Our project aims at observing the spatial modulations of local electron probability density along a quantum ring fabricated from a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) formed in an InGaAs heterostructure. As a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the plane of such a ring, a periodic pattern of maxima and minima of electron probability density is predicted to appear, due to interferences of electron partial waves inside the ring (these interferences give rise to the well-known Aharonov-Bohm effect, causing periodic oscillations in the ring magnetoresistance). In order to observe this phenomenon, we plan to use a low temperature (4.2 K) atomic force microscope (AFM) in non-contact mode. A voltage bias will be applied on the tip of the AFM in order to create a local perturbation in the 2DEG underneath. The principle is to record the changes of conductance of the quantum ring as a function of the tip position (i.e. the perturbation position) over the quantum ring, which will produce images related to the changes of electron probability density (the technique was demonstrated for quantum point contacts in M.A. Topinka et al., Science 289, 2323 (2000)). Using voltages applied on lateral (in-plane) gates patterned close to the quantum ring, we will investigate the influence of the coupling of the ring to external electron reservoirs as well as the influence of the asymmetry of the ring. The biased scanning tip will also be used as a static scatterer on one arm of the ring, and the influence of the position of the tip on Aharonov-Bohm oscillations will be characterized. Potential outcomes of this project are in the field of experimental quantum physics, quantum computation and electron optics.

The Microsystems platform for MObile Services and Applications (MiMOSA) is an integrated project done by a strong and synergetic consortium. MiMOSA creates a new open system platform for context-aware mobile services and applications. The approach is mobile phone based, providing the users with a smooth transition from current mobile services to ambient intelligence services. In the area of short-range connectivity, MiMOSA positions itself to low-cost, low-bit rate territory that can be set up with relatively modest investments in the infrastructure. The main focus of MiMOSA is the development of novel low-power microsystems, in particular wireless sensors exploiting the RFID technology, highly integrated readers/writers for RFID tags and sensors, low-power MEMS-based RF components and modules, low-power short-range radios, advanced integration technology, and novel MEMS sensors for context sensitivity and intuitive, user-friendly interfaces. MiMOSA extends the area of telecommunication business to ambient intelligence. The MiMOSA project is organized in 6 work packages including management. Its design approach is strongly human-centred. End users and application developers participate in designing and evaluating how ambient intelligence and short-range communication with environment could be best utilised in the everyday life. User feedback guides the design of the core components of ambient intelligence. To demonstrate the generic characteristics of the platform, MIMOSA develops specific applications with particular emphasis on physical browsing, health monitoring, intelligent housing, fitness/sports, context awareness for ambient intelligence and intuitive user interfaces. The defined approach and results will be disseminated and will lead to innovation in other application domains.Tomorrow's ambient intelligence will be enabled by generic technologies such as proposed by the MiMOSA vision in which cultural, ethical and/or gender issues are directly addressed.

The ACCA will coordinate and integrate a harmonised R&D programme targeting new proactive initiative within FET with the focus on self-organisation of a network element's autonomic behaviour exposed by innovative (cross-layer optimised, context-aware, and securely programmable) protocol stack in its interaction with numerous often-dynamic network communities. The goals are to understand how desired element's behaviours are learned, influenced or changed, and how, in turn, these affect other elements, groups and network. Autonomic communication is centred around networking selfware - a novel approach to perform network control, management, middle box communication, service creation, etc. based on universal and fine-grained multiplexing of numerous policies, rules and events that is done autonomously but facilitates desired behaviour of groups of network elements. The R&D programme will identify sound approaches to develop autonomic communication spanning any transport, network and link technology and assisting true ambient intelligence. Relevant knowledge will be accumulated, evaluated and disseminated to both industry and research communities in a form of requirements analysis, white papers on architectural principles, problem statements, roadmaps, impact reports, etc. presented at targeted events. The ACCA will build an autonomic communication R&D community prepared to undertake practical steps in realising the R&D programme. Recognising that ACCA aims to solve the problem of communication infrastructure evolvability through self-organisation and that this research requires a broad interdisciplinary approach the Action will explore concurrently multiple paradigm spaces addressing the problem from the viewpoints of software and hardware developments, radio technology advances, design methodology, control theory, formal methods, distributed systems research, etc.

