SelfLubricating Metal and Ceramic Matrix NanoComposites are materials consisting of a metal or hartstoff matrix with dispersed selflubricating nanoparticles. Fon Piston/Liner systems the matrix may be a refractory metal like tungsten, molybdenum and chromium or a carbide or nitride of these metals or titanium, etc. The solid lubricant would be graphite, fdisulfide, h-BN, etc. SLMCMNCs have so far never been synthesized and there exists no process technology for their synthesis. Selflubricating nanocomposites with a lubricant matrix (DLC) and carbide (WC, B4C) inclusions are state of the art since 15 years. They are produced by a P&CVD method on a large scale. Selflubricating Metal and Ceramic Matrix MicroComposites are state of the art since at least a century. They are produced by filling (SiC/C), sintering and casting (e.g. grey cast iron, Pb/PTFE, CuSnPb, AlSn, etc) , galvanic & electroless deposition (Ni/PFE), plasma spraying (alloy + MoS2, PTFE). They are used for gliding seals. The technologies used for selflubricating microcomp.can not be used for nanocomp. for worker's hygiene reasons, since they would involve handling of large quantities of powders of nanosized particles, which are a clear health risk. The state of the art PVD or CVD methods have failed so far in producing such nanocomp. (with the exception of AISn20), since these technologies usually do not produce bi-phase materials.In NAPILIS project two solutions will be explored: 1.sputter deposition process, combining the selection of an appropriate metallurgy with the use of extremely short (msec) intense heat spikes to promote the appropriate segregation. 2. in a combined arc+ sputter process, strong nano-particle emission from a graphite source will be obtained. SLMCMNCs will be then applied to Piston/Liner systems with the objective to have an high performance sealing giving an important contribution to clean and resource efficient IC engines.'

We will develop new technologies for handling and control of single molecules and nanostructures on the sub 10nm scale. These techniques will be based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) so that manipulation protocols may be applied on insulating surfaces, thus overcoming one of the major limitations of current state-of-the-art techniques. The fundamental processes which control AFM manipulation in nanoscale manufacture will be determined through a collaborative theoretical and experimental exploration of the frontiers of knowledge. The new techniques will enable long term innovation in the areas of molecular nanostructures, controlled self assembly and nanomachines and we will demonstrate several novel applications which form key milestones. The consortium is formed from internationally leading groups in the areas of molecular and nanoscale fabrication and the project directly addresses section 3.4.1.4, of the Priority 3 NMP Workprogramme, 'Development of handling and control devices and instruments'. The project objectives will be achieved through effective management and will be disseminated widely, in particular through an SMEs forum. This project will safeguard the leading status of researchers in the European Research Area and underpin the emergence of key nanotechnologies in Europe. The consortium will also be highly proactive in of wider societal objectives including the promotion of gender equality and the public understanding of science.'

The objective of this project is to provide access funding for scientists from European institutes who wish to perform part of their research at the Braun Center for Sub Micron Research (WISSMC) at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Under this project European scientists the will have the opportunity to visit the Braun Center, which is among the very few laboratories in the world, and particularly in Europe, which are self-sufficient in terms of the integration of 'state of the art' growth-fabrication facilities and measurement-evaluation equipment. The visitors under this program will be exposed to the very high quality research carried out at the WISSMC in the fields of mesoscopic physics and nano-physics. The transnational access will be provided as specified in section 6 of this Annex. The visiting scientists will be able to study complex semiconductor structures and devices. This will include high purity III-V semiconductor structures grown by molecular beam Epitaxy, miniaturization by optical lithography or electron beam writing and other processing and evaluation tools. The visiting scientists will interact strongly with two groups: excellent theoreticians and experimentalists, all working in strong collaboration under one roof and in this rather focused areas of research. The project will provide new opportunities for EU students to broaden their experience and knowledge in state of the art mesoscopic physics. It will allow graduate students to pursue new opportunities such as post doc positions in the field of mesoscopic physics. EU senior scientists will be able to strengthen their scientific ties with leading scientists at the Weizmann Institute. The project will enhance an extended flow of scientists between Europe and the Weizmann Institute and will thus induce fruitful scientific collaborations. It will help establish new research/technology collaborations with scientists across Europe.

