EU Research Autumn / Winter 2019 by Blazon Publishing and Media Ltd

EU Research Winter 2019

HORIZON EUROPE The ninth research and innovation framework programme

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Brains should become main resource of Europeâ&#x20AC;? ERC President speaks out

BREXIT Latest: 1.5 Billion Euros at stake for UK based researchers

The business of decision making: An in-depth report on economics

SNSF: A focus on the Swiss National Science Foundation

Disseminating the latest research from around Europe and Horizon 2020 Follow EU Research on www.twitter.com/EU_RESEARCH

Editor’s N C

limate remains the dominant science story in the press. The latest report is signed by 11,000 scientists from 153 countries, warning of untold human suffering if we don’t act on what they class as a climate emergency.

A climate scientist once told me that she was angry when she read the news because it reported the current unprecedented climate disasters often without mention of the bigger issue of climate change, the cause as she saw it. Scroll through the news reports on your mobile on any given day and you’ll see more than one natural, climate or weather-related disaster unfolding from wildfire to flooding. We need as a society to be aware we require a total rethink about how we do things, and big solutions and big changes are necessary today. Globally the pace of change in our habits, lifestyles and infrastructure is simply too slow. Greta Thunberg was right to shout in rage at the world leaders, this is a justified rage-moment in time. But, it’s not just world leaders. We all consume, waste and we pollute at a staggering rate. On another recent occasion, I talked to someone in local politics who spelt out how the landfill site for a region was nearly full and the options were, dig another landfill pit or build an incinerator. The first option means more polluting waste in the land, the second, in the atmosphere. This is the truth of the impact of what we throw away.

As a seasoned editor and journalist, Richard Forsyth has been reporting on numerous aspects of European scientific research for over 10 years. He has written for many titles including ERCIM’s publication, CSP Today, Sustainable Development magazine, eStrategies magazine and remains a prevalent contributor to the UK business press. He also works in Public Relations for businesses to help them communicate their services effectively to industry and consumers.

In the feature on plastic pollution in this issue you can read about one aspect of this lifestyle challenge and the damage our habits have done to the world. You can also read about the fight going on to correct mistakes. The EU is thankfully, playing its part in the fight. Directives and strategies are unfolding now that will have impact and if not reverse, at least slow or stop some of the industrial pollution. When you realise there is a time coming where the weight of plastic in the sea will be more than the fish, the reality of the challenge becomes apparent. Research around impacts and solutions has never been more important.

Hope you enjoy the issue.

Richard Forsyth Editor

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Contents 18

Research News

Researchers are looking to use an individual’s breath as a means of both diagnosing disease and optimizing drug dosage. This could represent an important step towards personalised medicine, as Professor Pablo Sinues explains

EU Research takes a closer look at the latest news and technical breakthroughs from across the European research landscape

MIRA It can be difficult for radiologists to detect subtle signs of early disease in medical scans. Researchers in the MIRA project are using machine intelligence to develop algorithms that will enhance the clinical workflow, as Dr Ben Glocker explains

Extensive computer simulations investigate TPP1-TERT protein-protein interaction Computer simulation techniques enable researchers to perform highly accurate drug design calculations. Professor Vittorio Limongelli develops advanced computational protocols to study pharmacologically relevant systems

Mechanisms of cellcycle dependent cell fate regulation by OCT4 Professor David Suter tells us about his work in investigating the capacity of embryonic stem cells to self-renew, which could in future help open up new possibilities in regenerative medicine

20 Systems genetics of Host/ Microbiota mutualism in Drosophila melanogaster

A range of techniques are available to probe the genetic and environmental factors that influence the development of Drosophila melanogaster. Professors François Leulier and Bart Deplancke are now using the BRB-seq technique to gain deeper insights

VIDOCK A physical map provides detailed information on topology and geographical features. A comparable level of detail on protein surfaces would be invaluable in drug design and development, a topic central to Professor Mathieu Montes’ research

Individualized Drug Dosage Guided by Breath

The role of mononuclear phagocytes in gut mucosal healing following inflammation Inflammatory bowel diseases can seriously affect quality of life. Early, complete mucosal healing in the gut leads to improved patient prognosis in these cases, a topic Dr Annika Frede is exploring in her research

22 Solutions for a Plastic Planet With a product that resists destruction for hundreds of years, we can no longer ignore the impact plastic is having on ecosystems, ecosystems which include us. Can we undo the damage of plastic pollution? Richard Forsyth reports

26 Determinants of individual energy- relevant decisions and behaviours: A multiple systems approach

There is growing awareness of climate change among the wider public, yet this does not always translate into action. Unconscious mechanisms exert a considerable influence on our energy consumption decisions, an area of deep interest to Professor Tobias Brosch

29 Alternative Life Histories

The causes and consequences of differences in migratory behaviour among populations of the same species remains poorly understood. Dr Thomas Reed is investigating the factors that influence whether brown trout choose to migrate

30 Soot Particle

Ageing Cloud Effects Is there a process in the atmosphere that makes soot particles hydrophilic? Dr Amewu Mensah is investigating how soot particles behave in the atmosphere, work which holds wider relevance to climate modelling

33 Cooking and Eating

as Aesthetic Practice Cuisine is more than just sustenance, but also an important element of culture. Professor Nicolaj van der Meulen is the Principal Investigator of a research project looking at cooking and eating as aesthetic practices

36 MAGnUM Researchers in the MAGnUM project are developing multi-modal traffic models, which could underpin more effective and environmentallyfriendly transport management strategies, as Professor Ludovic Leclercq explains

39 MAT_STOCKS How can we build a more sustainable society? The MAT_ STOCKS project aims to build databases of material stocks and services and gain new insights into patterns of resource use, as Professor Helmut Haberl explains

EU Research

EU Research Winter 2019

HORIZON EUROPE The ninth research and innovation framework programme

40 Ergodicity breaking and

non-equilibrium quantum many-body states It has become evident that certain quantum many-body systems do not thermalise when they are initialized in a non-equilibrium state, raising new questions that Professor Dmitry Abanin seeks to address

42 Flexibility and Design. A

History of Technology and Fashion in the Swiss Silk Industry, 1880 – 1914

The Swiss silk industry grew rapidly over the nineteenth century, as demand increased. The flexibility of the design process was central to the industry’s growth, as Denise Ruisinger and Professor Alexis Schwarzenbach explain

44 Enhanced Reality with

Holographic Technology The idea of holographic projectors has defined the look of the future in movies ever since the original Star Wars film, back in 1977, and maybe that inspiration is why innovators have made the technology a reality. We ask, will we soon see holograms in our homes, schools and workplaces? Richard Forsyth reports

48 CHANGING

PERSONALITY TRAITS Is it possible to modify personality traits over relatively short time periods? Could this help improve public health? Professor Mathias Allemand tells us about his work in testing a digital coaching intervention to modify personality traits

50 How do University

College Students Read? Many of us think of reading as being a sedentary activity, yet recent studies suggest it’s important to also consider how we use the body. Dr Sarah Bro Trasmundi is conducting a cognitive ethnography study into how students read

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52 TAMoLi Educational research and policy in Switzerland over the last twenty years or so has focussed on reading competence. Has this come at the cost of an encompassing literary education? Professor Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann gives her view

55 INSIDE THE FAMILY FIRM Many major companies across the world are family-owned, including Hermes, Cargill and Walmart. These companies differ significantly from businesses that aren’t family owned, a topic of great interest to Professor Morten Bennedsen

58 RISKY BUSINESS While some businesses adapt to social and economic changes, many do not. Professor Torben Juul Andersen tells us about his research into what distinguishes those organisations that adapt effectively from those that don’t

59 Real-PIM-System Data is shuttled back and forth between data storage and processing units every time a computation is performed in most computers. A new computer architecture could help improve both speed and energy efficiency, as Professor Shahar Kvatinsky explains

62 SymplecticEinstein The Einstein field equations are a source of great interest in both physics and pure mathematics. We spoke to Dr Joel Fine about his work in reformulating Einstein’s equations in dimension 4

64 Education Access under the

Reign of Testing and Inclusion

Rigorous testing and assessment is an integral part of education. Dr Christian Ydesen and his research team aim to analyse the balance between testing and inclusion in different education systems

“Brains should become main resource of Europe” ERC President speaks out

BREXIT Latest: 1.5 Billion Euros at stake for UK based researchers

The business of decision making: An in-depth report on economics

SNSF: A focus on the Swiss National Science Foundation

Disseminating the latest research from around Europe and Horizon 2020 Follow EU Research on www.twitter.com/EU_RESEARCH

EDITORIAL Managing Editor Richard Forsyth info@euresearcher.com Deputy Editor Patrick Truss patrick@euresearcher.com Deputy Editor Richard Davey rich@euresearcher.com Science Writer Holly Cave www.hollycave.co.uk Acquisitions Editor Elizabeth Sparks info@euresearcher.com PRODUCTION Production Manager Jenny O’Neill jenny@euresearcher.com Production Assistant Tim Smith info@euresearcher.com Art Director Daniel Hall design@euresearcher.com Design Manager David Patten design@euresearcher.com Illustrator Martin Carr mary@twocatsintheyard.co.uk PUBLISHING Managing Director Edward Taberner etaberner@euresearcher.com Scientific Director Dr Peter Taberner info@euresearcher.com Office Manager Janis Beazley info@euresearcher.com Finance Manager Adrian Hawthorne info@euresearcher.com Account Manager Jane Tareen jane@euresearcher.com

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RESEARCH

NEWS

The EU Research team take a look at current events in the scientific news

£1.5 billion at stake for UK researchers due to Brexit Prospect of Brexit taking a toll on U.K. research. Winners of European fellowships now less likely to come and bring their money to U.K. institutions. UK university researchers overwhelmingly favoured remaining in the EU in the 2016 referendum and, more than three years later, most want the softest possible Brexit if Britain has to leave. “The outward-facing and internationally collaborative nature of the UK’s research and innovation sector is a key factor in our global success,” says Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, Britain’s senior scientific body. “It is right that we review our place on the world stage but we must make sure we protect the elements that are already working well.” Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for the December 12th election to break gridlock over Brexit. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, kicked off by a 2016 referendum and now set for 31 January 2020, has been put off twice already. Johnson has been unable to get Parliament to approve a divorce agreement, and crashing out of the European Union without a deal could cause a recession. Johnson and the Conservatives want a quick approval for their plan. “I think we need to move on to bigger issues,” Stephen Metcalfe, a Conservative member of Parliament (MP) and a member of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, said at the Royal Society event. The opposition Labour Party says it will negotiate a better deal with the European Union and then put it to the people in another referendum. The Liberal Democrats, running third in national polls, want to cancel Brexit. If Brexit happens, the parties all say they would try to reach a science deal with the European Union and pay to participate in its funding programs. They also want to reform immigration for scientists, both to minimize the red tape and fees that EU scientists will face after Brexit and to bring in talent from other parts of the world. Johnson wants to eliminate caps on visas for top researchers and make it easier for universities to sponsor them. At the Royal Society event, Labour and Liberal Democrats said they would make improvements as well. “It’s clear the entire system needs reform

because it’s not working,” said Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP and party spokesperson for science and innovation. Research funding was another point of agreement. The Conservatives started to boost the budget in 2016, and in 2017 announced a 10-year goal of reaching a national R&D investment of 2.4% of gross domestic product, the average figure among economically developed countries, up from 1.7%. The other parties have pledged to maintain that momentum. “There is a startling degree of consensus across the three main parties,” says James Wilsdon, a science policy expert at the University of Sheffield. A closer look suggests the parties might deploy this money differently. Johnson said last month he wants to create a British Advanced Research Projects Agency, inspired by the U.S. military agency that helped develop the internet, with a total of £800 million over 5 years to work on bold civilian ideas. But Sam Gyimah, a Liberal Democrat MP and a former science minister before he quit the Conservative Party, pointed out that researchers are already adapting to a big new funder, UK Research and Innovation. He warned about the risk of “chopping and changing” the way government distributes research funding. Labour has a controversial idea of its own, calling for a publicly owned drug company to make generic drugs, including versions of drugs still under patent, for the National Health Service. Any profits would support public R&D. The election will determine how much of this is practical. Ambitious goals, such as a new funding agency or energy policy, need the approval of what has been a paralyzed Parliament. That inaction might continue if the next ruling party fails to get a significant majority. The parties have so far ruled out forming a coalition government. The end result could be more of the same: an impasse on the issue most important to the country, and to science.

EU has proposed a budget of €94.1 billion for Horizon Europe, up from €77 billion “forTheHorizon 2020, the current research programme that finishes at the end of next year. Both figures factor-in inflation estimates over each programme’s seven-year lifespan, so either number could turn out higher or lower if these estimates are off.

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EU Research

ERC President speaks out over €12 Billion cut to Horizon Europe European Research Council President Jean-Pierre Bourguignon believes that “Brains should become main resource of Europe”. The EU’s next research programme, Horizon Europe, faces a cut of €12 billion, according to Christian Ehler, one of the MEPs who steered it through the European Parliament. Speaking at the parliament committee on Industry, Research, and Energy (ITRE) in November, Ehler said he had heard that morning from the European Commission about the Finnish presidency’s latest proposal on the overall budget. “We are talking about €12 billion cuts from Horizon Europe,” he said. It was already clear the proposed Horizon Europe budget is threatened, but this is the first time anyone involved in shaping the programme has indicated how much could be cut. Research is getting trimmed back because some countries want to reduce overall EU spending, while others are vehemently defending the structural funds and agriculture subsidies, the two largest slices of the budget. Since every member state has veto, that puts research on the chopping block by default. Last month, Finland, as holder of the six-month rotating presidency of the EU Council, proposed a compromise that would involve some cuts, but didn’t specify what would happen to the research budget. The size of the cut to Horizon Europe appears to have been raised during a meeting between Ehler and the departing budget commissioner Günther Oettinger and incoming research commissioner Mariya Gabriel. Incumbent research commissioner Carlos Moedas, the next budget commissioner Johannes Hahn, and Horizon Europe’s other rapporteur, Dan Nica, were not present. In the ITRE meeting Ehler was addressing Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, president of the European Research Council (ERC). If there is a cut of €12 billion, ERC could see €2-3 billion sliced from its proposed budget of €16.6 billion, Ehler said, urging Bourguingon to publicly oppose this. “You’re lobbying the European institutions in the traditional way, but shouldn’t the ERC be going out a little bit more?” he asked Bourguignon. “What could we do to go more public, to convince the member states that if we cut the budget by €12 billion, we immediately, proportionately cut the ERC by two or three billion, which is a contradiction to the ambition and the needs of the ERC.”

In an interview with EURACTIV on November 25th Jean-Pierre Bourguignon stated “The ERC keyword is ‘bottom-up’. This means that we really want to leave the initiative to researchers, to empower them, and to push them to come up with their most adventurous ideas in formulating their proposals. For that purpose, we challenge them. The ERC is not about funding ‘business as usual’ research. Actually the ERC motto is ‘high risk, high gain’. It means that we want people to submit even crazy and risky ideas. It means that sometimes researchers are coming up with concepts or ideas offering new perspectives that nobody thought about. And, of course, it will in most cases take time to develop them. This is why, from the very first day, the ERC put in place five-year grants.” In the same interview when asked if (over the next 5 years) if he expected the new European Commission to pay more attention to research, he said “For the moment, the only signs available are the initial denomination chosen for the portfolio in which research is included, which did not formally mention research, and the “mission letter” to the Commissioner-designate in question. This is a very difficult time with many issues to be addressed. I am sure Mrs von der Leyen and her team understand that what we do has transformed Europe. The ERC has raised Europe’s ambition, keeping top talent in Europe and attracting the brightest minds from further afield. Of course, this was done by investing some money, but the results have been extraordinary, with countless breakthroughs along the way. I hope that within the next five years the ERC will be better recognised as great proof that Europe can be a beacon, creating new things that can lead the way on the world stage.” The EU has proposed a budget of €94.1 billion for Horizon Europe, up from €77 billion for Horizon 2020, the current research programme that finishes at the end of next year. Both figures factor-in inflation estimates over each programme’s seven-year lifespan, so either number could turn out higher or lower if these estimates are off. That means a €12 billion cut would, on paper, leave Horizon Europe just a little larger than Horizon 2020, but the cut could turn out smaller if the inflation gods cause the numbers to shift.

European Research Council President Jean-Pierre Bourguignon

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China narrows gap with US in scientific research activity amid trade war National think tank the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world’s largest research organisation, has about 60,000 researchers. China is narrowing the gap with the United States in terms of cutting edge scientific research activity, despite a protracted trade and tech war between the world’s two largest economies. National scientific think tank the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and US firm Clarivate Analytics jointly announced that finding on Tuesday at a forum in Beijing, where they released reports on the hottest and emerging areas in scientific research from 2013 to 2018, as well as a comparison on national performance across 137 research fronts. China achieved a score of 139.68 in terms of Research Leadership Index (RLI) this year, behind the US mark of 204.89. RLI, which measures a country’s degree of research activity, takes into account the number of core scientific papers published and citing papers, as well as their respective citations. China improved from its RLI score of 118.38 last year, while the US mark declined from 227.39 in the same period. “As China’s foremost think tank, we need to have solutions in accurately forecasting the development trends in science and technology, providing research basis for China to better support its blueprint in science and technology development,” said Bai Chunli, president of CAS, in a statement. The CAS is recognised as the world’s largest research organisation, employing about 60,000 researchers last year. That is nearly twice the size of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, which had a staff of 33,000 last year, according to a report by

scientific journal Nature. Rounding out the top five countries in terms of RLI performance this year are the UK, Germany and France with scores, respectively, of 80.85, 67.52 and 46.30. To be sure, the global impact of growing Chinese scientific activity has been marred by a disproportionate number of faked peer reviews and plagiarised publications. China has published 8 per cent of the world’s scientific articles as of November this year, but garnered 24.2 per cent of all retractions as of November 2017, according to a Nature report on Tuesday. By comparison, the US accounted for 30.7 per cent of the world’s scientific articles and recorded 28.1 per cent of retractions during the same period. In June this year, the Chinese government issued a document on improving academic integrity among scientists, in which it describes honesty as the “bottom line”. China’s improved RLI reflects a determination in Beijing that the country not lose out in the global race to study and master the next wave of advanced technologies. For China, achieving self-reliance in technology deemed crucial to the country’s military and economic security has taken on added urgency after Washington recently added more Chinese hi-tech firms, including telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies, to a US trade blacklist. The CAS and Clarivate have identified 137 research fronts, which cover 100 hot and 37 emerging specialities spanning 10 broad areas. These fields include geosciences, clinical medicine, physics, biological sciences, chemistry and material sciences, and mathematics, computer science and engineering.

Vaping could affect the heart’s health, warn researchers New human studies into the safety of vaping assess chronic harm to heart and lungs. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices containing nicotine and other substances, such as solvents that dissolve the nicotine and flavorings that enhance their appeal. Heat converts the mix into an aerosol that users inhale. Manufacturers tout e-cigarettes as tools to help smokers quit, although data are mixed. But one thing is clear: Millions of young people who didn’t smoke cigarettes have taken up vaping. And given that e-cigarettes vary more than conventional cigarettes in their chemical composition, “We’re asking medical science to do a huge, heavy lift” to pinpoint health impacts across people, says James Stein, a preventive cardiologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He and others believe they have no choice but to try. This month, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute gave a boost to studies of acute and chronic effects when it announced supplemental funds for ongoing e-cigarette research, on which the institute spent $23 million this year. Maciej L. Goniewicz, associate professor of oncology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center told journalists that e-cigarettes “contain nicotine and emit particulates and several toxicants that may negatively affect heart and blood vessels of users.” He said the cholesterol study shows those who use e-cigarettes and combustibles had “no improvement in health outcomes.”

