The proposed project “Readiness of ICOS for Necessities of integrated Global Observations” (RINGO) aims to further development of ICOS RI and ICOS ERIC and foster its sustainability. The challenges are to further develop the readiness of ICOS RI along five principal objectives: 1. Scientific readiness. To support the further consolidation of the observational networks and enhance their quality. This objective is mainly science-guided and will increase the readiness of ICOS RI to be the European pillar in a global observation system on greenhouse gases. 2. Geographical readiness. To enhance ICOS membership and sustainability by supporting interested countries to build a national consortium, to promote ICOS towards the national stakeholders, to receive consultancy e.g. on possibilities to use EU structural fund to build the infrastructure for ICOS observations and also to receive training to improve the readiness of the scientists to work inside ICOS. 3. Technological readiness. To further develop and standardize technologies for greenhouse gas observations necessary to foster new knowledge demands and to account for and contribute to technological advances. 4. Data readiness. To improve data streams towards different user groups, adapting to the developing and dynamic (web) standards. 5. Political and administrative readiness. To deepen the global cooperation of observational infrastructures and with that the common societal impact. Impact is expected on the further development and sustainability of ICOS via scientific, technical and managerial progress and by deepening the integration into global observation and data integration systems.

The goal of the RADIOBLOCKS project is to achieve a maximal boost for the European major world-leading research infrastructures in radio astronomy, which over the years have invested heavily in maintaining existing facilities as well as in substantial upgrade programmes, after identifying common challenges towards their mid- and long-term scientific visions. In this project, the institutes responsible of these facilities join forces, together with partners from industry and academia, in order to develop “common building blocks” for technological solutions beyond state-of-the-art, that will enable a broad range of new science and enhance European scientific competitiveness. They share the need to continuously improve their capabilities in order to enable new science: sensitivity, field of view, bandwidth, angular, time and frequency resolution, commensality and on-sky time, reaction time and RFI mitigation. Engagement with industry to co-develop advanced technologies will increase the partners’ technological levels and strengthen their market positions, creating a true European innovation system. This project carries out carefully targeted development work and addresses common aspects in the complete data chain, categorizing this in four phases: Novel detectors and components, digital receivers, transport and correlator, and data (post)processing. We will design and demonstrate common building blocks based on cutting-edge technologies, that will be enablers and extenders in the areas most critical to the RIs, and can and will be used for upgrades of several RIs. The building blocks will be new instrument components and advanced digital solutions based on newly available (HPC/AI optimized) hardware. This approach will enable a tremendous increase of the science delivery potential of Europe’s major radio astronomical observatories, for science cases that are high on their long-term agendas, aimed at the widest possible science community in Europe and beyond.

African sleeping sickness is caused by infection with trypanosome s. Infection of domestic livestock causes a range of diseases that restrict the development of small holder agriculture. The WHO estimates that up to half a million people currently suffer from sleeping sickness, which is fatal if untreated. Trypanosomes are single-celled eukaryotes that have several unusual features including the mechanism used to regulate gene expression. Whereas most organisms regulate gene expression by only turning on a gene when it is needed, trypanosomes keep the genes on all the time and degrade the gene product (messenger RNA) that is not required. This is an unusual system of regulation and may be exploitable as a target for therapeutics aimed to force the trypanosome to express the wrong genes. This proposal aims to investigate further how the messenger RNA is degraded by identifying how unstable messenger RNAs are identified in the cell and by characterising the pathway(s) and cellular components necessary for degradation. This work is greatly facilitated by the recently completed genome sequence and will contribute to the interpretation of the genome sequence.