technological platforms it manages : PETRA (which is scientifically based on the URI Octogone EA4156). The company ARCHEAN Technologies based in Montauban (82) is a company specialized Public Address for ERP and risk sites (nuclear power plants, Seveso sites...), and sound information for travelers. Currently, both entities work together through a project funded by the Midi-Pyrénées region (AGILE IT program) that involves the development of an automatic setting system for hearing aid based on a cognitive model of perception. This first-time collaboration has allowed us to test the complementarity between the laboratory and the company. To organize a program of research and development on the long term, structuring as a Joint Laboratory now appears necessary. The use of non-speech sound signals in ERP will be the main focus of our research. These signals are primarily dedicated to people with disabilities in two contexts : (1) risky situations, in order to optimize and secure the evacuation and (2) "normal" situations, to facilitate the orientation and wayfinding in the entire site for visually impaired and "normal" people, for example. Non-speech sounds are not language dependent and can therefore be useful to any people received in the ERP. Scientific research will focus on the design of such signals, including a perceptual study on how they are received and understood by the listeners, as well as a behavioral study on how they are used. The adaptation of the behavioral tests to this new context will also be a highlight of the development, since the variability of practices related to the functional diversity of ERP will be considered. The other axis will address the development of a device that automatically measures speech understanding in ERP, in order to adapt Public address systems efficiently and in real time to acoustic environment modifications. This device will be able to easily ensure high quality of sound diffusion. It will be based on a cognitive model of speech understanding that needs to be tested first in laboratory.

Since September 11, 2001, “radicalization” has become a category and major topic of public and scientific debate in the Anglo-Saxon world. The same applies to France, particularly since the January and September 2015 attacks. But as soon as we turn our attention towards political and geographical areas less concerned by radical Islamism, the very term “radicalization” does not seem to fit anymore. Hence we will consider extreme violence in other contexts and with other political and religious features. Violence, in all its shapes and outcomes, has always been a major field of social science research. This, however, does not apply to exiting violence, even more if we give this notion a wider meaning that goes beyond the simple ending, definite or temporary, of a process of violence and includes collective (e.g. State related) as well as individual (e.g. the healing of psychological traumas) dimensions. Just as violent radicalism must not be reduced to jihadism, exiting violence is not limited to the process of “de-radicalization”. As part of the platform Violence and exiting violence, the Observatory of radicalization and the Observatory of exiting violence are collaborating since 2015 to understand radicalization not simply as self-inflicted deterioration, but rather as a process involving numerous factors and configurations external to the radicalized subject. In a dynamic, multidimensional and transversal approach, this project seeks to compare experiences of extreme violence and of exiting violence located in different geographical areas, in order to put forward an understanding of contemporary developments by combining multidisciplinary approaches (political sociology, anthropology, law, diplomacy) and by avoiding “methodological nationalism” and the usual theoretical and geographical compartmentalization. The team will work in an effort to converge issues, fields and tasks determined beforehand. Various fields (Latin America with the guerillas and cartels; Africa with the militias, civil wars and genocides, Europe with terror attacks, jihadist radicalization but also the Basque independence movement; the Middle East with Daesh) will be compared according to the identified thematic approaches and a common methodology (individual interviews, participants’ observations, analysis of official reports, video and social media analysis, etc.), leading to a deeper understanding of the patterns of and reasons for radical and violent mobilization. This multi-level typology will range from the individual to the global level without under- or overestimating the protagonists’ national and local peculiarities, and will be complemented by cross-cutting research on other armed conflicts. This comparative perspective and original methodology across geographical contexts, analytical levels and stakeholders is intended to bring forward useful insight for policy makers, researchers and experts. Four cross-cutting issues have been identified: 1/ From subjective experience to collective commitment 2/ From radicalization to violent action 3/ How to exit violence (or avoid it right from the start) ? 4/ Kinship and social networks

New technologies are increasingly used as artefacts to optimize sports performance. On the one hand, these technologies make it possible to better describe and analyze performance (evaluation component). On the other hand, they make it possible to better transmit the relevant information to the athlete so that he can optimize his motor control (intervention component). Among the various digital strategies for optimizing sports movement such as the use of video or virtual reality with immersive environments, augmented audio reality, via the movement sonification method, is promising. Sonifying human movement consists in associating certain acoustic parameters with certain variables of human movement in order to improve its perception. Among the sensory information that the athlete can use to control his movement, sound information remains less exploited. However, it is of proven interest for the acquisition of certain sports movements, in particular those presenting a specific rhythmic structure or complex coordination. Associating sound with movement not only enriches its perception but also optimizes its control through multisensory integration (visual, somatosensory, and auditory) for performance optimization or rehabilitation purposes. From an interdisciplinary approach, the “MixSon” project consists of designing a sonification tool and questioning its acceptability and appropriation in an ordinary training context in order to optimize high-level sports performance. This project brings together a specialist in the biomechanics of high-level sports movement, a neuroscientist expert in the sonification of movement, a psychologist specializing in the acceptability of new technologies and an anthropologist specializing in the analysis of the lived experience of high level athletes and coaches.