“If [a] smoker seriously considers e-cigarette as a substitute product for combustible cigarettes, he or she should switch completely,” he said. “I think we need more data on the potential long-term consequences of nicotine vaping, not only in adult ex-smokers, but also in young regular vapers,” he continued. “Since e-cigarettes are also commonly used to deliver other substances, particularly THC and CBD (active substances in cannabis), studies should also look at potential health effects of different drugs inhaled with e-cigarettes.” Goniewicz argued it is not possible to directly compare the harm from smoking versus vaping based on present findings. “I think the scientific evidence still strongly suggests that smokers who switch completely to e-cigarettes may reduce their health risk,” he said. “However, the transition from combustible to electronic cigarettes needs to be complete. On the other hand, there is growing evidence of potential negative health consequences of regular vaping in young people who have never smoked tobacco cigarettes.” Photo by Quinten de Graaf

EU Research

After weeks of intense lobbying, incoming commission president Ursula von der Leyen gives in to pressure and adds ‘research’ to the job title - at the last possible moment. The incoming president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has given into demands that the word ‘research’ should feature in the research commissioner’s job title, making the change at the last possible minute, just before the European Parliament confirmed the new team of commissioners in Strasbourg on Wednesday. Von der Leyen’s last-minute decision means that rather than being appointed Innovation and Youth Commissioner, Bulgarian Mariya Gabriel will now become commissioner for Research, Innovation, Education, Culture & Youth. The change is more about sending a political message to researchers and does not alter the job description, which was always going to include science and research policy. But the move may help ease concerns among academics that EU support for basic science is being eclipsed by industry-oriented technological innovation. “It’s what we have been asking for,” said Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, “It’s clear that she [Gabriel] has a very broad portfolio, and I have no problem with the recognition of culture and youth, but out of all that, research and education had to be there [in the title],” he said. “I think it’s a very wise decision by president von der Leyen.” Researchers pushing for the change seemed to be losing the battle in recent weeks, as von der Leyen altered other portfolio names

Last-minute change sees ‘research’ reinstated in job title of R&D commissioner

but left Innovation and Youth as it was. The decision came about as late as it possibly could have, on the same day as the European Parliament formally approved the new commissioners, sealing their job titles for the next five years. The new commission will take office on Sunday, 1 December. The day before the vote, the Horizon Europe rapporteurs Christian Ehler and Dan Nica sent the incoming president a letter urging her – not for the first time – to add the word ‘research’ to Gabriel’s job title. “The balance between research and innovation will ensure the success of Horizon Europe,” Ehler said, reacting to news of the change. His comment highlights concerns that funding for basic science was taking a back seat to more policy-driven technological innovation. He also welcomed the addition of education and culture, calling them “the basic building blocks of European society.” Ehler and von der Leyen are both members of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in Germany. Gabriel’s was not the only fought-over job title. Greece’s new commissioner, former commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas, who is to be responsible for migration and culture, was originally to be given the title, ‘Vice President for protecting our European way of life’. But some MEPs on the left claimed this was a concession to the far-right. By way of compromise, von der Leyen swapped “protecting” for “promoting” earlier this month.

Men are funnier than women study claims Scientists claim that men are funnier than women — but female comedians brand study ‘f***ing ignorant’. Men are funnier than women, researchers have claimed. They looked at the results of various studies in which people were asked to rate men and women’s humour - without knowing their sex first. Researchers found that 63% of men were funnier than the average woman. The study looked at normal people rather than professional comedians, but Marina Bye, one half of the comedy duo Siblings, says the study feels “unnecessary”. “With comedy that’s the last thing you want,” she told jounalists. She worries it could put women off getting into comedy. Researchers from Aberystwyth University and the University of North Carolina analysed 28 studies which looked at how funny around 5,000 people were. They wanted to see whether the stereotype that men are funnier than women was true. Writing in Psychology Today, lead researcher Dr Gil Greengross said: “This stereotype is shared by both men and women - but of course, just because it exists does not mean it is true.”

Stand-up comedian Eleanor Morton also dismissed the research. ‘It’s just another boring “study” that claims women don’t NEED to be funny to find a mate so we’re not. Nothing new,’ she stated. ‘I actually think it’s more likely and more interesting that many men actively seek out partners they don’t think are funny because mummy told them they were the funniest little boy in the world and their ego couldn’t stand being proved wrong.’ ‘There’s a difference between being good at writing jokes (a skill anyone can LEARN) and being funny (some people are, some people aren’t),’ added Danish comedian Sofie Hagen. ‘There are amazing joke-writers that aren’t that funny and funny people who couldn’t write a joke.’ The full findings of the study were published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

In many of the studies they looked at, men and women were asked to write a funny caption to accompany a cartoon - and then independent judges rated their funniness without knowing their gender. Dr Gil said the results found that “to the best of our knowledge, on average, men appear to have higher humour production ability than women”.

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Climate change: ‘Bleak’ outlook as carbon emissions gap grows Countries are not doing enough to keep Earth’s temperature from rising to near-catastrophic levels, a United Nations report says. A new United Nations report paints a bleak picture: The commitments countries pledged to limit the climate crisis are nowhere near enough to stave off record-high temperatures. Delaying change any further will make it impossible to reach desired temperature goals. The time for “rapid and transformational” change to limit global warming is now, the report says. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) 2019 Emissions Gap report calls on countries to strengthen the commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement to stall climate change. Current measures will not keep global temperature increases within the 1.5-to-2-degree Celsius range (a “safe” level to which temperatures can rise and not cause devastation, though 1.5 degrees is preferable), according to the report issued Tuesday. Greenhouse gases reached a record high in 2018 with no sign of peaking, according to a World Meteorological Organization report released Monday. Carbon dioxide levels reached 407.8 parts per million, a unit used to measure the level of a contaminant in the air. The impression that time is running short is reinforced by the report - and UN negotiators gearing up to meet in Madrid in December at COP25 are feeling the pressure to increase their ambitions on carbon. “This is a new and stark reminder by the Unep that we cannot delay climate action any longer,” said Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for the ecological transition.”We need it at every level, by every national and subnational government, and by the rest of the economic and civil society actors. We urgently need to align with the Paris Agreement objectives and elevate climate ambition. “It would be incomprehensible if countries who are committed to the United Nations system and multilateralism did not acknowledge that part of this commitment requires further climate action. Otherwise, there will only be more suffering, pain, and injustice.”

Environmental recalibration will require fundamental structural changes across most of the world, the report acknowledges. It won’t be cheap. Climate policies consistent with the 1.5-degree goal could cost up to $3.6 trillion per year globally, according to the UNEP. But the cost likely outweighs the consequences of inaction. The adaptations humankind would need to make to survive in a world where temperatures have risen more than 1.5 degrees Celsius would seriously damage the global economy and reduce food security and biodiversity, according to the report. What’s more, delaying action further would force global powers to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a magnitude that current technology and resources haven’t caught up with yet, the report warns. The climate crisis will profoundly affect the health of every child alive today, report says. “Climate protection and adaptation investments will become a precondition for peace and stability,” the report’s authors write, and will require “unprecedented” efforts to transform nearly every sector of society. There’s growing demand from the public to see those changes implemented, said Anne Olhoff, the head of strategy in the UNEP’s climate planning and policy division.. The difficult part is executing change in such a way that doesn’t disrupt society completely. It’s worked for some: Olhoff offered South Africa as an example, as it’s made gradual but important progress in phasing out coal power plants. But in India, where coal leads the energy market and powers the economy, a change that drastic would result in social upheaval. “If we want to be serious about limiting global warming, we need to act now and we need to take it seriously,” she said.

EU Research

Didier Queloz this years winner of the Nobel prize in Physics has urged scientists to think outside the box for the future of scientific research.

Professor Didier Queloz

“Blue Sky thinking must be humanity’s focus” says Nobel prize winner

Blue sky research is science where practical applications don’t readily present themselves. Didier Queloz has warned that too much scientific research is currently focused on areas that only bear practical uses. ‘I’m very worried right now that there’s a lack of awareness of how blue sky research has changed our society,’ Professor Queloz told reporters. Queloz adds: ‘There is at least one Nobel Prize result that’s led to mobile phones: imaging work [for screens], telling you where you are with GPS technology, downloading images.’

has become a great lab to explore where we are and where we sit. ‘It’s part of the very profound questions that as human beings we keep asking looking at nature and the sky.’ But, as Professor Queloz points out, many technologies that we take for granted today came about from earlier research without clear practical uses. ‘I’m a bit worried right now on this kind of emphasis of asking for impact, asking for direct returns,’ says Queloz. He also points to restrictions in funding rules as a barrier to advancements in fields such as the search for extraterrestrial life.

Didier Queloz shared the Nobel Prize in physics for his part in discovering the first planet to exist in a star system outside our own. Since Professor Queloz’ discovery in 1995, researchers have gone on to discover thousands of exoplanets, opening a vast new field of scientific research. ‘I think we are now in a situation which we can call the golden age of astrophysics,’ Professor Queloz told Metro.co.uk. ‘If you look in just the last five years, there have been two Nobel Prizes dealing with astrophysics results.’ ‘Astrophysics

‘We are making a new field of research called looking for life, but it will need a new kind of funding awareness combining earth science, chemistry and astrophysics together.’ Without these sorts of collaborations and a push for outside the box thinking, Queloz says, we might hit roadblocks in scientific progress. ‘Science is about gambling, vision, and trying to push the boundaries,’ says Queloz. ‘You don’t push the boundaries if you don’t have vision. You don’t fly to the moon if you try to improve the steam engine.’

Scientists raise ‘deep’ concerns over Brazilian President’s management of the Amazon rainforest Experts blame Bolsonaro for surge in deforestation and warn of worse to come. The highest rate of destruction of the Brazilian Amazon in over a decade is likely to worsen through the term of President Jair Bolsonaro if effective measures to halt deforestation don’t come into force, experts warn. Between August 2018 and July 2019, a combined area of 9,762 square kilometers (3,769 square miles) of primary forest, roughly the size of Hawaii’s Big Island, was razed, according to data disclosed by the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE) in November. Experts stated that the 30 percent surge of forest loss over the past year could be even higher for the coming months amid lack of enforcement and large cleared areas preceding the massive fires of August and September 2019. “We are now in the new deforestation season which started in August 2019. In the first months of the new season, we are seeing even more deforestation than in the same period of the last season,” Carlos Souza Jr., a senior researcher at Imazon, a conservation nonprofit, told journalists. “If the federal government continues in the same way, there will be even more deforestation in this current season.”

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The damaging actions of the current government have been examined both by academics and the media. Some of these actions include weakening Brazil’s forest codes and environmental agencies, reducing protected areas, approving dangerous agrochemicals, overlooking and pardoning deforestation offenses, and denying climate change. “What’s so disheartening about Bolsonaro is that he’s tearing apart laws and environmental safeguards that have taken many years to create,” said William Laurance, a tropical ecologist at Australia’s James Cook University. “The damage Bolsonaro is doing will last long beyond his tenure as president, as the demons he’s releasing are notoriously hard to control.” The Brazilian Ministry of Environment did not reply to requests for comment.

Machine intelligent state-of-the-art medical image analysis Medical imaging plays an important role in modern medicine, helping doctors to diagnose diseases and monitor their development, yet detecting subtle signs of early disease in medical scans can be challenging even for expert radiologists. Researchers in the MIRA project are using machine intelligence to develop algorithms that will enhance the clinical workflow, as Dr Ben Glocker explains. The volume of medical images produced

The ability to discover groups of subjects and identify characteristics that may lead to similar health issues could allow medical staff to probe deeper into the major factors behind population diseases. A key challenge here is developing algorithms that can meaningfully combine imaging and non-imaging information. “There’s a lot of interest on our side in how we can combine these different data sets,” says Dr Glocker. Another major priority is ensuring that machine learning methods are sufficiently robust to deal with data from different sources. “It may be that the type of data changes. Maybe the data was acquired in a different way, with a different scanner,” explains Dr Glocker. “If you have an algorithm that can detect certain types of brain lesions, will it still work when you deploy it in a new setting with a new scanner and new algorithm? Or maybe a different patient population?”

in hospitals has increased significantly over recent years, yet the number of staff trained to analyse and interpret these images has not kept pace. With healthcare organisations looking to both diagnose patients more rapidly and reduce costs, technology has an important role to play in medical image analysis, a topic at the heart of the MIRA project. “We are essentially trying to extract and quantify information in medical images, that can then be used to inform clinical decisions,” explains Dr Ben Glocker, the project’s Principal Investigator. The aim here is to develop algorithms to analyse medical scans in a more objective way, essentially turning images into clinically useful information. “A lot of our work is about predictive modelling, so basically building models that can make predictions for new data by learning from previous examples,” continues Dr Glocker. “We’re also looking at diagnosis; for instance, can we classify which tumours are aggressive and which are benign?”

Trustworthy models

Machine learning This work is based on using the power of machine learning. Dr Glocker and his colleagues in the project, including research assistants, PhD students and post-docs, are making extensive use of publicly available data, such as 30,000 Computed Tomography (CT) images, which have been annotated by clinical experts. “We use that as training data for our algorithms, which then go through all these examples and try to identify patterns of disease. So what can we look for in a scan that distinguishes a lesion from the normal anatomical appearance?” he outlines. It can be difficult to detect lesions in 3D CT images, as they are often very small, so the project’s work could have a significant impact. “We aim to build systems that can automatically find very subtle signs of disease at very high levels of accuracy across the whole body,” says Dr Glocker. “We try to help doctors by automatically highlighting suspicious regions, where it might be worth taking a closer look.” A further dimension of the project’s work centres around the use of unsupervised

A machine learning algorithm is able to recognise individual organs in a whole-body MRI scan providing a detailed patient-specific anatomical map.

representation learning, where the training data has not been labelled. This approach can be used to discover whether there are specific groups within a wider population that share similar characteristics, which Dr Glocker says may be important in understanding the causes of certain diseases. “What factors are linked to certain developments?” he asks. By examining data from the UK Biobank Imaging Study, researchers in the project hope to help create a fuller picture. “This is an interesting dataset. There’s comprehensive imaging data gathered from random members of the population, including brain, abdominal and cardiac imaging,” outlines Dr Glocker. “Those people also report about their lifestyle, health and demographics. They are asked to answer questionnaires, for example whether they smoke, do sports or if they work nightshifts and their education level.”

This is central to building trustworthy and robust computational models. The technology must be able to still produce reliable results when circumstances change, for example if a hospital acquires a new scanner, a topic that Dr Glocker and his team are addressing. “We can take a prediction, and we can see if that prediction itself makes sense, such that it would allow us to explain the data for which we have the true answer,” he outlines. Researchers in the project have developed a concept called reverse classification accuracy, which acts as an effective quality control mechanism. “We essentially go back to our training data and ask; ‘if we take predictions from new data sets, and we look back at our training data, how well do these new predictions explain our training examples?’” explains Dr Glocker. “If we can explain the training data effectively, then the hypothesis is that the predictions are of good quality.” A reliable set of computational tools could be invaluable in the clinic, giving medical staff deeper insights into the nature of an individual case and its likely progression. Within the project, collaborations have been

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MIRA Next Generation Machine Intelligence for Medical Image Representation and Analysis Project Objectives

Project MIRA is aiming to redefine the state-of-the-art in medical image analysis by developing a new generation of machine intelligence using powerful techniques of representation learning. An overarching objective is to harvest information from population data to construct the most advanced statistical models of anatomy. This will provide insights into complex diseases, and enables a novel approach to abnormality detection that aims to automatically find subtle signs of pathology in medical scans.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 757173, project MIRA, ERC-2017-STG). Left: An algorithm trained to automatically segment brain lesions matching the performance of a human expert. Right: Another algorithm has learned to spot subtle signs of disease and flags up suspicious regions to the physician.

established with radiology departments, with researchers aiming to develop technologies that will support the clinical workflow. “Clinicians would look at a CT scan, and we would try to enhance that by flagging up things that we find suspicious, where they might want to take a second look,” outlines Dr Glocker. These technologies can be used in different ways, sometimes playing a complementary role to human staff, while in other circumstances they might replace them entirely. “A machine could run in the

this data. There’s a lot of potential to use new technology in healthcare, and not just in adding technology to existing workflows, but also new types of medical diagnostics based on imaging” he stresses. At this stage, Dr Glocker is focused more on helping improve diagnosis however. “There is known to be a high risk of human error with certain pathologies, where we know that radiologists might miss certain types of lesions,” he says. “If we can improve on that, then that will be an important step forward.”

A lot of our work is about predictive modelling, so basically building models that can make predictions for new data by learning from previous examples. We’re also looking at diagnosis, for instance can we classify which tumours are aggressive and which are benign? background and provide a safety net, making sure that the human expert has not missed anything. If they both agree then we can have a higher degree of confidence that the decision is correct,” says Dr Glocker. The role of technology in healthcare is evolving, as new methods and techniques are developed which promise to enhance the clinical workflow and improve efficiency. While technology is not always the answer to every problem in healthcare, Dr Glocker believes it does have an important role to play in medical image analysis. “The number of images that we get from each patient and the resolution are increasing, and you do need technology to get the most out of

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Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Dr. Ben Glocker Reader in Machine Learning for Imaging Imperial College London, Department of Computing 180 Queen’s Gate, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom T: +44 20 7594 8334 E: b.glocker@imperial.ac.uk W: http://project-mira.eu W: www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~bglocker TW: @GlockerBen Qi Dou, Daniel C. Castro, Konstantinos Kamnitsas, Ben Glocker / Domain Generalization via ModelAgnostic Learning of Semantic Features / Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), Vancouver, Canada, 2019 Martin Zlocha, Qi Dou, Ben Glocker/ Improving RetinaNet for CT Lesion Detection with Dense Masks from Weak RECIST Labels/ International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2019

Dr Ben Glocker

Dr Ben Glocker is Reader (eq. Associate Professor) in Machine Learning for Imaging coleading the Biomedical Image Analysis Group at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London. He holds a PhD from TU Munich and was a post-doc at Microsoft and a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. His research is at the intersection of medical image analysis and artificial intelligence aiming to build computational tools for improving imagebased detection and diagnosis of disease.

Machine learning powered image analysis enables accurate quantification of disease as here shown for a patient suffering from a traumatic brain injury providing important information for clinical decision making.

Illustration of the atomic structure of the capsid of HIV-1 (PDB ID: 3J3Q) using the VTX visualization software.

Mapping the future of drug design Maps help us find our way around an area, assess the local topology and identify places of interest, and a similar level of detail on protein surfaces could be very beneficial in drug design and theoretical biology. We spoke to Professor Matthieu Montes about the work of the VIDOCK project in developing new representations of molecular objects. A physical map

provides detailed information on the topology and geographical features of a region, helping visitors to find their way around and identify locations of interest. A comparable level of detail on the shape and form of protein surfaces would be invaluable in drug design and development, a topic central to the work of the VIDOCK project. “The idea is to work on the representation of molecular objects, proteins in particular. We want to represent the shape of proteins, and then to characterise the function by comparing the shapes,” explains Professor Matthieu Montes, the project’s Principal Investigator. The aim here is to characterise the topology of a molecule, which then opens up the possibility of identifying similarities between proteins, or molecular objects in general. “The idea is to characterise the shape of molecules, in order to identify potential partners,” continues Professor Montes.

