SNIP-AFRICA aims to establish a clinical research network and architecture to implement adaptive platform trials in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), responding to the urgent need for improved treatment of childhood infection in an era of increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR). SNIP-AFRICA focuses on the high-burden, high-impact group of inpatient neonates and infants with sepsis. This is a group especially affected by escalating rates of AMR in SSA healthcare facilities contributing to much slower than desirable improvements in neonatal mortality across SSA. The project will address all aspects of APTs in neonatal sepsis from defining potential treatments of interest to translation into clinical guidance, and will deliver interventional studies in the two domains of neonatal dose confirmation and drug regimen selection. The network and architecture could be readily extended to include older children in hospital with infections with epidemic potential. SNIP-AFRICA will achieve its aim by bringing together partners from the global North and SSA, including several with experience in designing and running adaptive platform trials and complex randomised controlled trials in SSA. The project therefore builds on existing expertise and capacity to enable an innovative response to the major threat to child health of AMR through a new architecture and extended network. The work plan includes Project Management, Coordination and Communication (WP1), Clinical and Microbiological Surveillance (WP2), Adaptive Platform Core Protocol and Governance (WP3), Pharmacokinetics for Adaptive Platform Trial (WP4), Complex Adaptive Drug Regimen Trial (WP5), Training and Capacity building for Adaptive Trials (WP6) and Stakeholder Engagement and Integration (WP7). SNIP-AFRICA aims to trigger a paradigm shift in interventional research in severe childhood infection and to equip a network of SSA institutions and researchers to conduct innovative, efficient, targeted research in this area.

The need for fully integrated cryogenic instruments 1) measuring physical quantities with ultimate sensitivity, up to the quantum limit; 2) processing the data at high clock speed up to several tens of GHz and; 3) delivering pre-processed data at high throughputs of several Gbits/second per channel to off-the-shelf equipment is felt in several domains: for the quest of knowledge associated to big science, like astrophysics or particle physics, for the development of quantum cryptographic front-ends to secure data and interfacing quantum bit systems, for processing digital signals on microwave frequency carriers, for imaging the brain or heart for medicine, as just a few examples. Often each task is achieved separately in a customized way for niche applications. This is an obstacle to the dissemination of instruments that are necessary, for example, for future imagers with very high performances. Besides, dedicated solutions do not enable incremental progress towards systems that can be easily re-used for other applications. Here we propose a novel interdisciplinary path with breakthrough technological solutions based on superconducting devices to provide end-users from different domains with an enabling cryogenic digital platform. This solution embeds nanoscale energy efficient superconducting digital processing circuits and sensors with superconducting high throughput amplifiers. To our knowledge this has never been done so far. To validate the proof-of-concept and enable faster future transfer of technology four companies are involved in the development and integration of technological modules and to prepare future exploitation. At the basic science level, this approach may allow developing at a larger scale nanoscale superconducting devices for further high-density integration of complex imagers and digital processing systems for future metrological, telecommunication, supercomputing and quantum computer applications. To achieve these objectives we decided, with a consortium based on 14 partners to apply to the FET-OPEN call. Our project submitted in January 2017 passed all thresholds but did not get funding given its global mark in a very competitve call with success rate of about 7%. We have an encouraging Evaluation Summary Report and we can improve our proposal to submit it again for the upcoming FET-OPEN call of May 2018. To achieve that objective we need to meet and discuss in more details our scientific and technological plans, the organisation of the work to upgrade our proposal and its FET-OPEN application document. We also need external advice regarding the planned activities and the polishing of the document of the H2020 application with some company specialized in that activity. Consequently the MRSEI call of the ANR is the adequate call to upgrade our proposal and reinforce the planned activities in the European framework.

Most traditional youth mental health interventions fail to achieve sustainable impact at scale because they overly rely on individualized, medical illness-focused models and treat youth as passive beneficiaries. citiesRISE, a multi-stakeholder initiative founded in 2017 to address these gaps, has worked with youth, communities, and professionals across five cities, as well as social innovators in over twenty countries, to develop a set of evidence-based, scalable youth mental health interventions and implementation models. The YiPEE project aims to provide robust evidence on the feasibility, adaptability, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of a multi-component intervention targeting the inner, social, and environmental dimensions that underpin mental health and broader NCD risk reduction outcomes, when implemented using a youth-informed and -activated approach. This will be achieved through a a mixed-methods approach, conducting a realist evaluation across the four sites (Chennai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; Cape Town, South Africa; Stockholm, Sweden) to study key implementation outcomes following the Practical Robust Implementation and Sustainability Model (PRISM) as well as the mechanisms underlying why the intervention works, for whom, and under what real-world conditions. In Chennai, YiPEE will conduct a randomized controlled trial for more robust evaluation of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness in achieving key mental health and other NCD related lifestyle behavioral outcomes. YiPEE focuses on the combination of a school-based multicomponent intervention targeting positive disruption in the inner, social, and environmental dimensions of adolescents’ mental health and a youth-informed and -activated implementation model that puts young people at the centre of transformation, working collaboratively with a range of other stakeholders.

