| Project Detail |
The dynamics of gender structuring in the ‘magic’ Veda
The Atharva-Veda (c. 1000 BCE), an ancient Hindu collection of spells, prayers, charms and hymns, has historically been overshadowed by the other three Vedas of the ‘high religion’. It has also been neglected in research – a gap the EU-funded project GHost aims to fill. To chart new territory in its study, the project will mobilise the wealth of data it holds on marginal social strata through an analysis of hymns, focusing on the indigenous category of ‘hostile ritual’. The work will involve the first-ever English translation of the hymns and relevant parts of the manual and a case study of the dynamics of gender structuring through the prism of language and ritual evolution.
Innovative X-ray imaging for materials science
A diverse consortium of experts from academia, industry and specialised X-ray instrumentation will drive innovation in materials science and manufacturing. This collaboration will enable the development of new materials and manufacturing processes informed by cutting-edge scientific research while also ensuring that the innovations are practical and applicable in industry. By working closely with industry partners, the EU-funded RELIANCE project will identify the most pressing challenges facing the manufacturing sector and develop solutions that address these challenges. The academic and X-ray instrumentation experts will bring their scientific expertise and technical knowledge to the project. RELIANCE’s methods have the potential to revolutionise Industry 4.0 solutions by providing decentralised decision-making based on current, observed structural properties.
RELIANCE will develop and implement depth-resolved multimodal X-ray imaging and scattering tools that will enable the automated real-time characterization at the nano-scale of the structure and morphology of materials, devices and their manufacturing processes, reliably and with precision. Providing training in the use of these tools, as well as training in open-access science and development of transferable skills for all ESR fellows is one of the key objectives of RELIANCE.
The methodologies developed by RELIANCE will be implemented for optimizing and controlling the processing of high-performance polymeric materials and composites, i.e. solution-spinning of aramid fibres, compaction-heat stretching of polyethylene film, and pultrusion of composites. RELIANCE will significantly improve quality control of a wide range of technological materials used in composite materials. Through integration of real-time data analysis and process parameters by application of machine learning, the methods will lend themselves to Industry 4.0 solutions relying on cyber physical systems for decentralized decisions based on actual, current structural properties observed during processing.
The real-time access to nanostructure in the diverse applications is provided by specialized X-ray instrumentation. A shared methodology for data reconstruction and machine-learning assisted analysis exploiting prior knowledge and modelling of structural anisotropy, is applied to enable the data reduction speed required to match industrial processing.
RELIANCE brings together a consortium of leading international experts in X-ray scattering, imaging and automatized analysis of scattering data, 3D reconstruction algorithms and automatized analysis of imaging data and Materials Applications, with industrial leaders in manufacturing and application of high-performance polymer materials, and in highly specialized X-ray instrumentation and scientific data acquisition and analysis. |