2-D Conformal maps This work involves effectively transforming 3-dimensional representations of proteins into 2-dimensional maps, which will complement the information that is already available. A lot of attention in the project

comparison of protein shapes. “We focus on the 2-d description of the shape, although there are also 3-d descriptors that we use. We describe the shape of a protein as a combination of different surface features,” continues Professor Montes.

The idea is to work on the representation of molecular objects, proteins in particular. We want to represent the shape of proteins, and then to characterise the function by comparing the shapes. is focused in particular on local shape comparison, yet researchers currently lack a clear basis on which to classify proteins in this way. “There are classifications of proteins, but not shape-based classification of proteins,” explains Professor Montes. It is necessary to first establish a benchmark, which then provides a reference point for the subsequent

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is an invaluable resource in this respect, providing detailed information on the shapes and structure of different proteins. From this type of information, Professor Montes and his colleagues can then derive different descriptors. “For example, in the project we are using a descriptor based on local convexity”

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Illustration of the 3rd person navigation mode in UDock within the IL-6/IL-6R/gp130 complex (PDB ID: 1P9M). UDock is freely available at http://udock.fr

want to annotate biological networks, it could be interesting to have methods that can be applied in a high-throughput manner,” he continues. “Which proteins interact with each other in a cell?”

Udock software

he outlines. The information that has been gathered about the surface of a protein is projected onto a unique sphere, which acts as a point of comparison. “We have information about the coordinates on the surface, and we project each point of the surface onto the unique sphere,” says Professor Montes. “This sphere is then projected onto a plan, similar to the process of producing a cartographical map.” Researchers aim to develop a prototype conformal mapping tool which provides accurate, reliable information on the topology of a protein. This information will prove complementary to that provided by existing 3-D representations of protein surfaces. “The idea is to enable high-throughput comparison of molecular changes,” explains Professor Montes. This work holds clear relevance to drug design and development, potentially enabling researchers to identify molecules with therapeutic potential significantly quicker than is currently possible, while Professor Montes says it could also be applied in theoretical biology. “For example, if you

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A second aspect of the project’s work involves the development of a piece of software called Udock to simulate protein docking. One of the applications researchers are focusing on is using Udock for molecular dynamics simulations; with current methods, it’s necessary to prepare a simulation beforehand. “Before launching a simulation, you have to prepare the geometry of the initial configuration of your system. Each component of the simulation – such as the proteins and the membrane – needs to be prepared, then they are put together,” explains Professor Montes. The focus in the project is on developing a more accessible, easy to use system, that will enable researchers to accurately and conveniently simulate protein

docking. “With Udock we focused on ease of use, and simplifying the interface as far as possible,” says Professor Montes. This approach is very much in line with the needs of researchers. While experimental biologists and experimental chemists hold deep expertise in their own field, Professor Montes says they may not necessarily be software experts. “People from experimental sciences often need to generate illustrations of their systems, or to do certain calculations. Sometimes they cannot perform these experiments, as the tools available are not usable for non-experts,” he explains. Ensuring that the software is accessible and easy to use is a correspondingly high priority, while more experienced users will also benefit from a specialised interface and better designed tools. “We aim to simplify the interface, to enable users to focus on the specific task they have to perform. Everything in the interface is dedicated to the task that they are performing,” continues Professor Montes.

Illustration of UDock classic mode with the Barnase/Barstar complex (PDB ID: 1BRS). UDock is freely available at http://udock.fr

VIDOCK 2D Conformal mapping of protein surfaces: applications to VIsualization and DOCKing software

Project Objectives

The goals of structural biology include developing a comprehensive understanding of the molecular shapes and forms embraced by biological macromolecules and extending this knowledge to understand how different molecular architectures are used to perform the chemical reactions that are central to life. Since the first resolution of protein structures by X-ray crystallography and NMR, structural biology seeks to provide this picture of biological phenomena at the molecular and atomic level by analyzing 3D structures. In the ViDOCK project, we develop new representations of protein surfaces that will open avenues for the development of 1. highthroughput protein shape-comparison methods and 2. Interactive visualization and simulation methods such as molecular docking.

Project Funding

This work is funded by the European Research Council Executive Agency under the research grant number #640283

Project Collaborators

• ILJ Team, Laboratoire CEDRIC, EA4629, CNAM • M2Disco Team, LIRIS, UMR 5205 CNRS/ INSA Lyon/Université de Lyon • XLIM, UMR 7252 CNRS, Université de Limoges • LCT, Sorbonne Université

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Professor Matthieu Montes Laboratoire GBCM, EA7528 Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers 2 rue Conté, 75003 Paris, France T: +33140272809 E: matthieu.montes@cnam.fr W: http://vidock.eu

Professor Matthieu Montes

Matthieu Montes is Professor of bioinformatics and head of the molecular modelling and drug design team at Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. His research interests include molecular modelling, drug discovery and design, interactive simulation methods and computational geometry.

Researchers are also working on interfacing Udock with simulation software, which could help in the representation of bigger systems. This is currently a major bottleneck for researchers working on molecular dynamics simulations, so the aim again is to develop a more useable way of generating the scenes for these larger systems. “The goal is to overcome the limits of the currently available visualisation software,” explains Professor Montes. The nature of this work crosses disciplinary boundaries, and close collaborations have been established with researchers in complementary disciplines to explore further possibilities. “We have established a collaboration with people working in computer graphics, to generate a new graphics engine, which will allow us to visualise very big systems,” says Professor Montes.

Sonification A further aspect of the project’s work involves the representation of data through sound, a technique called sonification. The idea itself is very simple, says Professor Montes. “You have a sound feedback that gives you information about a particular problem. For example, with cars we have sound feedback that tells you how close you are to an object when you are parking,” he explains. The shape of a protein could potentially be represented in a similar way with sound, a topic researchers are investigating in the project, alongside looking at how to distinguish between different shapes using sound. “We could modulate a rhythm for example. The idea is to make it noticeable and informative,” explains Professor Montes. The project as a whole is very much interdisciplinary in scope, and collaboration and knowledge-sharing has been a central feature. This has helped to lay the foundations for further research, says Professor Montes. “Links

have been established between structural biologists, drug designers, and people working in computer graphics. We’ve also been working with computer scientists and applying ideas from robotics and computer vision,” he outlines. One major outcome from the project has been to bring researchers in the robotics and applied mathematics fields together with structural biologists, work which has already yielded exciting results. “We published the first version of the global shape comparison prototype at a recent computer science conference,” continues Professor Montes. This work forms part of a long history of pioneering French research and technical innovation, the story of which is highlighted at the Musée des arts et métiers at CNAM, where Professor Montes is based. His own work is featured at the museum, which he hopes will help heighten awareness of his group’s research. “There are displays of new technologies from earlier periods of history, such as early computers and planes. Udock will be displayed alongside other prototypes and scientific tools,” says Professor Montes. It will also be displayed in an exhibition of cartographic tools at the museum. “This includes both celestial and terrestrial globes. Alongside these globes, there will be a dedicated version of Udock, that allows interactive and real-time projection of a protein surface” explains Professor Montes. The idea here is to draw a parallel between celestial objects and microscopic objects, such as proteins, as the techniques involved in projecting them are the same. By making scientific research more accessible to the wider public, Professor Montes hopes the feature at the museum will help stimulate greater interest in science. “There will be a temporary screen where people can select a protein and project it in real-time. They will then be able to navigate on the map”, he outlines.

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Simulations offer a “virtual microscope” for drug design Computer simulations play an increasingly important role in drug design, with new techniques enabling researchers to perform highly accurate calculations. Professor Vittorio Limongelli, together with his team at the Limongelli Research Group, develops advanced computational protocols to study pharmacologically relevant systems. The significant improvement

of simulation methods in parallel with increasing computing power is opening up exciting new avenues of investigation in biomedicine, allowing researchers to analyse molecular mechanisms in greater depth than previously possible. Based at the Institute of Computational Science (ICS) of Universitá della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Professor Vittorio Limongelli is both developing and applying new methods for investigating molecular interactions, work which holds wider relevance to the pharmaceutical sector. “One pillar of my research group is the development of funnel-metadynamics, which is an important new methodology in computational pharmacology, as it allows us to identify new binding modes between ligands, proteins and DNA. It also provides an accurate estimate of the inter-molecular interaction strength through the calculation of the ligand binding free energy,” he outlines. A second major pillar of Professor Limongelli’s research is the development and application of coarse-grained metadynamics. “This is a new approach through which we are able to observe the formation of protein dimers and oligomers in cell membrane models, as in a virtual microscope,” he says.

Molecular interactions These methods are central to Professor Limongelli’s work in a research project dedicated to investigating the molecular interaction between a sheltering complex protein called TPP1 and the telomerase enzyme (TERT), which is instrumental to the design of new anti-cancer drugs. The binary interaction between TPP1 and TERT plays a key role in the telomere maintenance mechanism, the process which protects the

ends of the chromosome from degradation and fusion. “The telomere maintenance mechanism can be seen as the biological clock of the cell. This process is enhanced in tumor cells, therefore starving this mechanism leads to an anti-tumor effect,” explains Professor Limongelli. Normally telomeres gradually shorten over time, yet in cancer cells the interaction between TPP1 and TERT helps telomeres maintain the same length, an important motivating factor behind the

stage Professor Limongelli and his collaborator Simone Aureli are focusing on identifying lead compounds and considering questions around their potency, selectivity and toxicity. “We can identify ligands that are able to disrupt mechanisms in the cancer cell lines, but we want to be sure that the new molecules are not toxic for the healthy cells,” he continues. Alongside this work, the Limongelli Research Group is also working to develop the first tridimensional

One pillar of my research group is the development of funnel-metadynamics, which is an important new methodology in computational pharmacology. project’s work. “The primary goal of this project is to discover the first compounds able to bind TPP1 and to disrupt its interaction with TERT. The novel compounds are designed to interfere with the telomere maintenance process and limit the number of cell cycles that a cancer cell can undergo. If successful, this study will lead to a new generation of anti-cancer agents,” continues Professor Limongelli. In fact, no molecules that bind to TPP1 on the TEL patch – the region of TPP1 which TERT binds to – have yet been identified, so Professor Limongelli and his team are investigating a completely new target. “First we have used high-throughput screening protocols and our inhouse technology to identify in-silico potential ligands, then we test them on different cancer cell lines using tools that allow us to assess their activity on telomers,” he outlines. This research holds important implications in terms of the development of anti-cancer drugs, and the long-term goal is to bring the most promising ligands towards applications. This is not an immediate prospect however, and at this

model of the binding complex formed by TPP1 and TERT, which will provide solid foundations for further structure-based drug design. “Once we have achieved that, we can proceed with a rational understanding of some diseases involving mutated versions of these proteins, and consequently develop patient-tailored therapies,” says Professor Limongelli. Extensive computer simulations investigate TPP1-TERT protein-protein interaction Prof. Dr. Vittorio Limongelli USI Lugano T: +41 58 666 4293 E: vittorio.limongelli@usi.ch : https://www.facebook.com/LimResGrp/ : https://twitter.com/limresgrp W: https://sites.google.com/site/ vittoriolimongelli/home W: https://www.ics.usi.ch/index. php/group-limongelli

Vittorio Limongelli is professor in Computational Biology and Pharmacology at the faculty of Biomedical Sciences of Università della Svizzera italiana USI Lugano (Switzerland) and University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy). He is expert in advanced molecular simulations on pharmaceutically relevant targets and his research group develops system-tailored drug design protocols.

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Studying stem cells for the future of regenerative medicine

One of the most crucial attributes of stem cells is their capacity to self-renew, in other words their ability to maintain the same identity even after undergoing cell division. Professor David Suter tells us about his work in investigating the capacity of embryonic stem cells to self-renew, which could in future help open up new possibilities in regenerative medicine. The process of

cell division has a considerable influence on gene expression, which plays a major role in determining the identity of a cell, topics central to Professor David Suter’s research agenda. As the head of a biology laboratory at EPFL in Lausanne, Professor Suter is particularly interested in the capacity of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to self-renew. “This means that they can divide and maintain the same identity, the same phenotype. We use ESCs as a model system to investigate this property of selfrenewal, which is very important for all types of stem cells,” he outlines. Both ESCs and induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) can be transformed into virtually any cell type of the body, so offer great potential in terms of regenerative medicine, a major motivating factor behind Professor Suter’s research. “In principle, these cells can renew themselves to replace those that are lost in some diseases,” he explains.

Self-renewal A further important motivation behind this research is a fundamental interest in the

underlying mechanisms behind self-renewal and the nature of the process. Professor Suter is particularly interested in what occurs in cells during and after mitosis, the point in the cell cycle where chromosomes separate. “During mitosis chromosomes are condensed and genes are essentially shut off. When cells exit mitosis, they need to reactivate all the correct genes to maintain their identity. If they don’t reactivate the right genes, then the cell identity will change,” he explains. When a cell exits mitosis, a first wave of gene expression to turn on the genes specific to that cell identity occurs. “The whole molecular architecture that allows genes to be directly expressed is basically destroyed during mitosis. This architecture effectively needs to be reconstructed when a cell exits mitosis,” says Professor Suter. There are many open questions around this process, now Professor Suter and his colleagues aim to build a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms. This work involves analysing both single cells and larger populations, although one of the main strengths of Professor Suter’s lab is in

looking at single cells, mainly using live-cell imaging. “We develop tools to quantitatively study gene expression in living cells. So we can follow – in real time – the expression of messenger RNA or proteins. We can quantify these to understand how this actually affects stem cells and to track their phenotypic state in real time,” he explains. Researchers in the group are studying ESCs from mice. “These cells are taken from the embryo at the blastocyst stage,” says Professor Suter. “Once we have taken these cells, we maintain them in a petri dish, and we can then make them divide as much as desired.” These cells can be separated in different phases of the cell cycle through the use of flow cytometry, then different methods can be applied to look at them in greater depth. Researchers are investigating which are the main players in re-activating genes following the exit from mitosis to the G1 phase of the cell cycle, which is known as the Mitosis-G1 transition. “Which are the main molecules involved in re-activating genes in early G1? How are these molecules coordinated ?” outlines Professor Suter. Two pluripotency

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transcription factors – SOX2 and OCT4 – are thought to play a major role in this respect. “We believe that these are the first players that act at the Mitosis-G1 transition to activate genes in pluripotent stem cells. The first thing they need to do is to de-condense DNA that is condensed during mitosis, but in the right places,” says Professor Suter. “This enables the re-activation of the sequences controlling the activity of genes which are important in stem cell self-renewal.”

OCT4 and SOX2 A variety of techniques are being applied in research, including a method called ChIPSeq, which enables researchers to map where OCT4 and SOX2 bind to the genome. This represents an important step towards the reactivation of gene transcription. “Our current thinking is that after mitosis, SOX2 and OCT4 bind first to genes involved in selfrenewal. Then they also need other factors

between different parts of these long strings. These contacts are very important for the regulation of gene expression, so they have to be re-established. Once they have been reestablished, then other factors can also come in.” While the project is mainly focused on ESCs at this stage, Professor Suter hopes that this research will hold broader relevance to different types of stem cells. “Once we’ve identified all the players, and the right sequence of events, we hope that this is going to be applicable to different kinds of stem cells,” he continues. This research represents an important step towards the long-term goal of producing cells directly for regenerative medicine, which has generated a lot of interest as a means of treating conditions like Parkinson’s disease or heart infarction. However, while this is an exciting prospect, Professor Suter says that it is essential to build a deeper understanding of

We develop tools to quantitatively study gene expression in living cells. So we can follow – in real time – the expression of messenger RNA or proteins. to help them to reactivate transcription. So we think there’s a whole series of molecules that act one after the other in a coordinated manner to allow stem cell self-renewal,” says Professor Suter. Researchers are also using a technique called ATAC-seq to identify where decondensation happens in the whole genome. “We use this method to determine how OCT4 binds to DNA and opens chromatin during mitotic exit, and to investigate any other changes. We’ve found that there are many places essential for stem cell self-renewal that do not recover their accessibility after mitosis in the absence of OCT4,” continues Professor Suter. Furthermore; “DNA in the nucleus is not randomly organised, there are contacts

how cells self-renew. “We want to understand how cells control their identity through cell division. As long as we don’t understand this, it’s going to be difficult to control,” he stresses. There is still much to learn in this respect, and the events around the Mitosis-G1 transition will remain an important part of Professor Suter’s research agenda over the coming years. Changes in chromatin accessibility as a function of OCT4 level decrease over time using inducible OCT4 degradation, at a genomic location where OCT4 binds (OCT4 ChIP).

Changes in chromatin accessibility of different gene regulatory sequences upon loss of OCT4 at the Mitosis-G1 transition (red lines). Some regions of the genome are strongly dependent on the presence of OCT4 upon mitotic exit (Cluster 1, left), while other regions are independent of OCT4 (Cluster 4, right). Regions dependent on OCT4 are enriched in elements regulating stem cell selfrenewal. EG1: early G1 phase; LG1: late G1 phase; S: S phase; SG2: end of S phase and G2 phase.

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Mechanisms of cell-cycle dependent cell fate regulation by OCT4 Project Objectives

The objectives of the laboratory are; i) To develop and apply quantitative, timeresolved approaches to gene expression and gene regulation, with a strong focus on single cell live microscopy; ii) To apply these methods to address central questions in gene expression regulation and stem cell biology.

Project Funding

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Professor David Suter SNSF and Tenure Track Assistant Professor Institute of Bioengineering Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Switzerland T: +41 21 693 96 31 E: david.suter@epfl.ch W: http://p3.snf.ch/project-179068 Phillips NE*, Mandic A*, Omidi S, Naef F†, Suter DM†. Memory and relatedness of transcriptional activity in mammalian cell lineages. *,†Equal contribution. Nature Communications 2019 March 14. Raccaud M, Alber AB, Friman ET, Agarwal H, Deluz C, Kuhn T, Gebhardt JCM, Suter DM. Mitotic chromosome binding predicts transcription factor properties in interphase. Nature Communications 2019 Jan 30. Alber AB*, Paquet ER*, Biserni M, Naef F, Suter DM. Single Live Cell Monitoring of Protein Turnover Reveals Intercellular Variability and Cell-Cycle Dependence of Degradation Rates. Molecular Cell 2018 Aug 23. Deluz C*, Friman ET*, Strebinger D*, Benke A, Raccaud M, Callegari A, Leleu M, Manley S, Suter DM. A role for mitotic bookmarking of SOX2 in pluripotency and differentiation. Genes & Development 2016 Dec 5. Friman ET, Deluz C, Meireles-Filho A, Govindan A, Gardeux V, Deplancke B, Suter DM. Dynamic regulation of chromatin accessibility by pluripotency transcription factors across the cell cycle. bioRxiv 2019. doi:10.1101/698571.

Professor David Suter

Professor David Suter studied medicine at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where he obtained a MD/PhD in the field of stem cell biology. After gaining postdoctoral experience in single cell and single molecule analysis of gene expression, he established his laboratory at the Bioengineering Institute of EPFL in 2013.

