Membrane proteins play numerous vital roles in cellular communication and transport processes and represent the majority of drug targets. Still, progress in our knowledge and understanding of membrane-protein structure, dynamics, and function is slow, primarily because of difficulties arising from their very hydrophobic nature. These proteins require a membrane-mimetic environment to keep them both soluble and active during in vitro investigations, which is typically accomplished with the aid of detergents, surface-active compounds that solubilise membrane proteins and lipids. However, many membrane proteins are inactivated when solubilised in detergents, that is, they lose their native structures and functions. This has motivated many efforts at replacing conventional detergents by milder alternatives, among which fluorinated surfactants appear particularly promising. Owing to the weak affinity of fluorocarbons for hydrocarbons and to the larger volume of fluorocarbons, fluorinated surfactants are hypothesised to be less destabilising because they hardly compete with protein–protein and protein–lipid/hydrophobic cofactor interactions. Indeed, it has been shown repeatedly that various membrane proteins are more stable when solubilised in fluorinated surfactants as compared with hydrogenated detergents. Unfortunately, though, neutral fluorinated surfactants are not able to solubilise lipid bilayers and ex-tract membrane proteins directly from membranes. Hence, conventional detergents are still required for solubilisation, and fluorinated surfactants come into play only at a later stage, when labile proteins will already have suffered irreversible damage. We have recently demonstrated that fluorination per se does not exclude detergency, as a fluorinated octyl maltoside derivative retains mild detergent-like activity. In this project, we intend to capitalise on this finding to develop, test, and establish fluorinated detergents that (i) can be synthesised in sufficient quantities and purities for widespread use in membrane-protein research; (ii) display favourable micellar properties such as small and well-defined sizes; (iii) partition into, translocate across, and solubilise membranes in a rapid, thermodynamically controlled manner; (iv) solubilise membrane proteins directly from native or synthetic membranes without requiring harsher, hydrogenated detergents; and (v) offer these proteins a stabilising environment that preserves their native structures and functions for extended periods of time. Such fluorinated detergents will open new possibilities for in vitro studies of physiologically and pharmacologically interesting membrane proteins that have thus far evaded detailed scrutiny. This highly interdisciplinary project shall be accomplished within a consortium that is uniquely qualified to address synthetic, physicochemical, biophysical, biochemical, and structural-biological aspects alike.

With the growth of the information in different media such as TV programs or internet, a new issue arises. How a user can access to the information which is expressed in a foreign language? The idea of the project is to develop a multilingual help system of understanding without any human being intervention. What we would like to do, is to help people understanding broadcasting news, presented in a foreign language and to compare it to the corresponding one available in the mother tongue of the user. The concept of understanding is approached in this project by giving access to any information whatever the language in which it is presented. In fact, with the development of internet and satellite TV, tens of thousands shows and broadcasting news are available in different languages, it turns out that even high educated people, do not speak more than two or three languages while the majority speaks only one, which makes this huge amount of information inaccessible. Consequently, the majority of TV and radio programs as well as information on internet are inaccessible for the majority of people. And yet, one would like to listen to news in his own language and compare it to what has been said on the same topic in another language. For instance, how the topic of AIDS is presented in SAUDI-ARABIA and in USA? What is the opinion of The Jerusalem-Post about Yasser-Arafat? And how it is presented in Al-Quds ? To access to various information and to make available different and sometimes opposite information, we propose to develop AMIS (Access to Multilingual Information and Opinions). As a result, AMIS will permit to have another side of story of an event. The understanding process is considered here to be the comprehension of the main ideas of a video. The best way to do that, is then to summarize the video for having access to the essential information. Henceforth, AMIS will focus on the most relevant information by summarizing it and by translating it to the user if necessary. Another aspect of AMIS is to compare two summaries produced by this system, from two languages on the same topic whatever their support is: video, audio or text and to present the difference between their contents in terms of information, sentiments, opinions, etc. Furthermore, the coverage of the web and social media will be exploited in order to strengthen or weaken the retrieved opinions. AMIS could be incorporated in a TV remote control or such as software associated to any internet browser. In conclusion AMIS will address the following research points: • Text, audio and video summarization. • Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) • Machine Translation • Cross-lingual sentiment analysis • Achieving successful synergy between the previous research topics

During the last twenty years, the collective debates on the political corruption took a considerable importance. In every country, as within the Council of Europe, these debates have led to the creation of new standards, aimed at eradicating corruption (Council of Europe 2008). By contrast, the historical study of the phenomenon is still at its beginning, particularly in France and in Germany. This comparative project wants to show how the phenomenon of corruption, in its current form, appeared, in France and in Germany, between the early XIXth century and the first half of the XXth century. Breaking with the Ancien Régime system marked by aristocratic patronage, the politicization of society and the institutionalization of the State created an « absolute criticism » of corruption, from the bend of the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries. Far from being timeless, the political corruption has at first a history. Today, the current conception sees corruption as the abuse of a public position for private purposes. This project sets its sights in showing how, in both countries, the notion of corruption refers to variable public perceptions of practices characterized by favours and preferential treatments. The project captures the phenomenon of corruption in its two essential dimensions: political practices dominated by favours; publicisation which, with the development of massmedia, transforms the scandals and the business affairs into recurring public debates. A general trend, in both countries, leading to an « absolute criticism » of political corruption cannot be eluded. It gives rise to questions about public morality and the cultural construction of ideal models on the probity of government. The project assumes that cases of corruption and scandals are not only indicative of existing civic cultures. They also reveal, at key moments, the institution of these ethical models.. In the context of both countries, with different state models and political traditions, which appeared above all during the 19th and at the beginning of 20th centuries, the project expects, through comparative research, some insights: the national peculiarities and the general trends – as historical research on corruption has not been very extensive on that point-.