We will develop a new generation of nano-biotechnological equipment, the CellPROMs. As the EPROM paved the way to a broad application of microelectronics, CellPROMs will overcome current limits of and revolutionise the existing handling technologies and procedures by automated, compact and parallel yet still individual handling of large numbers of cellular samples. Typical targets will be animal and human adult stem cells. Human embryonic stem cells will not be used. The main task of our IP is to develop procedures and devices for the precise creation of NanoScapes - individually tailored nanoscaled macromolecular landscapes which will allow, for the first time, to non-invasively produce well-defined populations of individually programmed cells, eventually leading to substantial breakthroughs and numerous applications in the fields of molecular medicine and cellular nano-biotechnology. Although surface imprinting of cells will be realised via artificial nano-biotechnological devices, e.g. nanostructured stamps or beads, these tools are designed according to the natural principles of cellular signalling and differentiation. As nanocomponents are essential to the imprinting process, suitable techniques and principles to form nanoscaled macromolecular patterns on arbitrary surface geometries have to be developed. All components, ranging from the nanoscale of functional interfaces up to the macro level for cell handling, are to be developed as functional modules suitable for further application. The project features multiple nano- and biotechnological challenges. To tackle these, will lead to breakthroughs in nanotechnological device development and, moreover, drastically advance our understanding of biological signals relevant to cellular programming. Once available, CellPROMs will facilitate the transition to a more knowledge-based and less resource-intensive society in Europe.

It is the objective of COMPOSE to develop new materials with predefined physical and chemical characteristics. The membranes developed will be based on new understanding of materials phenomena, especially in the nano range. COMPOSE focuses on the development of novel nanostructured materials for selective transport and separation. Two classes of materials will be developed in this project: nanostructured organic/inorganic hybrid materials and functional self organized supramolecular copolymers. Organic/inorganic hybrid materials will be developed and manufactured into membranes for the selective separation of gases and liquids. During this development, new knowledge will be gained about the behaviour of composite organic/inorganic membranes, where the inorganic phase is composed of nano-particles.Among the materials to be developed are high free volume polymers filled with in-situ generated inorganic phases and mixed matrix membranes consisting of polymer and dispersed carbon molecular sieve flakes. Exceptional gas fluxes and selectivities are expected. Organic/inorganic hybrid membranes will also be developed for nanofiltration in organic solvents. The membranes envisaged can have enormous economic benefit for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. The second route to totally new membrane materials is the self organisation of block copolymers. Self- organisation is an important building principle of biological membranes. Building membranes by the same principle tries to imitate nature, even so the molecules used for synthetic membranes are very different from biological ones. This part of COMPOSE dealing with creating membranes by molecular self-assembly promises a new paradigm in membrane technology and knowledge. Totally new membrane structures will emerge from this research opening the door to new applications. One objective is the development of a novel type of a charged mosaic membrane.

Early tumour detection and response monitoring require maximum sensitivity and specificity of the imaging methods. The programme focuses on the clinical evaluation and development of new more specific molecular tracers for the early detection of tumour cells. A large number of new and potentially more specific tracers than fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) will be tested including amino-acid analogues, small tumour-binding peptides, aptamers, peptides binding to mutant p53 proteins and nanoparticles. The more tumour specific the tracer, the more accurately it will be possible to image the true tumour cell density, and more importantly, the true response of the tumour to therapy. There is also a need to consolidate the experience in the use of recently developed molecular tracers to assess radiotherapy and chemotherapy response in order to improve on state of the art treatments. To maximise the sensitivity and tumour image quality, a high-resolution, wide field-of-view, ultra-sensitive PET-CT camera, capable of imaging half the human body in a few minutes, will be developed. New adaptive therapy planning and biological optimisation codes and a dedicated PET-CT detector for incorporation in treatment units will be designed in close corporation between university researchers and SME's. This will allow an efficient clinical integration and high patient throughput. The associated increase in accuracy of tumour imaging and three-dimensional in vivo tumour responsiveness data will hopefully allow the clinical introduction of accurate biologically based adaptive treatment optimization methods. Some of the work- packages will try to conenct to teh Genpe, Emir and Enlight programmes but do not depend on these programmes.