Guided by Breath Breath is an important indicator of an individual’s health, now researchers are looking to use it as a means of both diagnosing disease and optimizing drug dosage. This could represent an important step towards personalised medicine, enabling medical staff to monitor the effects of drugs over time and tailor treatment more precisely to individual needs, as Professor Pablo Sinues explains. The problem: narrow therapeutic window; highly individual-specific response

Breath analysis

Proposed solution: therapeutic drug monitoring guided by real-time breath analysis

Therapeutic window

Ineffective dose

Time

Drug breath concentration

Drug serum concentration

Toxic dose

Dose decreased

m/z All patients in therapeutic range

Dose increased Time

A lot of attention in research is devoted

Breath Analysis

to enabling rapid diagnosis and more tailored treatment, part of the wider shift towards personalised medicine. Analysis of an individual patient’s breath could be an important diagnostic tool, as well as in assessing the correct drug dosage for treatment, topics that Professor Pablo Sinues is addressing in two new projects supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). “We have two main research lines in my lab. One is dedicated to trying to detect medication in breath, and to trying to correlate these breath values with the systemic concentrations of these drugs. The second main research topic is the diagnosis of pneumonia,” he explains. Secondary Electrospray Ionization (SESI) technique, which is used together with high resolution mass spectrometers, plays a central role in this work. “We can detect a wide range of metabolites in exhaled breath, providing a comprehensive, noninvasive overview of relevant biochemical activity taking place in our bodies. We can do this in real time, enabling rapid patient assessment,” continues Professor Sinues.

This opens up the possibility of using breath analysis to rapidly identify which specific pathogen causes pneumonia, which would be a significantly more efficient approach than current methods. The hypothesis behind this work is that the pathogens which infect the respiratory system produce their own suite of metabolic end-products, which are not normally present (or are present at relatively low levels) in healthy people. “There are clear indications suggesting that microbes produce ‘exotic’ metabolites different to what we produce naturally,” outlines Professor Sinues. There is a high level of heterogeneity in breath profiles among the wider population, so researchers are analysing large volumes of data to identify the markers associated with pneumonia. “We are analysing data from different sites in Switzerland, as well as from China,” says Professor Sinues. “We will make sure the data is gathered with the same procedures, then we will pool the data and extract information from high quality datasets acquired across all laboratories placed in clinical settings.” The ultimate goal here would be to relate the

presence of a particular metabolite – or group of metabolites – in the breath to a particular pathogen. Several in vitro studies have been carried out, on the basis of which researchers hope to not only help diagnose pneumonia, but also narrow down which pathogen or group of pathogens are responsible in each case. “This is important, because then it will be easier to provide the right treatment,” stresses Professor Sinues. This could bring important benefits, as currently it is quite difficult to know beforehand the responsible pathogen(s), so patients are often treated with fairly generic antibiotics, which may not be ideal. “It may not turn out to be the right choice, then this has consequences for antibiotic resistance,” points out Professor Sinues. “We are trying to build a more comprehensive picture of the characteristics of the pathogen.” This will provide the basis of a more personalised approach to treatment, while breath analysis could also play an important role in monitoring the effectiveness of interventions. If a treatment is effective, then it would be marked by the decline of certain markers in the breath. “We would expect to see these signals – associated for example to

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bacterial infection – go down after antibiotic administration, thus enabling a way to firstly diagnose, hence helping to choose the right treatment, and secondly monitor the response to this intervention” explains Professor Sinues. The goal in the project is to prove that breath analysis can be used to diagnose pnenumonia, with a view towards eventually applying this approach in the clinic, although Professor Sinues sees it more as complementary to existing methods rather than as a replacement. “I see it first of all as a very rapid screening method. My goal is not to replace current methods, it’s simply to provide complementary information,” he stresses. “Currently there are molecular methods that work very well, but have certain limitations that we may be able to overcome in a complementary fashion.”

information there and then, rather than waiting two days until this information is available.” This is particularly important with drugs that have a very narrow therapeutic range, where too high a dosage would be toxic to the patient, and too low would be ineffective. Researchers aim to generate models that will enable medical staff to automatically calculate – on the basis of a breath test – the systemic concentration of a drug, which can then be used to guide decisions about dosage. “There is a clear clinical need to look at these drugs, to optimise the dosage of these drugs for patients. It’s also important to consider clinical and toxic effects. Is this drug really working or not?” points out Professor Sinues. Several different drugs will be investigated within the project, and while Professor

We have two main research lines in my lab. One is dedicated to trying to detect medication in breath, and to trying to correlate these breath values with the systemic concentrations of these drugs. The second is the diagnosis of pneumonia. Drug Dosage A second major priority in Professor Sinues’ group is to use breath analysis to quickly and accurately assess the systemic concentration of drugs in the body, which is enormously important in determining the right dosage of medication to treat children with certain conditions, for example epilepsy and cancer. Currently, children with epilepsy have to provide quite large volumes of blood during a consultation, the results of which may not be available for several days, whereas a reliable breath test would be much quicker and more patient-friendly. “We aim to screen patients that require monitoring of the levels of therapeutic drugs,” outlines Professor Sinues. “The idea is that, in future, neurologists (in the case of epilepsy patients) will have the result on the same day as the consultation, so they can make clinical decisions on the basis of this Project Team

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Sinues does not expect it will be possible to precisely assess the concentrations of all of them from breath analysis, he is confident that this research will bring wider benefits. “We are looking into bringing this concept to the market,” he says. “A start-up company named Deep Breath Initiative was launched at the University of Basel earlier this year to accomplish this endeavour.” This work is very much in line with the wider trend towards personalised medicine, and the goal of adapting and tailoring treatment more precisely to the specific needs of individual patients. The human population is quite heterogenous and one treatment doesn’t necessarily fit all, a major motivating factor behind Professor Sinues’ work. “We aim to understand the response of patients to an intervention, to try and optimise subsequent interventions,” he outlines.

GUIDED BY BREATH Individualized Drug Dosage Guided by Breath Project Objectives

The objective in this new project is to optimize the therapeutic regimen of pediatric patients to maximize drug efficacy and minimize side effects. This will be achieved by developing a mass spectrometry-based breath test. Ultimately, this will lead to new opportunities to guide the dosage of drugs with high precision, in real-time and in a patient-friendly fashion.

Project Funding

University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) http://www.snf.ch/en/funding/careers/ eccellenza/Pages/default.aspx The two SNSF grants are: Pneumonia 320030_173168; Diagnosis of Bacterial Pneumonia by Exhaled Breath Analysis; Duration 4 years, budget 690,000 CHF. Drugs PCEGP3_181300; Individualized Drug Dosage Guided by Breath Analysis; Duration 5 years, budget 1,500,000 CHF. This is a prestigious Eccellenza grant

Project Partners

• Profs. Malcolm Kohler and Annelies Zinkernagel (University Hospital Zurich) • Prof. Alexander Möller (University Children’s Hospital Zurich) • Profs. Nicolas von der Weid, Johannes van den Anker, Urs Frey and PD Alexandre Datta (University Children’s Hospital Basel)

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Prof. Dr. Pablo Sinues, PhD Tenure Track Assistant Professor University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) Department of Biomedical Engineering University of Basel Spitalstrasse 33 | CH-4056 Basel Switzerland T: +41 61 704 29 49 E: pablo.sinues@ukbb.ch W: www.sinueslab.dbe.unibas.ch Professor Pablo Sinues

Professor Pablo Sinues holds a master’s in chemistry, and a PhD in mechanical engineering. Visiting PhD and Postdoc at Yale University in former lab of Nobel Prize awardee Prof. John B. Fenn. Habilitation in analytical chemistry at the ETH Zurich. Since 2017 Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position at the University of Basel (Department of Biomedical Engineering).

Inside the guts of fruit flies Scientists use sophisticated, systems techniques to gain deeper insights into the genetic and environmental factors that influence the development of Drosophila melanogaster. The interaction between Drosophila melanogaster and the microbiota in their gut has a major influence in this respect, a topic at the heart of Professors François Leulier’s and Bart Deplancke’s research. There is a

long history of geneticists using Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) as a model species in research, as scientists can use sophisticated techniques to probe the genetic and environmental factors that influence their development. One of these developed at Professor Bart Deplancke’s lab at EPFL in Lausanne is BRB-seq. “There’s a clear need to come up with cheaper bulk transcriptomics approaches in order to derive meaningful, quantitative data from lots of tissues from many individuals. With BRB-seq, we essentially barcode the samples very early on during the sequencing library preparation process, which reduces cost and increases throughput,” he explains.

Systems genetics of Host/Microbiota mutualism in Drosophila melanogaster - DGRPmutualism Project Coordinator, Prof Bart Deplancke EPFL Life Sciences and Engineering T: +41 21 693 18 21 E: bart.deplancke@epfl.ch W: https://deplanckelab.epfl.ch/ W: http://igfl.ens-lyon.fr/equipes/f.-leulierfunctional-genomics-of-host-intestinalbacteria-interactions

Bart Deplancke (left) is the head of the Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics at EPFL in Lausanne, where he is an Associate Professor. The central focus of the laboratory is on understanding genome organization, regulation and variation. Francois Leulier (centre) is a biologist at IGFL in Lyon, with a background in genetics. Among his major research interests is identifying the molecular basis of the beneficial effects of intestinal microbiota on animal growth. Dali Ma (right), the project’s lead scientist.

This technique is being applied in a collaborative project which brings together researchers from Prof. Deplancke’s lab and that of Prof. Leulier at the IGF in Lyon. The aim here is to investigate the interaction between microbiota species and the host fruit fly. “There are thousands of different microbiota species in the human gut, many of which we cannot cultivate. On the other hand, we can cultivate all the bacteria that we find in the fruit fly gut,” outlines Dr. Dali Ma, the project’s lead scientist. Researchers in the project are screening the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP), a set of highly in-bred fly strains. “Even though these different strains carry an enormous amount of genetic diversity, they all look very similar,” says Dr. Ma.

found that these bacteria buffer phenotypic diversity not only at the organismal level, but also at the molecular level. “The BRBseq technique allowed us to look at many transcriptomes of both these populations. We could see essentially that the one treated with the bacteria was largely less variable than the one that wasn’t,” explains Professor Deplancke. Researchers are now aiming to draw deeper insights into the mechanisms by which a species produces the same developmental phenotype, despite high levels of genetic diversity. “A paper has been published suggesting that the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is also involved,” says Dr Ma. The production of ROS was long considered to be very damaging, as it causes ageing and cellular damage, yet it

If you remove all the bacteria from fruit flies and put them on a normal, protein and carbohydrate-rich diet, then those flies grow up normally. When we put them on a restrictive diet, we start seeing a developmental divide. Robustness This is related to the idea of robustness, broadly speaking a process that ensures there is a certain phenotypic homogeneity amongst a population, even though they may have a high level of genetic diversity. The concept of cryptic genetic variants (CGV) comes into play here. “An organism is essentially neutral when it is not challenged. So a population living in normal physiological conditions with these variants does not act,” explains Dr. Ma. If the physiological conditions change then an organism needs to adapt; Dr. Ma is probing how fruit flies adapt to a nutrient-poor diet. “If you remove all the germs from fruit flies and put them on a normal, protein and carbohydraterich diet, then we find that those flies grow up normally,” she says. “However, when we put them on a restrictive diet, with little protein, we start seeing a developmental divide.” The population of germ-free Drosophila with these different diets was found to show increased variation in developmental traits, which was reduced in a population to which Lactobacillus plantarum bacteria were added back at the embryonic stage. Researchers have

has now been shown that lots of physiological and developmental processes depend on correct ROS signalling. “For example, ROS signalling helps to organise the cyto-skeleton. ROS is really a double-edged sword,” says Dr. Ma. A major challenge in this research is to build a deeper understanding of how microbiota preserve genetic diversity, while at the same time driving evolutionary change. While aware of the bigger picture, Dr. Ma plans to focus her attention on genetic mechanisms. “We want to look for things mechanistically, to see how the bacteria channels growth,” she says.

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Getting into the guts of inflammatory bowel diseases There is currently no cure for inflammatory bowel diseases, a group of conditions that includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Recent studies have shown that early, complete mucosal healing in the gut leads to improved patient prognosis, now Dr Annika Frede and her colleagues are probing deeper into the underlying mechanisms behind the process. A group of diseases which affect the gastrointestinal tract, the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) can seriously affect a patients’ quality of life, with symptoms including severe diarrhea, abdominal pain, loss of appetite and weight loss, as well as tiredness. The two main diseases under the wider umbrella of IBD are Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, and while they are distinct from each other they share some common features. “The two diseases are generally described as inflammation of the bowel, but they can involve inflammation of the whole gastro-intestinal tract, starting even from the mouth,” says Dr Annika Frede, a postdoctoral student at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “IBD is a group of chronic diseases which have acute phases, followed by periods of remission.” The majority of patients with IBD are currently treated using anti-inflammatory drugs or antibiotics, both of which are targeted at the inflammatory phase of the condition. However, clinical studies have shown that patients who experience gut mucosal healing relatively soon after the onset of IBD have a better long-term prognosis, an area of great

Cross-sections of murine colonic tissue during homeostasis (left, “healthy”) and chemically-induced inflammation (right, “inflamed). The tissue is enlarged during inflammation and shows cell infiltrates. Furthermore, the typical crypt structure as well as the layer of epithelial cells is impaired.

and leads to inflammation. When we take this chemical away the mice recover – we are trying to understand how this recovery happens,” she outlines. The wider aim is to help accelerate gut mucosal healing in the recovery phase of IBD, or to start it earlier. “We have found that in this recovery phase the population of B-cells increases markedly,” says Dr Frede.

We feed the mice a chemical which disrupts the epithelial barrier, and leads to inflammation. When we take this chemical away the mice recover. interest to Dr Frede. “Mucosal healing is generally defined as the resolving of ulcers that occur in the gut,” she explains. “In IBD the intestinal epithelium – a layer of cells which protects the interior of the body from whatever travels through the gastro-intestinal tract – is disrupted, leading to inflammation. Through gut mucosal healing, this epithelial layer can be effectively closed again.”

Gut mucosal healing This could hold important implications in terms of IBD treatment, yet the focus at this stage in Dr Frede’s research is more on the underlying mechanisms behind gut mucosal healing. Many cell types are involved in gut mucosal healing, now Dr Frede and her colleagues are using a chemical induced mouse model of colitis to investigate the role of these different cells. “We feed the mice a chemical which disrupts the epithelial barrier,

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Researchers are investigating several of the different cell types involved in gut mucosal healing, including B-cells. These B-cells have two main functions, namely the secretion of antibodies and the activation of certain other cells, yet there are a lot of different B-cell subgroups which are yet to be fully described, another important dimension of Dr Frede’s research. “We are investigating whether there is one specific group of B-cells which helps in tissue repair,” she outlines. The primary focus in this research is IBD, yet it could also hold wider relevance to tissue repair in other parts of the body. “It could help us to understand tissue repair in other mucosal sites, the lung for instance,” says Dr Frede. “At the moment, our research is about building a deeper understanding of gut mucosal healing.” This mainly involves the use of mouse models at this stage, yet Dr Frede is keen to also analyse samples of human tissue in future, from

which wider conclusions can then be drawn. “We want to see if what we find in mice holds true in humans,” she says. While this research is currently exploratory in nature, the longerterm objective is to translate it into improved treatment of IBD. “We want to use our research to help design therapies,” continues Dr Frede. The role of antigen presenting cells in gut mucosal healing following inflammation Eduardo Villablanca (Principal Investigator) Annika Frede Ph.D., Department of Medicine Solna, Karolinska Institutet, Villablanca lab, Immunology and Allergy Division 17176 Stockholm Karolinska vägen L8:03 T: +46 738028510 E: annika.frede@ki.se W: ki.se W: https://ki.se/en/meds/ research-group-eduardovillablanca-immunologyand-allergy Dr. Annika Frede is a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Eduardo Villablanca at the Karolinska Institute since 2017. She focusses her research on understanding the aetiology of inflammatory bowel disease as well as healing processes in the gastrointestinal tract. Before conducting her research in Stockholm she gained her Ph.D. in 2016 on nanoparticle-based siRNA delivery to modulate inflammatory responses.

German Research Foundation

Solutions for a Plastic Planet Look out of your window, wherever you are, and you may spot something plastic that’s been discarded, in plain view. A supermarket bag, a cup, a wrapper from a chocolate bar. Plastic debris has become a devilish detail in every landscape and environment there is, the modern weed that’s almost invisible in plain sight. With a product that resists destruction for hundreds of years, we can no longer ignore the impact plastic is having on ecosystems, ecosystems which include us. Can we undo the damage of plastic pollution? By Richard Forsyth

lastic pollution, like all industrial pollution, is a global challenge. Plastic is in some ways the symbol of human consumption in the industrial world. It is on-demand, it is mass produced, it is very robust and yet often single use. In fact, half of all plastics are designed for one-use applications, such as shopping bags, product wrapping, food wrapping, straws and plastic cups. Inspect any supermarket shelf and you’ll see a huge range of products encased or wrapped in a form of plastic. Once discarded, these often find their way to the sea or into natural habits, as the debris is light and gets carried from bins and landfill by wind, into the countryside and waterways, which course to the ocean. It’s clogging up land and sea in such a way that it’s literally chocking nature to death.

Tide of plastic In ratio, estimates of plastic pollution concentration on land are between four and 23 times more than the ocean. It’s everywhere; cities, towns, countryside, parks and roads. For wildlife it can be a deadly modern curiosity. Entanglement, ingestion and choking kills many animals. But even trying to destroy it can be harmful. Burning plastics as a solution means releasing poisonous chemicals into the air. Every year, the

production and incineration of plastic emits around 400 million tonnes of CO2 around the world. It’s a tough material to dispose of. Much of the plastic inevitably ends up finding its way to waterways and the sea. Plastic debris is thought to be in all rivers near human habitats. Greenpeace once investigated 13 diverse river systems in the UK and found plastic waste in all of them. The rivers act as conduits for this rubbish to be dumped in the sea. About 60% of all plastic pollution in the ocean originally came from the land-based pollution. In a global context, 5 - 13 million tonnes of plastics — 1.5 to 4 % of global plastics production, ends up in the oceans each year. In terms of the EU, 150,000 to 500,000 tonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans every year (500,000 tonnes is the equivalent of 66,000 rubbish trucks). Plastic accounts for over 80 % of marine litter. With ‘business as usual’, by the year 2050 the oceans could contain more plastics than fish, by weight. One of the real horrors of this robust pollutant becomes apparent when it begins to disintegrate. Microplastics, tiny fragments of plastic below 5mm in size, accumulate in the sea, and marine life ingests them. The scale of the impact for wildlife is staggering. More than 100 million marine animals are killed every year by plastic waste including fish, seals and birds although the true figure is thought to be much higher.

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Incredibly, it’s estimated that over 90% of all seabirds have ingested plastic. Microplastics have been found to be rife in the food chain and that food chain leads directly to us. Recent studies found microplastics in the air, drinking water and foods like salt or honey, and the impacts on human health are potential significant by digesting microplastics. For example, studies indicate plastic chemicals can act as endocrine disruptors linked to cancer, birth defects and problems with development in children. Once the plastic debris is in the ocean it inevitably gets carried in currents. Plastic waste from Europe impacts in particularly vulnerable marine areas, like the Mediterranean Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Studies show plastics accumulate in the Mediterranean at a density comparable to the areas of highest plastic accumulation in the oceans. It’s not just an environmental issue either, it’s an economic one. Marine litter also causes economic damage to tourism, fisheries and shipping. For example, the cost of litter to EU fisheries has been estimated at 1 % of total revenues from catches by the EU fleet. When you imagine the materials of the first plastic products ever made are probably still out there in some form or fragments, it’s easier to realise that pollution like this cannot remain hidden and is not sustainable. So, here is the problem laid bare, and why can we not stop this at the source so easily?

