Human Rights Justifications (HRJ) are when States use human rights to justify decisions. Human rights regimes operate on the presumptions that only individual persons can be in possession of human rights. The regulatory gaps occurring when the States use HRJ for their actions are two-fold, one in the regulation of the States’ use of HRJ and one in the individual human rights protection when States use HRJ. This activity is not regulated by any international, regional or national regime. In other words, significant and important gaps in human rights regulations has now been identified, which this project seeks to address. We will develop a theory of HRJ and a process for Systematic Ongoing Civil Society Engagement (ODCSE) as a tool for a gender and intersectional inclusive Civil Society engagement. Through ODCSE, we will identify gaps in human rights regulations and protection, serving as underpinning data for our recommendations to EU in support of a multinational human rights system and promotion of transnational democratic governance. ODCSE will also help us identify geopolitical elements that influence States’ use of HRJ. This will be done through 5 countries: Sweden, Finland, Taiwan, India and Ukraine, through three actions: human rights dialogue, inclusive democratic participations, and protection of human rights defenders, and operationalised through three themes: Covid, Migration and Climate.

CICERONE brings together programme owners, research organizations and other stakeholders to create a platform for efficient Circular Economy programming. The priority setting and the organization of the future platform will be driven by Programme Owners (POs), involved either as project partners, or via a stakeholder network. Diversity of national / regional situations is reflected in the partnership. The work will be carried out in close cooperation with research & technology organisations (RTOs), which contribute with their expertise of the main scientific and technological challenges. Consultation mechanisms will also ensure that all stakeholders will be able to actively contribute (civil society, industry, innovative SMEs, startups, cities, investors, networks, etc.). An initial benchmarking exercise will be carried out for a deeper understanding of the state of the art, mapping stakeholders, existing RDI priorities as well as funding and legal mechanisms. A prioritisation methodology will be developed to support an analysis of the current performance: synergies, gaps and duplications will be characterised, and pathways for improvements will be formulated. Identified best practices will drive the definition of policy recommendations. Once the state of the art has been clearly mapped out, the actual prioritisation work will be carried out. This includes building a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), performing an ex-ante impact assessment of joint programming on circular economy R&I, and developing a policy toolkit to promote the priorities and foster adoption by policy-makers. The project will also set the grounds for the future PO platform, starting with defining its strategic role in the existing landscape. The next step will be to specify governance and possible legal frameworks, as well as creating a financially sustainable model. It is a key objective that the platform be sustained after the end of the project.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

NanoInformaTIX aims to create a comprehensive, sustainable, multi-scale modelling framework for exposure and (eco)-toxicity of Engineered Nanomaterials (ENM) to facilitate cost-effective risk assessment, less reliant on animal testing, and to support the design of safer materials and products. Our approach integrates several relevant EU/US databases with validated nanoinformatics models covering: Materials, Exposure, Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetics (PBPK), Quantitative-Structure-Activity Relations (QSAR) and Systems Biology modelling and in vitro/in vivo extrapolation to support the prediction of biological effects and exposure of ENM at various stages of their life cycle and product development. NanoInformaTIX will address grouping and read-across for risk assessment and safer product design. NanoInformaTIX will use existing curated data from several completed EU/US projects and from peer-reviewed literature to develop, extend the models and will also consider emerging data from ongoing projects for model validation following the OECD validation principles. This will take the NanoInformaTIX models from TLR4 to TLR6. The NanoInformaTIX modelling framework will be a web-based platform with a user-friendly interface tailored to the needs of different stakeholders (industry, regulators, academia and the civil society). To obtain optimal confidence in the use of the NanoInformaTIX modelling and database framework, all models will be described clearly using agreed standards terminology and implemented on harmonized standard operating protocols based on Good Modelling/Software Design practices. Their applicability domain will be clearly documented and referenced for full transparency and detailed user guidance for each will be provided. NanoInformaTIX will achieve considerable impact by providing the much -needed validated accessible data management modelling framework to predict human and environmental risks, to support the design of sustainable ENM and products.

Light has many uses, one of its biggest applications is in optical communications systems where a laser is switched on and off to transmit data. There are also many applications in the world of medicine, biology and biochemistry and tradiationally these have required very expensive, very large pieces of equipment. Currently the life sciences are required to look at smaller and smaller samples, sometimes down to the size of a single molecule. What this means is that the world of nanotechnology could be be used to create very small scale pieces of equipment that shine light onto very small samples and observe the light emitted by the samples. This then enables scientists to understand many important properties of the material. To work with light at these very small scales is very difficult, but recently, a new technology known as Photonic crystals(PhCs) has made breakthroughs in the way light can be confined and controlled. To make Photonic crystals nanofabrication procedures are need that are coming into mainstream use and they are now being applied in many different disciplines. This project will look to use PhCs to guide light onto a sample and then guide light emitted by the sample at a different wavelength towards a detector. A very small light source, a laser, will be included on the chip to make a very compact measurement device. The beauty of this approach is that 1000's of these devices could be placed on to a chip to measure many different samples simultaneously. This is the approach that is need for decoding genes to enable new drugs to be made.