Molecular electronics is expected to become a key technology in the 21st century with extensive current research. Owing to its future importance, molecular electronics is included in one of the seven FP6 priority areas, viz Nanotechnologies and Nanoscience. Our project will contribute to both the theoretical understanding of functional molecular electronic devices, and to their development and application. Target systems are inorganic transition metal complexes attached to suitable conducting leads. These systems exhibit molecular conductivity features that mimick electronic components such as diodes or transistors. However, most work published so far has been at low temperatures in vacuum or air. We intend to expand the area to ambient temperatures using in situ STM and scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) in electrochemical environments. The in situ STM electrode configuration consisting of a reference, a counter and a working electrode, resembles closely a molecular transistor with source, drain and gate contacts. Together with cooperation partners who will synthesize identified classes of inorganic complexes, we will develop molecular designs that are most suitable for our experimental requirements. Electrochemical experiments using ultrapure, atomically planar single-crystal metal electrodes will help to test the novel designs, e. g. concerning stability, prior to in situ STM experiments. In parallel, condensed matter charge transfer theory and detailed electronic structure calculations of the molecular tunneling junction will correlate molecular conductivity features to its properties. A profound understanding of this correlation is a pre-requisite to tailoring molecular tunneling properties, a key issue in present and forthcoming molecular electronics research.

This project's main goal is the theoretical design of a quantum simulator of magnetism that makes use of current technology for the manipulation of trapped ions. The implementation of this idea would lead to the simulation of complex spin models that are not well understood, and also to the first observation of quantum phase transitions in a system of trapped ions. The project will pursue the following objectives: (1) Elaboration of methods and protocols that experimentalists working with trapped ions can follow in order to simulate quantum magnetism, and description of the optimum conditions to minimize errors during the quantum simulation. (2) Description of the many-body state of the effective spin models to be simulated in ion traps, and, in particular, of the quantum phase transitions. Calculation of critical exponents, and properties of spin systems that can be translated into experimental observables of trapped ions (effective magnetization, and correlation functions, for example). (3) Design of proposals for the manipulation of the quantum state of the effective spins for entanglement creation and transmission of quantum information. Our project would lead to one of the first applications of the techniques developed in the field of the implementations of Quantum Information, and would fill the gap that separates current experiments from the long-term goal of quantum computation.

Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) is known to be one of the main causes for failures in ULSI technologies. These failures are caused by the discharge of electrostatic charge present either on an external body, like humans or machines, or on the device itself. In order to cope with this problem, ESD protection circuits have to be provided at all input, output and power supply pins, to ensure that the discharge currents are safely conducted towards the ground.With the ever continuing scaling of CMOS technologies, the problem of ESD becomes more and more difficult to cope with. This makes the scaled down technologies more vulnerable to ESD discharges with each new technology generation. Moreover, new materials and technology modules are continuously introduced in future technologies: high k dielectrics and metal gates to replace the conventional SiO2/polySi gate stacks, copper interconnects and low k dielectrics to replace the conventional Al/oxide based interconnect schemes, and new types of devices such as FinFets are under study to cope with the scaling problems of conventional MOSFET and apos;s. The impact of these new modules and materials on the ESD robustness of the devices is unknown and needs to be investigated.The ESD protection of RF CMOS circuits also poses severe problems. The reason for this is that the conventional ESD protection elements cannot be used anymore due to the too high parasitics of the protection elements. As a result new devices and/or design approaches to provide ESD protection for RF-CMOS applications are urgently necessary.In this project these important reliability issues for future technologies will be studied. The impact of advanced CMOS process modules, novel SOI-based devices and advanced junctions on the ESD performance of more or less conventional ESD protection devices will be studied in great detail. New ESD protection strategies and design methodologies for RF CMOS circuits will be investigated and developed.

The German applicant achieved his Dipl.Phys. at the University of Hannover, working on magneto-optical trapping of 85Rb with Prof.W.Ertmer. He has graduated to doctor of the University of Amsterdam in the group of Prof.J.T.M.Walraven, where he developed scientific expertise in collisional and collective behaviour of ultracold thermal clouds and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of 87Rb. He now plans a project within the cold atom group at LKB/ENS in Paris. His program, elaborated with Prof.M.Leduc and Prof.C.Cohen Tannoudji, aims for studying BECs of metastable helium in a 3D optical lattice. Metastables have a unique feature due to their large internal energy, i.e. ionization by Penning collisions which allows highly sensitive detection. The primary goal is to study the real-time kinetics of the quantum phase transition from superfluid to Mott-insulator by monitoring the ion flux, caused by Penning collisions of atoms in each lattice site. Prof.G.V.Shlyapnikov in Orsay will provide theoretical assistance. The results will improve the understanding of the coherence of matter waves. For the success of this project the applicant will have to build up on his expertise and quickly advance to sophisticated methods, e.g. optical lattices, which offer perspectives in the domain of quantum computation. The cold helium group, one out of only 3 in the world with a helium BEC, has the appropriate infrastructure and funding for this 2 years project. Together with the female supervisor Michèle Leduc, the applicant will be involved in research management and supervise 2 PhD students, 1 postdoc and several undergraduates. His development will benefit from the excellent experimental and theoretical conditions at ENS and the shared expertise with the entire cold atom group, which hosts a number of young physicists from many international collaborations.