The wonder material Before we condemn the industry and this material outright, it’s worth noting that whilst plastic is perceived as a bad guy in the very public war against pollution, the plastic industry significantly bolsters the European Economy. Its usefulness is exactly why it has become so prolific. For example, light innovative materials in vehicles, keeping our food safe from germs, insulation materials helping people save on energy bills and when combined with 3D printing technology, plastics can be used in conjunction with healthcare innovations, like biocompatible materials. The European economy relies on plastic for a large amount of job creation and innovation, which means that indiscriminately crushing this industry would create a shockwave in the European economy. Transforming this sector will take an extraordinary amount of cooperation, inventiveness and awareness from the many key stakeholders involved. This has sparked a Europe-wide EU Strategy for Plastics in the Circular Economy. A goal is to ensure by 2030 all plastic packaging should be recyclable. This relies on a mix of innovation, curbing plastic waste and imposing market restrictions. Innovations from around the world, through need and because of popularity with consumers, are beginning to emerge in their legion and

The European economy relies on plastic for a large amount of job creation and innovation, which means that crushing this industry would create a shockwave in the European economy.

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they seem to offer genuine hope that invention can be the difference in this challenge.

Thinking outside of the bag If it is so hard to get rid of one-use plastic and applications are so useful – one solution is change to more innovative materials. For example, a Chilean company, Solubag have invented a new material made from calcium and natural gas which can dissolve in water in 5 minutes, as opposed to hundreds of years. Similarly, Avani Eco, a company in Indonesia has made a plastic bag that’s not only eco-friendly, you can actually eat it. It’s made of the vegetable root, cassava used widely for food consumption in Latin America and Asia but which can be also exploited in manufacturing. In fact, material science solutions have come in the form of packaging from everything from forestry byproducts (cellulose) to food waste. There have been some truly unusual concepts for breaking down plastic. In 2017, researchers found that wax worms could eat through and effectively process polyethylene. It took 100 worms 12 hours to chew through 3% of a plastic bag, so whilst this is not a scalable solution the true aim would be to find the enzyme responsible and synthesis it to industrial scales. Simply not throwing single use plastic away, and recycling it, can also help. A 5 pence tax on plastic bags was enforced in England in

2015 and this has reduced the number of bags used by 80% since the scheme has been in effect, that’s 9 billion fewer plastic bags out there. Outright bans are one way to bluntly stop the flow of pollution. The European Parliament has recently approved a ban on single use plastics like straws, plates and cutlery in Europe by 2021. Anyone dining in European cafes may notice small shifts occurring such as a change from plastic to paper straws, for example. Plastic free shelves are appearing in some supermarkets and there seems a genuine desire by a large section of the public to reduce use of disposable plastic. To date, the UN indicates that 127 countries have banned or taxed single-use bags. This ‘hard-stop’ is spreading around the world. And consumers can choose proactively to play a big part in reducing plastic pollution. Greenpeace has some sound advice like suggesting we carry our own reusable bottles and coffee cups, choose not to plastic wrap vegetables and find refill stations for detergents.

A sea-change For dealing with the existing waste out there already floating in the sea, there are also some clever but equally simple solutions. Whilst particles of plastic adrift in the water are harder to clean up, the larger plastic debris tends to clump together and accumulate in circulating ocean currents known as gyres. Wide areas of such debris on the surface present visible targets for

With ‘business as usual’, by the year 2050 the oceans could contain more plastics than fish, by weight.

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clean-up operations. The Netherlands based initiative, The Ocean Cleanup, launched in 2018, has created ocean-based technology that is located in these gyres to passively trap the plastic. The system they created is made of long lines of floating buoys several kilometres long, with a skirt dragging beneath, to keep debris from bobbing under. Like the plastic, it drifts and moves into these oceanic systems. The plastic bumps into it and is contained for extraction. One target of this project is to remove 50% of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, the largest accumulation of plastic trash in a gyre, every five years. It’s clear that the problem of plastic pollution is now a focus for every country and the awareness of the issue is ensuring an international response. Like a lot of the sustainability challenges, finding viable alternatives for applications is a concern that needs to be tackled as single-use plastic specifically, is phased out of the economy, production and use. Politicians and captains of industry must play a leading role, but it is the public participation in new consumer habits that will inevitably play a huge part in the ensuing battle for change that is needed. The message consumers are receiving now is that single-use plastic is not in fact disposable at all and for our own health and the health of the environment, we should refrain from using it, and when we do use it, refrain from throwing it away.

Directive on Single Use Plastics and fishing gear by the EU Aims include: •

a ban on selected single-use products made of plastic where there are alternatives such as cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, sticks for balloons, as well as cups, food and beverage containers made of expanded polystyrene and on all products made of oxo-degradable plastic.

•

t o reduce consumption of food containers and beverage cups made of plastic.

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t o increase Producer Responsibility to cover the cost of cleaning up litter.

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a 90% separate collection target for plastic bottles by 2029.

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new design requirements to connect caps to bottles.

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t o incorporate 25% of recycled plastic in PET bottles from 2025 and 30% in all plastic bottles from 2030.

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Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent as the climate changes. NASA captured this image of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on September 2, 2019, as the storm churned over the northwestern Bahamas. ©NASA

Bringing our biases to the surface Many of us would agree that it’s important to reduce our individual energy consumption in the context of wider concern about sustainability and climate change, yet this doesn’t always translate into concrete action. Our emotions may play a major role in our decisions on energy consumption, a topic central to Professor Tobias Brosch’s research. The development of new technologies and renewable sources of energy is a central part of efforts to deal with climate change, yet this on its own is unlikely to be enough to meet sustainability targets. Alongside technical development, changes in individual behaviour are essential if we are to deal with climate change effectively, believes Tobias Brosch, Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva. “A substantial degree of behaviour change will be needed from everybody,” he says. However, while there is a growing awareness of climate change among the wider public, this does not always translate into action on the individual level. “People are starting to become more aware of the reality – climate change is happening – but still do little to translate this into concrete behavioural change,” outlines Professor Brosch. There are several different reasons for this, beyond questioning the scientific basis of climate research. One important factor is

that the human brain is not really designed to process information around climate change; our ancestors dealt with challenges in the here and now, things that could be touched, felt or seen, whereas climate change is presented in terms of statistics and forecasts about the future. “There are long-term trajectories of temperature change that we cannot capture with our senses,” points out Professor Brosch. This is not to suggest that humans do not consider the long-term consequences of their actions, but this may not come as naturally as thinking about the more immediate effects. “We tend to discount things that might happen 50 or 100 years in the future, to focus on more immediate concerns,” continues Professor Brosch. A second major issue is the sheer scale of the challenge around climate change. There can be a tendency for individuals to think that their own actions will have little impact in the wider global context, and that it is up to governments and large organisations

to take action. “This is a second problem – that individuals evade responsibility,” says Professor Brosch. These are areas of deep interest to Professor Brosch, who is the Principal Investigator of a research project probing deeper into the basis on which individuals make decisions about energy consumption. “We look at global questions, like why are some people still not concerned about questions around climate change and the potential consequences?” he outlines. “We also look at more concrete issues, like what interventions can we develop to help people consume less energy?”

Energy decisions Research in this area has previously focused on mechanisms that are consciously accessible to people when making energyrelated decisions, such as knowledge, values and attitudes. However, Professor Brosch says that automatic, unconscious mechanisms also exert a considerable influence on these

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Human behaviour and CO2 emissions are inextricably linked. The excessive use of airplanes is just one major factor contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, which are now having a palpable impact on the global environment.

Despite ups and downs from year to year, global average surface temperature is rising. By the beginning of the 21st century, Earth’s temperature was roughly 0.6 degrees Celsius above the long-term (1951–1980) average. (NASA figure adapted from Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis.)

decisions. “We have shown that both implicit biases and more conscious factors, like your values, influence your purchasing decisions,” he explains. One major aim of the project is to build a more complete picture of the decision-making process, including these implicit biases. “We use neuroscience to look directly at the decision-making process as it happens in the brain. We are trying to develop a perspective that takes into account multiple decision-making systems in the sustainability domain,” says Professor Brosch. This encompasses several different strands of research, one of which centres around looking at the neural mechanisms involved in processing information about climate change. Much of this information is presented in terms of how the climate will evolve in future. “We know how the brain operates when you think about the future: you use your knowledge of the past to construct a simulation of this future. A region of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is involved in constructing these simulations,” says Professor Brosch. One reason why people might differ in their concern about the consequences of climate change is their ability to construct these future situations, a topic Professor Brosch and his colleagues in the project are exploring. “We put people in a scanner, and we showed them potential consequences of climate change,” he outlines. These consequences included, for instance, a certain level of temperature change by a given point in the future, or the potential for higher levels of social conflict and more mass migration events. Some of these consequences were set to occur far into the future, while others were projected to occur much sooner, within the lifetime of the individual themselves. “We asked people how worried they were by these consequences and we measured their brain activity. We found that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex was related to the extent to which

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Above: Climate change affects our living environment: More than a year of drought has dropped lake and reservoir levels in central Texas by tens of feet. September 2010 through September 2011 were the driest 12 months on record for much of the region, with rainfall at 30 to 40 percent of the norm. NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using Landsat data provided by the United States Geological Survey. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.

people were worried about the consequences of future climate change,” explains Professor Brosch. “This suggests that these people who are better able to create mental simulations of the future are also more concerned about the consequences of climate change.” Researchers are also working to present these consequences to the wider public in a more tangible, concrete way, and to bring home the possible impact of climate change.

is to investigate how emotions influence individual decisions on energy consumption. “We wanted to identify the different emotional profiles that people experience in the context of environmental actions. We found differences in the extent to which people feel positive emotions when they do something environmentally-friendly,” explains Professor Brosch. People may feel a burst of pride when they recycle correctly, for example, while Professor Brosch says there are also differences in the extent to which we feel negative emotions when we do something that harms the environment. “That might be shame or guilt when you take the plane for a week-end trip, or when you use your car instead of the bike,” he says.

We look at global

questions, like why are some people still not concerned about questions around climate change and the potential consequences? There is a tendency to think that climate change will only affect future generations, so it’s important to make climate change as relevant as possible to our everyday lives, a prime motivation behind a new project that Professor Brosch and his colleagues have recently started. “We’re creating a simulation of how Geneva will look in 2070 or 2080, once those consequences have become more tangible. We’re using virtual reality to help create those simulations,” he explains. This would essentially be a full immersion in a Geneva feeling the full effects of climate change. “It’s about translating the statistics into something that is personally relevant to the individuals themselves,” continues Professor Brosch. A deeper awareness of the likely consequences of climate change may prompt people to take action themselves, another area of interest in the project. One aim here

The researchers found that different types of emotional reactivity were related to different energy-relevant actions. Based on a sample of 5,000 Swiss households, they showed that people who tend to feel strong positive emotions were more likely to invest in energy-efficiency. “These people were more likely to change their electricity tariff to a more expensive, but greener tariff. Feelings of pride that you invest in something for the future seem to increase willingness to take action,” outlines Professor Brosch. On the other hand, the tendency to feel negative emotions was related to curtailment behaviour, so using less resources. “In general people who are more prone to this negative reactivity have a lower electricity bill,” says Professor Brosch. “We found it very interesting to observe a disassociation between positive and negative emotional reactivity and different kinds of environmental actions.”

Determinants of individual energyrelevant decisions and behaviours: A multiple systems approach Project Objectives

Climate change is a major issue across the world, and a lot of effort is focused on dealing with it. While technological development will have a crucial role to play, individuals will also need to change their behaviour in order to reduce the amount of energy they consume. The aim of the project is to develop a deeper understanding of the factors and mechanisms that influence individual decisions and behaviours on energy consumption and sustainability. This will then form the basis for the development of targeted interventions designed to reduce energy demand. A great deal of behavioural research has previously focused on explicit, consciously accessible determinants of judgments and decisions, such as individual values, attitudes, or norms. Researchers in the project also take into account more automatic decision-making mechanisms including emotional reactions and implicit associations. Researchers are combining explicit measures with implicit cognitive, psychophysiological, and neuroscientific measures to better understand the interplay of different determinants of sustainable decisions. The goal is to develop a multiple system approach to sustainable decision making.

Project Funding

“Determinants of individual energy-relevant decisions and behaviours: A multiple systems approach”, AP Energy Grant PYAPP1_160571 from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Contact Details

Prof. Tobias Brosch University of Geneva Department of Psychology, Consumer Decision and Sustainable Behavior Lab Boulevard du Pont d’Arve 40, CH-1205 Geneva T: +41 (0) 22 379 92 23 E: tobias.brosch@unige.ch W: https://www.unige.ch/fapse/decisionlab/

Professor Tobias Brosch

Professor Tobias Brosch studied psychology at the Universities of Trier and Canterbury before obtaining a PhD at the University of Geneva. He completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at New York University and then worked as lecturer and senior lecturer at the University of Geneva. In 2015, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva where he founded the Consumer Decision and Sustainable Behavior Lab. In 2019, he was promoted to Associate Professor and now holds the chair for Psychology of Sustainable Development.

Emotions – as expressed here in the faces of the protesters – may play a major role in motivating sustainable behaviour. Sydney, Australia - March 15, 2019 - 20 000 Australian students gather in climate change protest rally, School Strike 4 Climate, and demand urgent action on climate change.

Interventions The wider picture here is ongoing concern about the sustainability of current consumption patterns, which has led to a lot of interest in designing interventions to promote reductions in energy consumption. Professor Brosch and his colleagues have been working on a ‘soft’ intervention in the context of the so-called energy efficiency gap, which refers to the fact that it is actually quite irrational not to invest in energy efficient technology, despite the upfront cost. “By initially investing you can save money in the long run, and also help protect the environment. So there are lots of advantages, but people don’t do it as much as economists would predict that a rational person would,” he explains. This is another important aspect of Professor Brosch’s research. “What subtle changes can we introduce so that people take those considerations more into account when making their decisions?” he asks. The way in which energy-related information is presented is one important consideration in this respect. One reason why many people fall into the energy efficiency gap, and choose not to invest in energy efficient technology, is the way information is presented. “If you see for example that a fridge saves 15 percent energy compared to the standard model, this also means that you reduce CO2 emissions, so it’s good for the planet. This also means that you save a certain amount in energy costs,” explains Professor Brosch. These benefits are not necessarily made explicit to consumers at the moment of their purchase decision however, so Professor Brosch is working on an intervention strategy called attribute translations. “The idea of attribute translations

is that we present this information explicitly at the moment of choice, so people can immediately see the extent to which emissions would be reduced and how much money they would save every year,” he says. Initial findings show that this intervention could have a significant impact in terms of encouraging people to move towards energyefficient technologies, and Professor Brosch is looking forward to applying some of the ideas and models that have been developed in the project. He and his team are collaborating with electricity providers and international organisations like the UN and the World Economic Forum, with the wider goal of helping reduce overall energy consumption and promoting sustainable behaviour. “We are discussing how we can move towards getting our results into the field faster,” outlines Professor Brosch. Alongside this work, Professor Brosch is also keen to pursue further research into the mechanisms behind human decision-making with respect to sustainability. “We are going to continue these research lines with follow-up projects,” he says.

The Campus Biotech building of the University of Geneva, where the project is located. The Campus is within walking distance of the United Nations, facilitating collaborations with international organisations.

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Stick or twist? The brown trout’s migratory dilemma Facultative migration, where some individuals migrate while others from the same population do not, is common across several different species, yet the causes and consequences of this intriguing phenomenon remain poorly understood. Researchers in the ALH project are investigating the factors that influence whether brown trout choose to migrate, as Dr Thomas Reed explains. A type of salmonid fish, brown trout can be found in a variety of different habitats, including the sea, lakes and river systems. While some brown trout in rivers migrate to the sea before returning to freshwater, others choose to stay where they are, a topic of great interest to Dr Thomas Reed. “A complex interaction between genes and environment determines whether a given fish decides to migrate or to remain resident in their natal stream,” he outlines. As Principal Investigator of the ALH project, Dr Reed and his team are investigating these interactions underpinning choice of migratory tactics. “It seems to be closely related to the energy balance of the fish,” he says. “If a fish is not getting enough energy from its environment, it might decide to go to a place with more feeding opportunities. That could be in a lake downstream, or an anadromous trout might go to sea.”

Photograph by Ross Finlay

Waterfall study The project brings together researchers from several different disciplines, including genetics, physiology and ecology, to build a deeper picture of the differences between these migratory and resident fish. One strand of the project’s research centres around comparing trout from above and below different waterfalls across Ireland, which offers a good opportunity for researchers to

If a fish is not

getting enough energy from its environment, it might decide to go to a place with more feeding opportunities. That could be in a lake downstream, or an anadromous trout might go to sea. There are boundless feeding opportunities in the oceans but also more predators. While there are different factors at play here, such as the age of the fish and the nature of the surrounding environment, essentially the decision on whether to migrate comes down to binary choices. “Do I migrate or not? If I do, do I go to the sea or a lake? Those are the major binary choices that we’re interested in, they’re what we call the alternative life history tactics,” says Dr Reed. The decision is typically made months before it actually happens, giving time for the migratory fish to prepare for the marine environment, while the resident fish pursue a different strategy. “In this preparatory phase the fish that are migrating start to invest more energy in attaining a critical body size to ensure better survival prospects at sea, whereas those that stay behind maybe invest more in storing energy as fat to fuel earlier reproduction” explains Dr Reed.

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investigate genetic differences. “Sea trout returning from the sea can’t get above these waterfalls, they’re just too big. But the same species of brown trout also live above these falls, and that’s a purely resident population,” outlines Dr Reed. Researchers are sampling individual fish from above and below these waterfalls and comparing their genomes. “We would expect to see genetic differences across the whole genome,” says Dr Reed. Researchers can identify those parts of the genome where differences are particularly pronounced, however, from which Dr Reed and his colleagues can look to gain deeper insights. “Some parts of the genome show exaggerated differences and might point us towards the genes that are involved in these alternative life histories, of anadromous migration vs residency,” he explains. Another topic on

the project’s agenda is sexual conflict, where the evolutionary interests of males and females diverge. “Males might have different strategies from females to maximise their evolutionary success,” says Dr Reed. “In the case of trout, the benefits of going to sea tend to be higher for females.” The reason for this lies in the abundant feeding opportunities available at sea, which means migratory fish are often much bigger than resident fish when they return to freshwater to spawn. This is very important to their chances of reproductive success, as bigger females produce more and larger eggs, yet body size doesn’t really affect males in the same way. “Males may prefer to become residents, because the advantages of going to sea and getting bigger are not as pronounced,” explains Dr Reed. This sets up the potential for sexual conflict, a topic that Dr Reed and his team plans to investigate further. “It’s an interesting area that is relevant not just to fish but many other species including humans, yet about which we know rather little at a genetic level,” he says.

ALH Alternative life histories: linking genes to phenotypes to demography. Dr Thomas Reed, Senior Lecturer BSc, PhD ‍Distillery Fields, North Mall Campus University College Cork Cork, Ireland T: ‍+353 (0)21 4904661 E: ‍treed@ucc.ie W: http://fisheye.ucc.ie/ W: http://research.ucc. ie/profiles/D026/treed Dr Thomas Reed is Senior Lecturer in Zoology at University College Cork, a position he has held since 2017, while he has also worked in institutions in Europe, the US and Africa. He is interested in how organisms respond - and populations adapt to variable and changing environments.

Experimental setup of a CSTR experiment. Soot particles are produced and conditioned before atmospheric ageing is mimicked in the aerosol chamber. The impact of the ageing process is monitored by various measurement instruments.