The Eco2Wine project aims at providing a new generation of PhD graduated employees for the wine sector who will be able to manage winemaking-associated ecosystems, protect and control the biodiversity, and use this knowhow to reduce unsustainable interventions in natural environments while improving wine sustainability and “natural wine” production. Winemaking-associated ecosystems are complex environments in which more or less stable and evolutionary relevant interactions among species, and between each species and abiotic components, are established. In recent years the direct manipulation of these ecosystems has gained considerable interest in wine science because of the need of boosting sustainable, socially relevant and ecofriendly choices for the wine production while meeting the growing consumer demand for more diverse wine styles. To better map and exploit the natural biodiversity of winemaking-associated ecosystems, the understanding of the relevant microbiota, the various ecological interactions within those biota and of the molecular mechanisms involved in interactions is essential. Such studies will allow to describe how these ecosystems work and how their intelligent exploitation can benefit the wine world. The training program is divided in 4 areas of interest: wine ecology, wine innovation, wine business and wine science communication. The consortium includes 9 beneficiaries and 12 partner organizations that possess complementary competencies and are working with success in wine research. The level of quality of these institutions, the long-term collaborations established in the past joint European project, YeSVitE (GA612441), and the appropriate exchange scheme of training with private companies will sustain an efficient transfer of knowledge between PhD students, the broader scientific community and the relevant social and economic actors. The project will have a relevant impact on the wine research field, winemakers and all potential stakeholders.

Learning to read for meaning is the most important skill that children learn in primary school. Yet children in 90% of South African schools are not acquiring this skill by the end of grade 4 (Spaull & Pretorius, 2019). The most recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (2016) (PIRLS-Literacy) indicates that almost one in every eight grade 4 students in South Africa cannot read for meaning in any language, despite the curriculum assuming that students can read in both their home language and English by the end of grade 4 (Howie, et al., 2017). Against this context, 'reading for meaning' among young children has recently been identified by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as a top five national priority (South African Government, 2019). In adopting this new priority goal, South Africa needs to significantly advance the local body of knowledge on reading in African languages, identifying why children can't read, how reading could be improved, and how much improvement we could reasonably expect. In this study, we aim to fill some gaps in this body of knowledge. First, we will explore reasons for why children are failing to read with comprehension in African languages and English. Comprehension is what reading is all about - and this is what is measured in nationally representative surveys. However, reading comprehension is just the 'tip of the iceberg' with respect to underlying skills required to read (Spaull, et al., 2018). Necessary but not sufficient skills for comprehension include oral language, vocabulary knowledge, print awareness and decoding components such as phonemic awareness, letter-sound knowledge, word reading and oral reading fluency (Hoover & Gough, 1990). Using new emerging datasets on reading in African languages in South Africa, we will identify to what extent children can master these basics of reading across different languages. We will be able to construct a clearer picture of which of the reading 'building-blocks' children do and don't have, how these differ by language and whether reading skills systematically differ by poverty levels and gender. Fortunately these new datasets testing reading in African languages and English collect assessment data for the same children over time. With this data researchers can explore how reading skills develop and what gains in skills are acquired by initially low achievers, medium achievers and higher achievers. By observing best possible reading gains, it will be possible to get a better idea of the feasibility of attaining the presidential reading goal under current conditions or when conditions for improvement are created in schools. The constraints to learning at the school, teacher and classroom level are well understood in South Africa (see for example van der Berg, et al., 2016; Fiske & Ladd, 2004; Carnoy & Chisholm, 2012) with projects underway to address these constraints. But little is understood about underlying individual factors that may enhance or limit children's proficiencies in reading. Bullying, for example, is a very big concern in primary schools with South Africa recording some of the highest levels of bullying across all countries participating in PIRLS (Howie, et al., 2017). Bullying may reflect low underlying socio-emotional skills among children. Yet, international evidence and preliminary evidence from South Africa suggests that socio-emotional skills may be particularly important in fostering academic performance, including reading comprehension skills (Wills & Hofmeyr, 2018; Durlak, et al., 2011; Zins, et al., 2004). We will use available datasets to explore evidence on socio-emotional skills among primary school children in South Africa and identify whether indicators for socio-emotional skills (such as Duckworth's (2007) concept of 'grit') are linked to learning and reading skills in challenging contexts.