The AgeHear project is firmly based on the perspective of access to speech comprehension for the elderly suffering of Age-related hearing loss in a dual framework of both basic and clinical research. Hearing loss is a growing challenge in our modern society, and has a significant socio-economic impact, particularly with regard to the ageing population. Age-related hearing loss (ARHL or presbycusis) is present in about two thirds of the elderly, causing serious communication difficulties and leading to social isolation and depression. This difficulty in communicating is worsened by a cognitive decline related to the listening effort which depletes the person's cognitive resources. These demographic and clinical issues are at the heart of AgeHear project, which focuses on understanding the mechanisms of rehabilitation of presbycusis subjects with hearing aids (HAs). Thanks to technological advances, hearing aids enable the elderly to have access to oral communication and to return to an enriched social life. From a fundamental point of view, based on a multidisciplinary approach combining psychophysics, neuropsychology and brain imaging, AgeHear will seek to understand the mechanisms of brain plasticity involved in the rehabilitation of speech in the noise of the presbycusis subject and the links with a reduction in cognitive effort. From a clinical point of view, AgeHear will make it possible to use this experimental and theoretical understanding to support and guide the implementation of rehabilitation strategies. The central theme of AgeHear thus concerns the mechanisms of spatial hearing and neurocognitive compensation and their impact on the recovery of speech comprehension by hearing aids. The originality of AgeHear is both technological and theoretical. Conceptually, AgeHear proposes to study the mechanisms of spatial hearing restoration in a natural ecological context including dynamic and multisensory components. The impact and strategies supporting the rehabilitation of speech understanding in noise will be evaluated using a 3D virtual system (HTC ViveTM) allowing the patient to be immersed in a controlled vivid visuo-auditory environment. At the heart of AgeHear is the strong hypothesis that the success of rehabilitation of the presbycusis subject depends on his potential of brain plasticity. Based on a longitudinal approach, we will search for neural markers through PET scan brain imaging which would be predictive of the level of recovery by HAs and could consequently guide individual rehabilitation strategies. PET imaging will also allow us to determine whether spatial hearing and speech in noise comprehension share the same cognitive resources. This aspect will be reinforced by analyzing the links between hearing loss and its recovery with deficits in executive functions. Thus, AgeHear is a definitely a multidisciplinary and translational project that brings together two laboratories with expertise in brain imaging and psychophysics of deafness associated with an ENT service in addition to the participation of an industrial partner specialized in hearing aids. This consortium will enable a complementary approach, from psychophysics to clinical neurosciences, with a single common objective of a better understanding of the mechanisms of rehabilitation of presbycusis in its perceptive and cognitive aspects in order to optimize the rehabilitation of the elderly, thus promoting their social reintegration.

Scientific communities produce a valuable amount of data as a direct or side product of their research, which can be potentially explored in many different applications. However, making data open and accessible requires considerable efforts in order to guarantee the data quality and compliance to the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability). The aim of Semantics4FAIR is to facilitate the tasks of finding and accessing scientific data that results from both research and production by a scientific community, in order to support the development of new usages by other scientific communities. The originality of the proposed approach is twofold: (i) a human factor method to capture user’s needs and vocabularies; and (ii) a semantic approach takes up the findability challenge. We plan to build and reuse several ontologies to account for the various points of view on the data and the relations between these views: one ontology will account for the data producers’ view, and the users’ vocabulary refers to a different ontology. These ontologies will be then used to describe the data, its provenance and usages, and will be the basis for the development of services querying and consuming data. This work will rely on the collaboration of a computer science lab (IRIT) and a human-factor institute (MSH-T) with scientific communities that want to make their datasets FAIR, and scientific communities that want to reuse this data for their own research projects. We propose to test the approach thanks to a joint work with the atmospheric scientific community (OMP and CNRM) as meteorology data providers, and the Palynologist community (GET) and meteorology data exploitation (MeteoFrance) services as two data user communities.