Soot in the clouds Current models of cloud formation typically don’t include soot particles, as they are hydrophobic at the time they are produced, but what if there is a process in the atmosphere that makes these particles hydrophilic? We spoke to Dr Amewu Mensah about her work investigating how soot particles behave in the atmosphere and its wider relevance to climate modelling. The combustion process

results in the production of soot, a particle that can represent a significant threat to human health. While large quantities of soot are generated across the world, it remains hard to understand what happens to soot particles when they are emitted into the atmosphere, a topic central to Dr Amewu Mensah’s research. “A perfect combustion process would result in the production of just CO2 and water – but perfect combustion never happens, so there are some left-overs. Soot forms as a result of the combustion process,” she explains. As the Principal Investigator of a research project based at ETH Zurich, Dr Mensah is investigating how these soot particles behave in the atmosphere, an important consideration in the context of wider concern around climate change. “How will atmospheric conditions evolve in future? The scientific community uses cloud models in this, and has parameterized many kinds of processes,” she says.

Cloud condensation nuclei There is still a significant level of uncertainty around cloud formation and whether soot particles are involved however. Many aerosol particles float around in the atmosphere,

“CCN are the nuclei on which cloud droplets can form. When the conditions are right in terms of temperature and water vapour concentration, cloud droplets will form in the sky and we will see clouds,” outlines Dr

Cloud Condensation Nuclei are the nuclei on which cloud droplets can form. When the conditions are right in terms of temperature and water vapour concentration, cloud droplets will form in the sky and we will see clouds. like dust, which play a major role in cloud formation when the conditions are right. “We can’t see these particles, because they are too small – but they are recognised by the water molecules in the air. Water molecules attach to these aerosol particles, and then they form a droplet,” outlines Dr Mensah. These initial particles, those that were too small to be visible to the human eye, are called cloud condensation nuclei (CCN).

Mensah. “It has long been thought that pure soot, without any coating from hydrophilic material, cannot act as CCN.” Cloud formation in the current global climate models does not always match satellite and radar measurements however, leading researchers to re-examine some of the underlying ideas behind them. For Dr Mensah, the question is whether soot particles can in fact act as CCN, and if they

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contribute to cloud formation. “Is there a process, while soot particles are flying around in the air, that could turn them from being initially hydrophobic – where they repel water – to hydrophilic, and therefore enable them to contribute to cloud formation? Will consideration of this process improve our representation of clouds in models?” she asks. While it is known that soot particles can gain a greater affinity for water by merging with something that is hydrophilic, for example salt, Dr Mensah is looking at other ways in which they can change. “Is there any way that these soot particles might become hydrophilic without merging with a pre-existing hydrophilic particle?” she continues. A process called heterogeneous oxidation is of great interest here. When an aerosol particle meets ozone gas in the atmosphere the two components are in different physical states, which is why the subsequent reaction is called heterogeneous oxidation. “I’m investigating whether ozone, at atmospheric conditions, is capable of oxidising the surface of a soot particle to such an extent that it will become hydrophilic,” explains Dr Mensah. One major challenge for researchers here is that these particles won’t necessarily survive for a long time within a small volume, so Dr Mensah

says it’s necessary to speed up the reaction. “Normally when we speed up reactions in the lab we put in a lot more ozone and a lot more soot particles, by a factor of a thousand or more,” she says. “While in the atmosphere there may be around fifty ozone molecules per billion air molecules, in the lab we sometimes do 50 per million, or even 50 into 100,000.”

CSTR approach This approach can be effective if the speed of the process under investigation is directly proportional to the concentration of the molecules. However, if the relationship is more complex then experimental results may not be entirely reliable, an issue of which Dr Mensah is well aware. “We tried to figure out a way to allow this reaction to take place at atmospheric conditions. That means at atmospheric ozone concentrations and particle concentrations,” she outlines. This relates specifically to the boundary layer, around the first 300 metres of the atmosphere above ground level; researchers are using an experimental technique involving a continuous flow stirred tank reactor (CSTR) to mimic environmental conditions. “In the CSTR, we managed to age soot particles at atmospherically relevant particle and ozone concentrations, as well as atmospherically relevant temperature and

humidity conditions, for up to 16 hours and beyond,” says Dr Mensah. Dr Mensah is keen to encourage researchers to use this experimental technique in their experiments. “This will help researchers to determine if their current way of thinking about the relationship between particle concentration and reaction speed is really correct,” she explains. “There may be different reactions at higher concentrations than you would get at low concentrations.”

Climate modelling The results of these experiments show that if soot particles are exposed to ozone at atmospheric background concentrations for long enough then they become hydrophilic and can in fact act as CCN. This holds significant implications for our understanding of how the climate is likely to evolve in future. “Clouds have a major impact on our climate and temperature budget,” says Dr Mensah. The project’s findings are being shared with climate modellers, which Dr Mensah hopes will help improve the representation of clouds. “Implementing soot as a potential CCN has a major impact on the representation of cloud cover in climate models,” she points out. “The impact of this on the climate depends on the type of the cloud. The really high clouds –

Aerosol ageing pathways in the atmophere. After emission aerosol particles are exposed to ageing processes before they can be washed out from the atmosphere. The three most important ones are coating with hydrophilic substances, heterogeneous oxidation, and in-cloud cycling. These processes can turn hydrophobic particles into CCN or INPs

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SPACE Soot Particle Ageing Cloud Effects

Project Objectives

Aerosol-cloud interactions, i.e. the impact of aerosol particles on clouds, spans a multidimensional space. The impact of soot particles on clouds is especially highly uncertain. Since soot is the second most important anthropogenic emission after CO2 in terms of climate forcing, SPACE aims to resolve the impact of individual atmospheric ageing processes on the cloud formation potential of soot particles.

Project Funding

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); http://p3.snf.ch/Project-161343

Contact Details

Dr. Amewu A. Mensah Head of Air Quality Environmental and Health Protection Service City of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland E: A.Mensah@alumni.ethz.ch W: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnOsfaGKHeU W: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUSKHFsSYfI Friebel, F. and Mensah, A.A. (2019b). “Ozone Concentration versus Temperature: Atmospheric Aging of Soot Particles” Langmuir, doi: 10.1021/acs. langmuir.9b02372. Friebel, F., Lobo, P., Neubauer, D., Lohmann, U., Dusseldorp, S.D.v., Mühlhofer, E. and Mensah, A.A. (2019). “Impact of Isolated Atmospheric Aging processes on the Cloud Condensation Nucleiactivation of Soot Particles.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 2019: 1-29, doi: 10.5194/ acp-2019-504. Friebel, F. and Mensah, A.A. (2019a). “Aging aerosol in a well-mixed continuous-flow tank reactor: an introduction of the activation time distribution.” Atmospheric Measurement Techniques 12(5): 26472663, doi: 10.5194/amt-12-2647-2019.

the cirrus clouds – trap outgoing long-wave radiation and contribute to heating, but lower clouds actually contribute to cooling, because they prevent short-wave radiation from reaching the earth’s surface.”

Particle surface A particle’s surface area is another important consideration with respect to understanding its wider impact, a topic that Dr Mensah and her colleague Franz Friebel are also investigating in the project. A soot particle has carcinogenic substances on its surface, and the quantity depends on the surface area. “If a particle has a large surface area there are a lot of these substances, whereas if it is small then there are less,” explains Dr Mensah. Soot particles have a fairly unusual shape, so determining their surface area is a complex task. “It has historically proved challenging to determine the surface area of soot particles, or of other particles that can be found in low concentrations in the atmosphere,” continues Dr Mensah. “We have developed a new measurement technique which we are now in the process of patenting. We’ve proved that we can determine the surface area of soot particles and we want to continue our research and develop this technique further.”

There are also plans to bring this technique to the market, with a start-up company currently being established to build these instruments. This will help to demonstrate the long-term importance of continued scientific research to both commercial development and our ability to prepare for emerging challenges. “This research has led to positive outcomes that will be beneficial to society,” stresses Dr Mensah. The experimental technique developed in the project can be applied to a range of other atmospheric particles aside from soot as the latest experimental results show. “We are convinced that this new measurement technique will open a new horizon to the characterization of nanoparticles that are nonspherical or too low in concentration for the standard technique.” says Dr Mensah. Research can lead to commercial development and new products, yet it’s important to also give scientists the freedom to address abstract questions that may not lead to immediate results. While keen to translate her research into tangible outcomes, Dr Mensah also plans to continue with more exploratory research in future. “We will look at how we represent clouds better, how we represent soot particles in models better, and how will we be able to anticipate the impact of climate change due to these better models?” she outlines.

A fast adsorption of an Ozone monolayer within several minutes is followed by a slow reaction of the adsorbed Ozone with the soot particle surface which takes hours. The proceeding oxidation causes an increase in the hydrophilicity of the particles.

Dr. Amewu A. Mensah

Dr. Amewu A. Mensah was a senior scientist at ETH Zurich. She has investigated the chemical and physical nature of aerosol particles throughout her academic career. As the PI of the SPACE project, she has focused on the cloud formation potential of soot particles after atmospheric aging. She has now moved to a governmental position. As the Head of air quality of the city of Zurich, she is dedicated to the fast implementation of scientific results for the benefit of society.

Like many chemical reactions, the oxidation of soot with Ozone is highly temperate-dependent. An increase from 5°C to 35°C results in a 5 times faster reaction rate. Understanding the reaction kinetic of aging processes is vital for assessing the climate impact of soot particles.

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The art of cooking

Food is not just sustenance, but an important part of a nation’s culture, and chefs put a lot of thought and energy into both sourcing their ingredients and producing interesting, creative meals. We spoke to Professor Nicolaj van der Meulen about his work in exploring the aesthetic aspects of cooking and eating. A nation’s cuisine

is an important element of its culture, and chefs across the world devote a lot of energy to not only cooking interesting and tasty food, but also presenting it in an attractive way. Food in this sense is more than just sustenance, but a cultural and sensory experience, in other words a language without words. “One of the first ways in which we experience another culture is through its food. What do people eat there? Where can I get cook books to try and make these recipes myself, to enter into the world of another culture?” says Professor Nicolaj van der Meulen, co-director of the Institute of Aesthetic Practice and Theory at FHNW in Basel. These questions are at the heart of Professor van der Meulen’s work as Principal

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Investigator of a research project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation looking at cooking and eating as aesthetic practices. “We see that on the one hand a lot of artists and designers are interested in the field of cooking, and on the other hand a lot of chefs are adopting this attitude of seeing their profession as being artistic,” he outlines. “The project investigates new concepts of food and dining at the interface of art and cookery.”

Chefs and artists This manifests itself in different ways, including both a preoccupation among chefs with the appearance and presentation of food, and also an awareness of wider social and political concerns related to food. While

on one level food is of course essential to our daily lives, Professor van der Meulen says that the question of what we cook and how we cook it is also related to wider social issues. “Within our project we have observed that a lot of prominent topics, in politics, culture, and identity, are related to the topic of food,” he explains. Migrants to a new country tend to bring their own cuisine with them for example, and often fuse them with elements of the local cooking to develop new recipes, introducing new ideas into the food culture. “People come from other cultures to new countries and bring their food with them, This is often how we understand newcomers to our own country,” points out Professor van der Meulen.

Image by Fiona Rahn Glühwein-Wurst

Many European cities have a vibrant restaurant scene, offering a wide variety of cuisine from across the world. Chefs like Rene Redzepi in Copenhagen and the Swiss chef Stefan Wiesner are well-known for their willingness to experiment with innovative cooking techniques and work with uncoventional ingredients, and their restaurants or locations are extremely popular. “People want to get a deeper experience of what the world is by tasting it,” stresses Professor van der Meulen. These chefs can be thought of in a way as artists, people who are concerned with aesthetic sensibilities and the world around them, something Professor van der Meulen and his colleagues in the project are exploring. “We want to understand the aesthetic and artistic aspects of their procedures and their method of cooking. We’re also looking at it the other way round – when artists begin to cook, how do they use food to express themselves? What do they want to express? What alternative ways of cooking, eating and food do they develop” he outlines. “Refering to regional historical food, for example, is the result of broader cultural development, driven not only by chefs or restaurant owners, but also by people who have a strong interest in cultural history and art and design practices.” The job of a chef is first and foremost to cook and plate interesting and tasty food, yet many chefs nowadays do not wish to be understood solely in these terms, but also as people who have a message beyond their craft, be it social, culinary, aesthetic or

something else entirely. Some chefs for example are keen to address concerns around sustainability in their cooking, while at the same time giving diners an interesting and luxurious experience. “The idea of cooking meat from nose-to-tail, or cooking vegetables from root-to-leaf, is increasingly prominent. Many chefs are also keen to cook with ingredients from their own region,” points out Professor van der Meulen. What does seasonal and regional cooking exactly mean? Researchers in the project are collaborating with farmers, restaurants and chefs, including the famous Swiss chef Stefan Wiesner, who is known for his willingness to experiment. “Stefan has an archive containing a lot of tastes, spices, herbs and different woods. He

do they explore new ideas?” he says. To some extent this is a process of trial-and-error, but chefs like Stefan Wiesner also use their own intuition and knowledge, which often extends beyond their own profession. “Stefan Wiesner builds on the knowledge of the farming community and artists for example, then he looks to bring it all together,” continues Professor van der Meulen. “Notebooks - or sketches - play a very important role in that context. Before recipes are published, they are created by sketches, similar to an artist’s design process.” The quality of the food is clearly a major priority for restaurants, yet it’s not the only influence on an establishment’s popularity and commercial prospects, so researchers are

The idea of cooking

meat from nose-to-tail, or cooking vegetables from root-to-leaf, is increasingly prominent. Many chefs are also keen to cook with ingredients from their own region. also looks in the local area for new ingredients that he could cook,” says Professor van der Meulen. This openness is an important part of Stefan Wiesner’s appeal as a chef, yet he also has a great depth of knowledge about cooking and which flavours will work well together in a dish, which he brings to bear in his work. Professor van der Meulen and his colleagues in the project are exploring the approach chefs take to developing new recipes. “What kind of knowledge do these chefs have? How

also considering other angles. One strand of the project involves looking at the specific topics that chefs, owners and artists are addressing in order to provide a welcoming environment in restaurants. “The analysis of this is based on more than 80 non-standardized interviews, the phd-student, artist and food specialist Anneli Käsmayr has done, partially in cooperation with the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL (Robert Home, Bernadette Oehen). We are building on the idea that you can touch somebody with a

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COOKING AND EATING AS AESTHETIC PRACTICE One of the first ways in which we

experience another culture is through its food. What do people eat there? Where can I get cook books to try and make these recipes myself, to enter into the

world of another culture?

Cooking and Eating as aesthetic Practice. An explorative survey

Project Objectives

The food crisis which is being observed by social and cultural sciences coincides with a dissatisfaction that is found of consumers in Switzerland with their own diet and life choice and offering. At the same time cooking, nutrition and eating find a high media attention, since here significant questions of health, sustainability, leisure and social coexistence are being discussed. The project deals with the current points of contacts of art and cooking. It analyzes first, the relevant discourses and practices in terms of sustainability, pleasure and host culture. Secondly there will be an investigation on how chefs in Switzerland develop their knowledge and use of aesthetic practices of transformation, communication and scenography to reposition their field. In a bundling of these research fields there is going to be, thirdly, artistic-culinary models being developed as an alternative eating culture for exemplary areas.

Project Funding good restaurant environment, and with a well-arranged plate,” says Professor van der Meulen. There are many different elements to consider here, beyond the visual appearance of the food itself. “We don’t normally think about the effect of temperature on a sensory experience for example - how do we experience the temperature of a room? How do we arrange the furniture to make a guest feel comfortable? Do we need to change the colours, the plates, or the images in the restaurant?” outlines Professor van der Meulen. A restaurant may choose to consider the likely reaction of customers when making these decisions, yet at the same time they need a degree of confidence in their own vision, taste and judgment, and the same kind of idea extends to food. As a chef, Stefan Wiesner backs his own judgment, with the idea of acting as a host and providing both a convivial atmosphere and good food. “He wants people to feel good in the restaurant, so everything has to be perfect,” stresses Professor van der Meulen. The aim in this research is to probe the relationship between food and art, and to look at how chefs are using artistic ideas to modify and refine their own practices. “What kinds of restaurants and chefs are coming closer to the artistic field? What topics do they address in this? Is it topics like regionality, communication, social life, mindfulness?” explains Professor van der Meulen. “We want to identify these topics and to understand who are the actors in that field.”

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Food sustainability This research is very much exploratory in nature, yet there are also aspects of the project that touch on more immediate issues, such as food sustainability. Researchers in the project are collaborating with FiBL to investigate topics around the relationship between farmers and restaurants. “How can we build stronger connections between restaurants and surrounding farms? How might guests experience food differently if the links between the farmers in the area and the restaurant are directly addressed?” asks Professor van der Meulen. This is just one of the topics that is being explored, while Professor van der Meulen says the project’s work has also opened up potential new avenues of research. “There are a lot of possibilities to extend the research project. The philosophical and theoretical knowledge of what food really is – nutrition, medium or language – is in my view still unclear. One question I’m interested in is how areas of a city can be transformed and developed by addressing food?” he outlines. Many cities are experiencing high levels of demand for allotments for example, while urban farms are also a common feature in some parts of Europe, just some of the ways in which food can play a role in transforming urban culture. This is a topic of great interest to Professor van der Meulen. “What factors affect the success of a transformation process? What is the role of food in that context?” he outlines. First Results of the project can already be seen in: van der Meulen/Wiesel: Culinary Turn (2017).

The research project is funded by the SNF – Swiss National Science Foundation.

Project Participants

Co-applicant, Jörg Wiesel PhD candidate, Anneli Käsmayr • Please visit the website for full project participant information

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Prof. Dr. Nicolaj van der Meulen Institute Aesthetic Practice and Theory University of Applied Sciences and Arts | FHNW Academy of Arts and Design | HGK T: +41 61 228 41 15 E: nicolaj.vandermeulen@fhnw.ch W: https://web.fhnw.ch/hgk/projekte/iaep/ ceaep/category/about/ Fiona Rahn: Conceputal Cooking at Stefan Wiesner: Glogg Sausage in Knit Coat, 2019. Vaidehi Hofer: Conceptaul Cooking at Stefan Wiesner: Sun Sausage, 2019.

Prof. Dr. Nicolaj van der Meulen

Since 2013 Nicolaj van Meulen has co-headed the Institute of Aesthetic Practice and Theory at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Basel. He studied Art History and Philosophy and did his Habilitation Thesis in 2014 at the University of Hildesheim on space and movement in late baroque churches.

New routes around urban congestion Traffic congestion is a daily experience for many people, which often leads to high levels of pollution in urban centres. Researchers in the MAGnUM project are developing multimodal traffic models, which could underpin more effective and environmentally-friendly transport management strategies, as Professor Ludovic Leclercq explains. Many cities face

significant challenges around traffic congestion, and policy-makers are grappling with the task of ensuring that large numbers of people can get in and out of urban centres as quickly and efficiently as possible, while also minimising pollution. As the Principal Investigator of the MAGnUM project, Professor Ludovic Leclercq aims to make a significant contribution in this respect. “We are trying to improve the functioning of urban transportation systems,” he outlines. This is primarily about the management of existing mobility, with researchers taking different modes of transport into account to develop traffic models. “We initially aimed to develop models related to the management of journeys, rather than looking at each mode of transport specifically or trying to manage the flow,” explains Professor Leclercq. “That means you have to consider all the means of transport at once, and the connections between those means of transport. Such models require a deep integration of mathematical, computer and behavioural sciences.”