The fabrication of conventional microchips is today close to reaching its lower limits concerning the possibleminimization of electric circuits by standard lithographic methods on silicon, a fact referred to as \andquot;the end of thesilicon road\andquot;. To further decrease the size of microelectronic circuits and therewith increase the density of logicalunits per chip new ways have to be found to build smaller devices. The greatest prospect for succeeding in thistask lies in nanoelectronics, where the basic logical units are formed of nano-scale objects. One possibility is touse interconnected molecules adsorbed on surfaces for such nanodevices.Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy at low temperature will be performed onorganic molecules to better understand their arrangement on the surface, possible template creation and theconnection to the surface as well as the conduction through the molecule when assembled into nanowires.Furthermore, vibrational spectroscopy shall be used to investigate the switching behaviour of molecules andallow better judgement whether they are suited for future electronic components.Nanoscience is a young and very promising field due to the expected future applications in nanotechnology. Theshaping of these research fields is a great challenge both to the European Community, which assumes acoordinating role, and the individual researcher, who works at the frontier of current knowledge. After the twoyears of the proposed project, the expertise in nanoscience of the research fellow will be greatly expanded,leaving her with bright prospects for a future career. The new input that both parties, host and researcher, willgain from each other will be stimulating to the advancement of the field. The synergistic interplay willundoubtedly be the source of novel approaches, which will promote the project and thereby the scientificexcellence of both the project parties and the #

Using nanoflow LC coupled on-line to a novel FTICR mass spectrometer we want to describe the complexity of histone modifications and define co-occurring modifications. We want to then investigate the biological role of these simultaneous present modifications by using synthetic peptides for pull-down experiments and stable isotope labeling for quantitation and effective back-ground subtraction to identify specifically binding proteins. We will focus after the implementation and test of the methods in a global scenario on metH3K9 which is central for gene silencing. In this way we intend to find out if other modifications are involved in fine-tuning and regulating gene silencing. This is central for our understanding of the histone code and epigenetics and may lead to a better understanding of cancer. M. Salek will move for this project to J. Rappsilber's group in Milan. He brings with him the experience of a PhD in mass spectrometric analysis of protein modifications and method development. He will be trained in LC-MS and FTICR MS and expand his experimental repertoire by peptide synthesis and pull down experiments. He will expand his analytical training into medical direction joining a campus that hosts two large cancer research institutes and is affiliated with two major cancer hospitals in Milan. The increased expertise in technology, in medical applications, and in administration will put him after this fellowship in an excellent position to respond to the European urge for proteomics groups. J. Rappsilber's group will gain with M. Salek competence essential for the proposed project and for the success of the group. M. Salek's connection to his former lab will result in transfer of expertise in the analysis of protein modification and long term access to instrumentation available there. M. Salek will go for a short stay to M. Mann's lab, one of the leading proteomics centers worldwide, and allow tightening the link to this lab while getting himself networked.

We consider methods of liquid atomization for use in the generation of mono-sized nanoparticles via evaporation

of solvent from liquid droplets (as in spray-pyrolysis or spray-drying). Making nanoparticles with mean geometric

diameter between 1 & 15 nm, requires droplets that are not much larger, in order to reduce trace contamination

in the final residue. Also, nanosize-related effects demand tight control over the width of the droplet size

distribution. We thus consider the generation of drops 5 to 50 nm in diameter, via electrohydrodynamic

atomization (EHDA) as a basis for development of future sucessful atomization methods. This remarkable

technique leads to very narrow droplet size distributions, with means tunable between 100's of microns down to

atomic dimensions (as in liquid metal ion sources). It is also a very gentle technique (routinely used for protein

analysis for example), compatible with many chemistries. Applying this technique, however, requires solving the

constraints of its traditional implementation, the "cone-jet mode", of: (1) high electrical conductivity values, and

(2) low liquid flow rates per emitting point. While the importance of (2) will be dependent on applications, solving

(1) is of fundamental value for enabling such applications.

We propose that recently-reported EHDA modes of "nanospray" and "corona-assisted electrospray" offer new

angles that are worth investigating in this context. While the mechanisms behind each of these modes are still

unknown, these modes appear to be superior to the traditional "cone-jet" mode, especially in regards to the

challenge posed by (1). Understanding their mechanisms will be key to gaining insight about what is ultimately

required to fix problem (1), and is thus one of our main objectives. Another objective is to determine how new

implementations of these modes, by combination, or via coupling of other forms of energy (such a