Objective of BINASP is to build-up a system of bio-nanotechnology research infrastructures and facilities in AREA Science Park within the newly formed 'TDMB-Technology District of Molecular Biomedicine' set up in the Region FVG at the end of 2004 with the endorsement of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. The core and main driver of the TDMB is the 'CBM-Centre for Biomolecular Medicine', a syndicated company leaded by the Consorzio AREA which presently involves 15 shareholders, including research institutions, hi-tech manufacturing companies and financial institutes. BINASP's s goal will be achieved starting from the assets of the CBM and from the renowned European milieu of ASP, one of the largest European science & technology parks. Cornerstones of BINASP: - to promote research in nanotechnology applied to biology and medicine, and develop advanced instrumentation; - to develop collaborations with EU Nanotech R&D Centers, through the organization of scientific meetings, joint research projects, exchange programs; - to develop hi-education programmes by the promotion of PhD, start-up grants and fellowships; - to manage advanced instrumentation and laboratories for common R&D use, provide consultancy to fund raising and management for partners and others institutions; - to set-up products, to provide services and instruments useful to diagnostic and therapeutic purposes; - to exploit the market value of the relevant research results. Initial funding and locations of the project will be provided by the BINASP Partners as well as other public-private institutions; the project sustainability will be subsequently affirmed by the same institutions as well as by grants and market revenues of the intellectual property. BINASP fulfills the goals of the FP6, since it provides the basis of a European cross-cutting hi-tech platform development starting from the existing bulk of sectorial excellence competence centres.

The integrated project PACE will explore the utilization of the simplest technically feasible elementary living units (artificial cells much simpler than current cells) to build evolvable complex information systems. We will create, analyse and investigate the applications of such systems that process information by self-organization starting at molecular scales. We will also determine whether life-like properties are necessary for computational systems to be fully robust and adaptive and investigate the tension between evolvable living autonomy and programmable utilization.. We will explore the collective properties of artificial cells and demonstrate that they are the right material for building nanoscale robot ecologies. The particular molecular systems we will consider will have genetically controlled catalytic reactions, self-assembly of complex supramolecular structures, and energy transduction. We will investigate the stepwise evolution of such complex systems by machine complementation and combinatorial search using a programmable microfluidic interface. We will provide theoretical and simulation frameworks for understanding emergent computational properties of such systems, and experimental frameworks for programming them by evolutionary exploration of chemical reactions. We will integrate and disseminate multidisciplinary European activities to give it a decisive international competitive advantage in this FET.

Secure communication is an essential need for companies, public institutions and in particular the individual citizen. Currently used encryption systems are vulnerable due to the increasing power of computer technology, the emergence of new code-breaking algorithms, and the imperfections of public key infrastructures. Methods considered as acceptably secure today will have a significant risk of becoming weak tomorrow. On the other hand, with quantum cryptography a technology has been developed within the last decade that is provably secure against arbitrary computing power, and even against quantum computer attacks. When becoming operational quantum cryptography will raise communication security on an essentially higher level. The vision of SECOQC is to provide European citizens, companies and institutions with a tool that allows facing the threats of future interception technologies, thus creating significant advantages for European economy. With SECOQC the basis will be laid for a long-range high security communication network that combines the entirely novel technology of quantum key distribution with components of classical computer science and cryptography. Within the project the following goals will be achieved: - Realisation of a fully functional, real-time, ready-to-market Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) point-to-point communication technology; - Development of an abstract level architecture allowing high security long-range communication by integrating the QKD technology and a set of cryptographic protocols; - Design of a real-life, user-oriented network for practical implementation of QKD based long range secure communication. To achieve this goal, all experience and resources available within the European Research Area are to be integrated and combined with the expertise of developers and companies within the fields of network integration, cryptography, electronics, security, and software development.

This host institution is a Research Infrastructure supported by the European Commission for providing transnational access to biological NMR. The infrastructure is uniquely equipped with a large number of NMR spectrometers ranging from 900 MHz down to 0.01 MHz, through 800 MHz, two 700 MHz, 600 MHz, 500 MHz and 400 MHz spectrometers. It has a specialized tradition in the investigation of metalloproteins and in particular of paramagnetic metalloproteins. The aim of this application is that of moving ahead the perspective of Biological Inorganic Chemistry through the training of a new generation of doctorate students, trained at the interface between biology and inorganic chemistry through biocomputing and biospectroscopy. The availability of high technology NMR methods to study at the atomic level the structure and mobility of metalloproteins and their adducts with physiological partners and small synthetic ligands is of crucial importance in the post-genomic era. The use of the genomic databases will be exploited through bioinformatic tools for the selection of proteins for expression and for characterization in terms of structure, stability, recognition of biological partners, specificity and discovery of new folds and functions. Chemistry oriented fellows will develop aspects related to the role of metal ions in biological systems; biologically oriented fellows will go through an integrated approach from genome to proteins by using high throughput techniques, bioinformatic tools and will be exposed to spectroscopic techniques; biophysics oriented fellows will develop technological and scientific aspects through the use of high and low field NMR and flanking biophysical spectroscopies. The long term educational aim is to create scientists capable to frame specific problems in a general context, to consider multi-disciplinarity as a primary need and to consider trans-national collaboration as a requirement to develop a coherent generation of European scientists.