Simulation game A commuter making their way into a city for work typically has a choice between the car or relying on public transport for example. One key priority in the project is to better understand how people make these types of decisions around urban transport. “You have at least three main decisions to make when you travel – you have to choose your mode of transportation, your route through the city, and your departure time,” says Professor Leclercq. Researchers have designed a simulation game to gain deeper insights into how these decisions are made. “The simulation environment is essentially the city of Lyon in France. People play a game at the same time on different computers, where they see a map of the city and receive assignments where they have to make journeys across the city, from a point of origin to a specific destination,” continues Professor Leclercq. “The players in the game have to choose the route they are going to take and when they want to start travelling.”

These journeys vary widely in terms of distance as well as in other factors, such as proximity to the ring road and the availability of public transport. Participants in the simulation can choose their means of travel, whether it be car or public transport, which will affect the level of congestion on the transport network. “As in real life, the choices of other users will affect the rest of the transportation network. So if you decide to take the car you will see more congestion and the travel time will increase,” points out Professor Leclercq. This kind of information is commonly available to travellers on the move, which is reflected in Professor Leclercq’s simulation. “People can change their decision based on the traffic information that we broadcast to them,” he says. “Travel time information is an important influence on people’s transport decisions, but we have found it’s not the only consideration – some people may choose a less direct route to avoid traffic signals for example.”

Simulation Game interfaces and outputs for a route choice experiment.

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Reversoir-based large-scale dynamic traffic simulation – Lyon Metropolis.

Mobility patterns at city scale This is an important insight in terms of the management of transport networks, where the right balance needs to be struck between user equilibrium and the system optimum. In the vast majority of European cities individual people are free to make their own choices on what form of transport to use, and so tend to prioritise their own interests when making decisions on transport. “The main factor when making this decision is usually the travel time,” says Professor Leclercq. While information on the fastest route for a given journey is often freely available, if sufficiently

alternatives routes at busy times with maybe longer journeys, would significantly improve the global transportation system. If some people can be persuaded to avoid the most congested routes then this will help the system function effectively, an important dimension of Professor Leclercq’s research. “The question is, can we identify the 10 or 20 percent of trips that are really having the biggest impact on the system overall?” he asks. Researchers are developing methods to identify these groups of people from within the wider population. “Everyone needs to travel and we’re not trying to force people to change their plans. What we

The choices of other users will affect the rest of the transportation network. So if you decide to take the car you will see more congestion and the travel time will increase. large numbers of people choose to use that route then this will inevitably affect the overall functioning of the system. “If a lot of people go on the same route at the same time then the travel time will increase and then you will see that some people start to use alternatives,” explains Professor Leclercq. “This is not the most efficient way to manage the transportation system.” The ideal scenario in terms of the overall functioning of a transport system would be to achieve a collective optimum, which would involve identifying travellers that, by using

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want to see is who among the population, by maybe changing their journey in some way, would help the system overall,” continues Professor Leclercq. A parallel can be drawn here with medicine. In the same way as medical researchers aim to develop treatments that target the source of a problem rather than the whole body, Professor Leclercq and his colleagues are developing targeted techniques to improve network efficiency and mitigate pollution. “From that point we can then look to notify those users and so improve the overall

management of a system. However, at this stage we are focussing more on developing the methods, using the advanced modelling frameworks we set up during the early years of the project,” he says.

Traffic management strategies This research could both inform the development of traffic management strategies and provide a basis to evaluate their effectiveness. Traffic signals at intersections to reduce or slow the traffic that enters a particular region are a central part of largescale management strategies based on cordon control. “This approach helps to maintain a certain level of service,” explains Professor Leclercq. This is known to work effectively in terms of improving traffic flow. Now Professor Leclercq and his colleagues in the project are looking to apply it to buses, as dedicated bus lanes do not always represent an efficient use of space. “If you don’t have a very high flow of buses then this part of the road may not be used at full capacity,” he points out. “Our idea is to have a cordon of signalled intersections along major bus routes, and essentially to limit the inflow into a region. This guarantees high commercial speed for buses while being more flexible for other vehicles.” A similar principle is being applied in the project’s work on dynamic perimeter control strategies to protecting a given area like the central business district (CBD). The static and economic counterpart of such a strategy is already applied for example in London and

MAGnUM A Multiscale and Multimodal Traffic Modelling Approach for Sustainable Management of Urban Mobility

Project Objectives

T he MAGnUM project aims to: (i) create a consistent set of interrelated dynamic and multimodal traffic models able to capture driver behaviours at the different urban scales. (ii) apply this variety of models to design efficient and green traffic management strategies.

Project Funding

This study has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 646592 – MAGnUM project)

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Professor Ludovic Leclercq Université de Lyon, IFSTTAR / ENTPE, LICIT T: +33(0) 04 72 04 77 16 E: ludovic.leclercq@ifsttar.fr W: http://magnum.ifsttar.fr W: https://www.sciencesquared.eu/ network/researcher/ludovic.leclercq Professor Ludovic Leclercq

Professor Ludovic Leclercq is deputy director of the LICIT laboratory at IFSTTAR (The French Institute of Science and Technology devoted to Transport, Planning and Networks), where he works as the head of a research group focused on traffic modeling and analysis. His main research interests are multiscale and multimodal dynamic traffic modeling and the related environmental externalities. IFSTTAR will become University Gustave Eiffel on 1st January, 2020.

Network travel time improvements by banning movements at intersections for certain demand levels - Lyon 6th network.

well-known as congestion charge. The idea here is that a defined area is protected in order to improve traffic congestion and reduce emissions. However, classical implementations mainly focus on the area only leading the vehicles and the pollution being shifted elsewhere in the suburbs. “We see that this works very effectively inside the region, but essentially all the emissions may be moved elsewhere,” explains Professor Leclercq. This is a large part of the motivation behind Professor Leclercq’s work in designing a new traffic management scheme. “We are trying to balance the total emissions in a region by controlling entry into the CBD in a way that is good for both that area as well as the areas outside it,” he says. A number of other strategies to improve the efficiency of urban transport systems and reduce emissions have been proposed, such as encouraging ride-sharing. “Some studies have suggested that encouraging ride-sharing will lead to a dramatic reduction in the number of cars in a city, and a much better and more efficient transport system,” outlines Professor Leclercq. However, the project’s models suggest that while this may lead to a reduction in the number of vehicles on the road, this will not necessarily have a big impact on congestion. “There will be less cars parked in the city but there will be almost no gain in terms of congestion, and if you have

no gain in terms of congestion you will have no gain in terms of emissions,” points out Professor Leclercq. The project’s analysis of mobility patterns and their work in developing methods to identify the biggest contributors to overall congestion will also inform the design of new traffic management strategies as innovative technologies enter the transport sector. With autonomous vehicles set to come onto the roads at some point, Professor Leclercq believes that in future urban routing could be more prescriptive, based on centralized or decentralized guidance provided to vehicles by road operators. “This could help us to better distribute traffic over a city’s network,” he says. “Another option is to modify mobility demand patterns by changing departure times or mode of transportation, using pricing or incentive schemes.” The wider aim in this research is to design new tools and traffic management strategies, which could eventually be applied in cities to alleviate congestion problems. Beyond the term of the MAGnUM project, Professor Leclercq plans to work actively with transport authorities to conduct field experiments, although at this stage the priority is developing the models. “In terms of the models we are quite well advanced, and now we starting to focus more on the development of innovative traffic management strategies,” he says.

Results of perimeter control of region 3 in total network travel time - Lyon North network.

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A new perspective on sustainability A radically different approach to the use of land, energy and materials will be required if we are to build a more sustainable society, yet modern lifestyles often revolve around established patterns of resource use. The MAT_STOCKS project aims to build detailed databases of material stocks and services and gain new insights into patterns of resource use, as Helmut Haberl explains. Our everyday lives often revolve around our use of biophysical resources, namely energy, materials and land, as we drive cars, build houses and develop new consumer products. The goal of meeting sustainability targets will require significant changes in the way we use these resources, a topic at the heart of the MAT_STOCKS project, an ERC Advanced Grant project carried out at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. “Scientists have used a variety of data to create a biophysical representation of the economic process,” says Professor Helmut Haberl. As the project’s Principal Investigator, he distinguishes between material stocks, flows and services to build a more detailed picture of society’s use of biophysical resources. “A stock is something that is measurable at a certain point in time, while a flow is measured over a longer period,” he outlines. A building is part of society’s material stocks for example, while the resources used when erecting it are flows. Material stocks like houses and roads provide vital services to society, such as shelter and transport, and create structures which we all use in our daily lives. “Through building stocks, societies establish certain patterns of resource use,” says Haberl. Many commuters rely on the roads and railways for their daily journey into work for example, yet entirely different stocks may be needed if sustainability targets are

to be met, an issue central to Haberl’s work. “We aim to highlight the importance of the accumulation of material stocks in society, like buildings, infrastructures and car fleets, in terms of meeting sustainability targets,” he explains. “Currently we lack a clear basis to systematically address it.”

We aim to highlight the importance of the accumulation of material stocks in society, like buildings, infrastructures and car fleets, in terms of meeting sustainability targets. The MAT-STOCKS project Researchers from both the social and natural sciences are working together in the project to build databases of material stocks and their services across the world, which will then provide a basis for analysis of progress towards a more sustainable society. The MAT_STOCKS team uses economic data and flow analysis to build a more detailed picture. Haberl: “We are working with material in-flows, dividing them up into different uses, and looking at the lifetimes of these materials.” The aim is to help establish a much broader perspective on eco-efficiency. “At the moment, eco-efficiency is usually only measured in the flow of physical resources, divided by GDP,” explains Haberl. “Through analysing this stock-flow-service nexus, we want to help establish a broader picture, also taking into account the level of material stocks.”

Researchers in the project aim to gain new insights into eco-efficiency through analysis of the stock-flow-services nexus.

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The project’s work could also help researchers understand the density of human activity across different parts of the world. Currently night-time lights are commonly used as a proxy to measure human activity, as the data is readily available and relatively easy to measure. “Spatially explicit representations

of population density or economic activity are often based on night-time lights,” says Haberl. Part of the project involves gathering data on road networks and buildings, which can provide a more effective proxy for economic activities and environmental impacts. “Our proposition is that data on societal material stocks like infrastructures and buildings are much better proxies for economic activity than night-time lights. These data will be used to map the spatial distribution of many key processes through which human activities and the earth system are entangled,” he says.

MAT_STOCKS Understanding the Role of Material Stock Patterns for the Transformation to a Sustainable Society a.o. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Helmut Haberl Institute of Social Ecology University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna Schottenfeldgasse 29, 1070 Vienna, Austria T: +43 1 47654-73714 E: helmut.haberl@boku.ac.at W: http://matstocks.boku.ac.at W: https://boku.ac.at/wiso/sec

Helmut Haberl is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Ecology, part of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. His research interests include society’s energetic metabolism, climate change and integrated land system science.

Quantum states for tomorrow’s materials It has become evident over recent years that some quantum many-body systems do not thermalise when excited by laser pulses, which raises new questions around their behaviour and opens new opportunities. We spoke to Professor Dmitry Abanin about his work in investigating the behaviour of these systems and developing new theoretical tools to describe them. It has long

been thought that complex physical systems thermalise when they are initialized in a non-equilibrium state, meaning that they reach a state of thermal equilibrium, which can be described using statistical physics methods. For example, the temperature of a cup of coffee will change when milk is mixed in, before settling into a more stable state. “There will be some exchange of energy between different sub-systems and then the system will reach a thermal equilibrium,” says Dmitry Abanin, Professor of Physics at the University of Geneva. However, over recent years it has become clear that certain quantum many-body systems in fact do not behave in this way, raising new questions. “There is a whole world that we need to understand beyond conventional statistical physics,” says Professor Abanin.

Quantum many-body systems This area forms a central part of Professor Abanin’s agenda in a new project based at the University of Geneva, in which researchers aim to probe deeper into the behaviour of quantum many-body systems, building on experimental data. These systems are defined quite broadly within the project, with researchers looking at a wide variety of systems. “Let’s say there are 1020 electrons in a system, which all interact strongly with atoms through Coulomb interaction. This is a many-body system which can lead to a full range of different behaviours,” outlines Professor Abanin. “The focus in this project is on better understanding how to control many-body states, and on investigating what new, essentially quantum phenomena we can get when we disrupt the equilibrium of a system.” The primary interest here lies in the states of matter which can arise when a system is stirred out of equilibrium, so when it does not thermalise. Researchers in the project aim to develop detailed descriptions of these many-body systems when they have been excited, for example by a laser or some other method. “If these systems don’t reach

(top left) A cloud of atoms can be controlled by lasers, realizing a tunable quantum many-body system. (top right) In traditional systems, a non-equilibrium state (with non-uniform density of particles) relaxes to thermal equilibrium state described by statistical mechanics. (bottom left) This project studies systems which do not thermalize, and are outside the realm of statistical mechanics. (bottom right) Experimental system of interest: Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) spins in diamond. Their entangled states may be used to build better sensors.

thermal equilibrium, how do they behave?” asks Professor Abanin. Part of this work involves developing theories to describe the behaviour of many-body systems, with theorists and experimentalists working closely together. “As theorists we may predict something, then the experimentalists work on it. Or experimentalists may see something unusual, then we come up with a theory to explain it. Synergy between theory and experiment is essential in this field,” explains Professor Abanin. A number of new tools have been developed over recent years to make very controllable quantum systems, such as cold atoms, opening up new possibilities in this area of research. These quantum optics tools enable researchers to put particles in interesting initial states outside of their equilibrium, from which new insights can then be drawn. “You put the particles in an initial state, and then you let them interact and evolve,” explains Professor Abanin. “With cold atom systems there are typically enough particles to see the

most interesting phenomena that can stem from the collective interactions between them. With modern experimental techniques, it is possible to control how some of the particles interact, and to tune the properties of the lattice.” The aim is to achieve a greater degree of control over these many-body systems, which will enable researchers to study interesting phenomena like high-temperature superconductivity in greater detail. A lot of computational resources are required to describe these quantum many-body systems however. “They work differently to classical systems,” stresses Professor Abanin. One of the many body systems that Professor Abanin and his colleagues are working with is black diamond, which hosts degrees of freedom that may serve as quantum bits. “These are nitrogen vacancy spins, which are very coherent and can be controlled,” he continues. “For example, I might want to engineer an entangled state of the spins, in order to measure the magnetic field very precisely.”

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Materials development By building a deeper picture of the behaviour of many-body systems, researchers hope to lay the foundations for the development of new materials with interesting properties in future. In the long-term, Professor Abanin plans to apply what has been learned about systems out of equilibrium to help develop materials with specific properties. “We want to see whether by nudging a many-body state out of equilibrium, we can achieve certain desired properties,” he explains. This is a fast-moving area, and recent experimental breakthroughs could open up new avenues of investigation. “A new class of systems which do not thermalise was recently discovered, and in time we hope to have a much better understanding of the underlying mechanisms,” says Professor Abanin.

able to do certain useful things, like quantum computing and sensing.” A deeper understanding of the quantum physics of many-body systems is an essential step towards realising this potential, a point which underlines the wider relevance of Professor Abanin’s research. While a lot of investment and resources have been poured into research in areas like quantum computing, Professor Abanin says more work is required to translate this into tangible progress. “A much better understanding of the quantum physics of many-body systems is really an essential building block before we can truly realise the potential of these systems,” he stresses. “There’s been a lot of progress in the development of quantum technologies, but it’s not yet clear how to build further on these foundations in the most fruitful way.”

The focus in this project is on better understanding how to efficiently control many-body states, and on investigating what new types of unique phenomena we can get when we disrupt the equilibrium of a system. This research holds important implications for materials science, providing the foundations on which future development will be based. For his part, Professor Abanin plans to continue investigating these many-body states in future, work which will help researchers build a deeper understanding of certain interesting phenomena. “One of the reasons why people are interested in these quantum systems is because they open a window into probing fundamental scenarios that we couldn’t probe before,” he explains. “A second major reason why people are interested in these quantum systems is the expectation that they will be

This is a challenge for both theorists and experimentalists, and close collaboration will be central to efforts to harness the potential of non-equilibrium quantum many-body states. It’s possible to run experiments today with a much higher degree of control, allowing researchers to probe theoretical predictions much quicker than previously, and Professor Abanin hopes the project’s work will yield some exciting results over the coming years. “I’m hoping that we will have some new results in terms of better understanding the potential applications of a non-thermalising state. This is a very exciting time in research,” he says. The project team

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Ergodicity breaking and non-equilibrium quantum many-body states Project Objectives

The project aims to develop a theoretical framework for non-equilibrium quantum systems which are studied experimentally in systems such as cold atoms. Based on our recent work, we will focus on systems which do not thermalize as they can host unique phenomena not possible in equilibrium. This research is expected to guide efforts to control many-body states, with potential applications in quantum computing and material design.

Project Funding

This project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Project start date: October 1, 2019

Project Partners

Dr. Michele Filippone, Dr. Louk Rademaker (Ambizione Fellows, University of Geneva)

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Prof Dmitry Abanin University of Geneva UNIGE Department of Theoretical Physics 24 quai Ernest-Ansermet, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland T: +41 22 379 631 E: Dmitry.Abanin@unige.ch W: https://www.unige.ch/sciences/ physique/theorique/en/research/

Professor Dmitry Abanin

Prof. Abanin received PhD from MIT in 2008, followed by a fellowship at Princeton University. He joined University of Geneva as a professor of physics in 2015. He theoretically studied quantum twodimensional materials such as graphene. His current research focuses on unique phenomena found in non-equilibrium quantum systems not described by statistical mechanics.

How silk was brought to the masses The Swiss silk industry grew rapidly over the nineteenth century, as demand for the luxury product increased both in Europe and the US. The flexibility of the design process was central to the industry’s growth, enabling manufacturers to respond rapidly to changing fashions and produce textiles that consumers wanted to buy, as Denise Ruisinger and Professor Alexis Schwarzenbach explain. The Swiss silk industry was located in the Canton of Zurich. In the nineteenth century it became the second most important centre for silk textiles after Lyon in France. A central challenge for silk manufacturers was to produce fashionable and desirable goods, a topic at the heart of Denise Ruisinger’s research, which is carried out in a cooperative project between ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. “I’m looking at the strategies the Zurich silk manufacturers employed to tackle the uncertainties inherent in the fashion industry,” she explains. This research involves Ruisinger analysing material from archives and museums to build a fuller picture of the design processes at work in the period between 1880-1914, a time when new technologies were being applied in manufacturing. “Previously textiles had been woven on handlooms by people working in their homes. In the later part of the nineteenth century more companies started to produce textiles in factories using power looms,” says Alexis Schwarzenbach, Professor of Design History at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, who supervises this PhD project. Mechanization in silk weaving came relatively late in comparison to other textiles like cotton, a much rougher and cheaper product. Silk by contrast had historically been a luxury, high-fashion product worn only by a relatively narrow section of society. But as the industrial revolution progressed it became more widely available. “In 1800 only the highest social classes would have been able to have silk gowns, but by 1900 even people with small budgets were able to afford silk garments,” outlines Professor Schwarzenbach.

The Swiss silk industry grew over the period to meet increasing demand; while the development of new technologies played an important part in this process, Professor Schwarzenbach says other factors were also involved. “It’s not just machines making silks cheaper, it’s also about producing goods that appeal to consumers, about the right choice of colours and patterns,” he stresses. “We are looking at the people who were involved in the design process. Design, as we understand it, is not a product, it’s a process.” This process has evolved over time, as new technologies have emerged that enabled manufacturers to work more efficiently and effectively. With mechanical looms, replaceable punch cards were used to produce patterns, so manufacturers could develop extensive design archives, on the basis of which they could both recreate successful designs and also draw inspiration for new ones. “If a manufacturer had these cards made then they could use them over and over again if they chose. The cards and accompanying sketches and point paper draughts were given the same number and put into storage. The

different designs were made easily and readily accessible,” outlines Ruisinger. Employees also needed training in how to operate new machinery, another important aspect of Ruisinger’s research. “A school was established to provide training and help personnel learn about new technology,” she continues. “Manufacturers soon realised that they would also benefit from deeper knowledge about fashion and design. The school management reacted to this need and integrated topics like drawing, sketching, colour theory and colour combination into their courses.”

Fashion trends The rapidly evolving nature of the commercial marketplace meant manufacturers needed to be flexible and adaptable if they were to thrive. Textiles had to be in line with contemporary tastes if they were to sell in the various markets the products were exported to, so it was important for manufacturers to understand what patterns and colours were en vogue. “We’re investigating the ways in which manufacturers gathered information about the market, to identify what was fashionable at the time and what was going to be fashionable in future. They had different ways of retrieving that information from Paris and other fashion centres like New York,” says Professor Schwarzenbach. This often meant employing agents in major fashion centres, who would then report back on the latest trends in terms of textures, patterns and fashionable colours, while professional agencies were another important source of information. “Almost all manufacturers subscribed to Paris-based pattern services and seasonal colour cards to find out what was and would be - in demand,” says Ruisinger.

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FLEXIBILITY AND DESIGN Flexibility and Design. A History of Technology and Fashion in the Swiss Silk Industry 1880-1914 Project Objectives

The main aim of the project is to find out about the design processes in the Swiss Silk industry by taking the relationship between fashion, design and technology into account. By doing so it explores a chapter in Swiss economic history which has been widely neglected by historians so far.

Project Funding

The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Project Partners

• ETH Zürich, Professur für Technikgeschichte

Contact Details

Colour card of the Chambre syndicale de teinturiers de Lyon, autumn 1913, circulated by the Weidman dye-works, Thalwil, Switzerland. Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Art and Design WEID_SM_00002_00 - WEID_ SM_00002_06. © 2019 Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Art and Design.

This in a way represents an early form of what we would now call market research, although at the time marketing wasn’t developed yet as a tool to sell consumer goods. There was enormous demand for information from manufacturers; Professor Schwarzenbach says colour was a particularly vital consideration. “Fashion is extremely colour-dependent, and minute differences in colour can change the effect completely, so it was important to know what kinds of colours were fashionable. That was very significant, even more so than the pattern itself,” he stresses. As silk became

from shoes to automobiles,” points out Professor Schwarzenbach. Much of the current commercial thinking around the marketing and development of consumer goods has its roots in this period, and while fashion is an inherently changeable industry, Professor Schwarzenbach says manufacturers devoted a lot of energy to preparing for the future. “It is always difficult to make reasoned decisions about the future. From our research on the Swiss silk industry we can see that already in the 19th century this challenge was addressed in a surprisingly sophisticated way,” he continues.

We’re investigating the ways in which manufacturers gathered information about the market, to identify what was fashionable at the time and what was going to be fashionable in future. They had different ways of retrieving that information from Paris and other fashion centres like New York. more widely available to a broader range of consumers over the latter part of the nineteenth century, it became increasingly important for manufacturers to understand consumer demand, and this shaped the evolution of the industry. “Different professions associated with the fashion industry, like marketing or trend scouting, have their roots during that time,” outlines Ruisinger. Many manufacturers in other industries faced similar challenges, particularly around adapting to changing tastes and fashions. A number of processes that were developed in this period are at the heart of marketing efforts today, so the project’s work holds broader relevance in terms of understanding how design processes interacted and evolved. “Design processes are involved in almost all industries producing consumer goods,

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The fashion industry today still puts a lot of emphasis on understanding and shaping the market, for example through Instagram influencers and maintaining a presence on social media. While these techniques of course were not available to nineteenth century silk manufacturers, they were fully aware of the importance of representation and publicity. “Zurich silk manufacturers mainly sold to whole sale businesses and department stores in Europe and the US. While some of them advertised their products in trade journals, great emphasis was placed on representation: they rented conspicuous office space in prime locations in Paris, London and New York and devised elegant pattern books showcasing their products,” explains Ruisinger. “It was a time when a lot of the thinking behind industries like marketing began.”

Prof. Dr. Alexis Schwarzenbach Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts T: +41 41 248 62 13 E: alexis.schwarzenbach@hslu.ch W: https://www.hslu.ch/en/lucerneuniversity-of-applied-sciences-and-arts/ research/projects/detail/?pid=2184 Denise Ruisinger ETH Zürich, Professur für Technikgeschichte T: +41 44 632 75 08 E: denise.ruisinger@history.gess.ethz.ch W: https://ethz.ch/en.html Denise Ruisinger: In einem Musterbuch lesen. Die Verwaltung des industriellen Textildesigns in der Zürcher Seidenindustrie um 1900. In: Traverse 26 (1) 2019, 161 – 172.

Alexis Schwarzenbach

Denise Ruisinger

Alexis Schwarzenbach read Modern History at Balliol College in Oxford and did his PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. Since 2015 he is professor for design history at the School of Art & Design, a department of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Denise Ruisinger is the doctoral candidate in the collaborative project „Flexibility and Design“ between ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Enhanced Reality with Holographic Technology

The concept of creating 3D moving projections has been around a long time. Who can forget that iconic holographic projection from R2D2 of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars film, back in 1977? The idea of holographic projectors has defined the look of the future in movies ever since, and maybe that inspiration is why innovators have made the technology a reality. We ask, will we soon see holograms in our homes, schools and workplaces? By Richard Forsyth

olographic technology is here, and it just might be about to go big. There are hologram projectors and innovations on the market today and industry forecasters have a keen eye on the space. It’s predicted to have a 24% compound annual growth rate during the forecast period of 2019-2024, according to Research and Markets. Holographic projection has been interpreted in different ways by different companies. For example, there is augmented reality (AR), where a person wears special ‘goggles’ or ‘sunglasses’ to perceive 3D imagery in their surroundings, all the way to the other end of the spectrum, where you can see with the naked eye, a true full colour three-dimensional moving image. Tech giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft are looking at AR very seriously but it’s the strength of diversity in innovation for bringing holograms to market, that means so many variations of this idea are now emerging. Consider there are over 3 billion augmented reality devices currently in use and in recent years we have witnessed incredible innovations in real-time holographic projection that have ‘wowed’ audiences in different countries around the world. Whilst still finding its feet in terms of consumer adoption, the commercial potential for holographic projection technology remains enormous.

Immersive Teaching Whilst it’s likely most people associate the idea of holographic technology purely for TV and video games purposes, holographic tech is not just for entertainment. It’s showing great potential in a range of sectors. One area that is showing increasing promise, is the educational sector. For instance, students in a Canberra school in Australia were eager test subjects for educational holographic lessons using augmented reality goggles. The specially adapted lessons enabled them to walk through 3,000 year old buildings, a class room sized rendering of the solar system, and see 3D molecules as well as the inner workings of the human body – all up close and personal. This kind of experiential holographic application can enable users to interact directly and intuitively with the holographic imagery they see. Your hands become tools to interact with the imagery, so you can make objects bigger or smaller, shift them around or open them up, driving all kinds of possibilities for learning, organising and experimenting. Microsoft’s HoloLens is such a device. HoloLens uses a technique called mixed reality. Mixed reality can combine holographic images with data and graphical representations

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which are then mixed into real-world environments. Another pioneer of mixed reality is a Russian company called HoloGroup. For educational uses, they’ve developed lessons in physics, geology, biology and chemistry, complete with holographic professors, tests and practical laboratory tasks. In many traditional lessons the format of learning is listening, reading or looking at a whiteboard. The idea that you engage all your senses to truly investigate and explore subjects from the inside out can make learning so much more memorable. Better to show a pupil what you are teaching than simply tell them about it. Lessons and lectures need never be boring again!

Healthcare and War Holographic projection and interaction can also be useful in healthcare settings, for doctors or surgeons to investigate conditions. This was realised by RealView Imaging, an Israeli StartUp which is focusing on interactive holograms in medical imaging applications. It’s recently completed the world’s first in-human clinical trials which evaluate live 3D holographic imaging in intervention cardiology. Military applications have also been embraced by governments. In 2018, Microsoft were awarded a 480 million US dollar contract to supply 100,000 HoloLens devices to the US army to be used for training and also in real combat. As the Government statement said, this was to ‘increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy. Augmented reality technology will provide troops with more and better information to make decisions.’ It’s not a stand-alone case either, the government in Israel has also used HoloLens for training soldiers for battle.

Pushing the Boundaries The boundaries of possibility with holographic tech are constantly being expanded. A company called Euclideon Holographics has made a name for itself with a holographic table and now a holographic room (Star Trek fans will understand this one) where the room can become a larger environment with holographic projection. These innovations use some of the most powerful rendering technology on the planet. The technology works out the position of trillions of atoms of light in relation with the users’ viewpoints. These inventions were seen as having potential for design application and also for selling ‘real estate’. Currently, city developments are presented as small real 3D models, but the Euclideon solutions would make the interactive potential so much more interesting, realistic and

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give truer perspectives. The company also has video games in mind, with a plan to roll-out a chain of hologram or ‘Holoverse’ gaming arcades around the world. However, these holographic projectors, clever and innovative as they are, still demand the viewers use eyewear, if less cumbersome than many of the usual goggles and headsets on the market. It is important to note, there is a recognised challenge for the wider mass market with wearing eyewear, especially heavy and unsightly AR goggles, as the physical inconvenience will make it less appealing for a lot of people. This has been a stumbling block for AR for a while. Ideally, we want to ditch clumsy goggles or sunglasses and just ‘see’ the hologram before us, without the need for any accessories.

Real Life, Real Time and Simply Real Beyond HoloLens, there are several impressive holographic technologies causing a stir at technology shows and in the media. Take The Hypersvn Wall, which was a highlight at the 2018 CES event in Las Vegas. It can create HD images more than 3 metres tall that float midair. Or there is an innovation in South Korea which offers a ‘tabletop’ holographic projection that can be viewed simultaneously in 360 degrees. It relies on high power lasers and a high-speed rotating display.

On a cautionary note, we must also consider that like the electric car industry, it’s not just the product itself that counts for a successful roll-out, it’s the infrastructure to support it.

A very promising hologram device is called the Holus, created by H+ Technology. This device is designed so the family or friends sit around it. One advantage of this is to reverse the way technology is isolating us, ‘sucking us in’ to phones and screens. The device looks like a box with a transparent pyramid inside and in the pyramid, you see the animated holograms. Multiple people can gather around it. It’s been described as being able to provide ‘campfire’ moments, to bring people together, to play hologram based video games, for example. One of the most incredible innovations and applications of hologram technology was seen in electoral campaigning. Specifically, as a candidate for prime minister in the Indian election in 2012, Narenda Modi pulled together a sizable team numbering hundreds of technologists, camera and sound experts, so he could address 90 rallies, across the expanse of India, live as a holographic projection of himself. Similar technology had been used by the late Hip-Hop artist, Tupac Shakur in Coachella annual music and arts festival. It was rumoured to have costed hundreds of thousands of dollars to pull it off. And there-in lies the problem of the most impressive technology for holograms to date, the high price tag. For roll-out into our living rooms and offices the innovation needs significant work in reducing costs. Even the more basic goggle-based augmented holographic technology is discouragingly expensive kit for the average consumer. Yet, there is hope that radical solutions can address this. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) created a holographic projector. The experiment was to see how holographic TV might be possible and look. They used a 46-inch TV laid flat and positioned an acrylic pyramid structure on top of the screen in the centre of the TV. The BBC adapted some natural history footage in their extensive archives to use for the device and the results were spellbinding – a suspended moving image set inside the acrylic pyramid. Moving creatures like jellyfish, butterflies or rendered dinosaurs would entrance viewers, appearing like phantoms of reality within the transparent structure. What is hopeful about this product concept is that it would not need to cost a fortune. The technology is very common and uncomplicated in relation to other holographic technology. Perhaps holographic table TV could be closer to roll-out than we imagine?

DIY Holographic TV A remarkably easy method for creating holograms on your smartphone, very similar in concept to the BBC’s device, is now available

One of the most incredible innovations and applications of hologram technology was seen in electoral campaigning.

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for all, via a set of instructions on the internet, pushed out in multiple places by influencers. Just google ‘how to make 3D hologram – No glasses’ and you’ll find instructions that can convert your smart phone into a convincing holographic projector. You don’t need anything more advanced than kindergarten crafting skills, and nothing more sophisticated than an old transparent CD case and some glue. The task involves cutting a CD case into four sections and gluing them together into a simple 3D pyramid-like structure, just like a mini version of the BBC’s projector. The specially adapted hologram footage is now freely available on the internet so when you place your structure on your phone’s screen it will project those specially created 2D films, into a convincing 3D holographic format. It’s stupefying how simple this is and it works beautifully. It’s also free, although you can buy a pre-made version of this small structure for a few pounds or euros if you can’t be bothered to make it. It’s certainly not a huge step to envisage mass-manufacturing and distributing various sized versions of this. But, of course, it’s not just about the technology, it’s about the service, the streaming and the applications. On a cautionary note, we must also consider that like the electric car industry, it’s not just the product itself that counts for a successful roll-out, it’s the infrastructure to support it. In this case, holographic broadcasting, software and applications need serious consideration and investment if we are to adopt holograms as our new media. Holographic projection is certainly being used by some organisations that see it’s huge potential but whether it will become a household media is still not certain. It maybe a little early for that but there is no denying the appeal, the excitement and the limitless application that is possible with mixed reality and holographic imagery.

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Can leopards change

their spots?

Evidence suggests that personality traits change and evolve throughout adulthood, but is it possible to modify those traits over relatively short time periods? Could this open up avenues to help improve public health? Professor Mathias Allemand tells us about his work in testing a digital coaching intervention to modify personality traits. A child’s personality

often becomes evident quite early in life, and continues to develop over time as they begin to socialise with their peers and progress through formal education. While some aspects of our personalities are thought to be formed relatively early and remain relatively stable over the entire lifespan, evidence suggests that personality traits can evolve during adulthood. A personality trait in this sense is distinct from an individual’s personal habits, or the different emotional states that they may experience in their daily life. Personality traits can be broadly thought of as relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours, in contrast to emotional states, which are typically more transient and emerge in response to specific situations. There is huge scope for individual variation in these traits, which are typically organised within the framework of the ‘Big 5’ personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Each of us has a different profile in terms of these traits, and they go a long way to informing our personalities and how we react to different situations. These traits have a significant influence on our professional and personal lives, and also how we perceive ourselves. An individual who is prone to neuroticism may be more likely to experience anxiety and depression for example, while those with a higher degree of

extraversion during adolescence may be more successful in forming intimate relationships. An individual with particularly marked traits or a personality disorder of some kind may require clinical interventions. While the majority of the population do not need this kind of treatment, some people may nevertheless want to modify certain personality traits, whether for personal, professional or health reasons.

such as excessive drinking or smoking. These are patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that many people find particularly hard to shake, even though it is well-established that they are detrimental to our physical health. While these types of behaviours and experiences may be deeply entrenched, recent studies suggest that it is possible to intervene and change them, a topic that Professor Allemand and his colleagues

While some aspects of our personalities are thought to be formed relatively early and remain stable over the entire lifespan, evidence suggests that personality traits can change. Intentional personality change This is a topic central to the research by Professor Mathias Allemand and Mirjam Stieger (PhD student in the project and now postdoc at Brandeis University). Based at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Professor Allemand is the Principal Investigator of an interdisciplinary research project looking to assess the effectiveness of a digital coaching intervention which aims to help change certain personality traits in a desired direction. The study took place over a three-month period, in which the effectiveness of this nonclinical coaching intervention was assessed. The participants in Professor Allemand’s study are people who have expressed a desire to change a personality trait that may be linked to a specific aspect of their behaviour,

are now exploring in greater depth. This is not a well-established area of research and there is no clear precedent on which to build, so it is essential to first identify a conceptual framework on which such interventions could be based. Together with his colleague Professor Christoph Flückiger from the University of Zurich, Professor Allemand has put forward a heuristic framework for intentional personality change interventions. A key part of this is discrepancy awareness, enabling people to see the difference between what they are now and what they want to be. Alongside reflecting on their own outlook, it’s also important that people who want to change certain personality traits have the opportunity to put new ideas into practice, to embed them in their daily habits and behaviours.

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The PEACH app and its components.

CHANGING PERSONALITY TRAITS: Testing the Efficacy of a Mobile Technology-Based Intervention Project Objectives

MobileCoach platform The digital coaching intervention was developed in collaboration with Professor Tobias Kowatsch from the University of St. Gallen and Dominik Rüegger (PhD student in the project) from ETH Zurich. The MobileCoach platform was central to these collaborative efforts. An open source behavioural intervention platform, MobileCoach provides the foundations for fully automated digital interventions, tailored to the needs of the individual and their own outlook. In the case of the intentional personality change project, a smartphone application called PEACH (PErsonality coACH) was developed. This application is designed to intervene at points when the individual involved in the study needs support, such as when they’re on the verge of displaying a particular trait that they’re trying to control. A conversational agent engages with participants and encourages them to change their behaviour in the direction they desire. The effectiveness of these different interventions may depend to a degree on the participant’s outlook, so the aim is to build on the available data to provide individualised messages that motivate that individual to stay the course. Specific micro-interventions help individuals to modify or change trait-related experiences and behaviors in real-life situations by suggesting behavioural and self-reflection tasks, or by providing psychoeducative videoclips and individualized feedback. This could help participants to sustain personality trait changes over the longerterm, even to a point where they become part of their everyday life, in the process reducing the chance of reverting to their old ways. The impact of this is potentially profound, as positive personality changes can help people achieve greater success at work, and to lead more healthy and fulfilling lives.

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A smartphone-based approach to personality trait change is technically scalable and the threshold for its wider application is quite low, so should it prove effective then it could be used more widely. Such an approach could reach large numbers of people outside clinical settings, leading to wider social, health and economic benefits. This is not the immediate priority in the project however, and the focus for now is on assessing the efficacy of the digital coaching intervention with PEACH in terms of its impact on the group of about 1,500 individuals who downloaded the app and completed the initial assessment. Of this group, more than 500 stayed until the end of the three-month period, which is remarkable for a digital intervention without face-to-face interactions. The participants in the study completed a follow-up assessment three months after the end of the study, from which Professor Allemand and his colleagues hope to draw deeper insights. Researchers will both examine the effectiveness of the approach at the conclusion of the study, then also follow up on that initial work three months later. This could help lay the foundations for more tailored personality trait interventions in future, yet there is still much to learn in the field of psychology and Professor Allemand maintains a deep interest in the foundations of personality traits, including their formation, development, and the mechanisms by which they can be changed or modified. One strand of his research involves looking at the development of self-control during adolescence, and its importance to later professional success and emotional fulfilment, and there are many other research avenues to explore. This type of exploratory work will remain an important part of Professor Allemand’s research agenda, alongside building on earlier findings.

The primary objective in the research project is to assess the effectiveness of a mobile technologybased intervention called MobileCoach in helping people to change certain personality traits. These traits could be related to certain habits that people have expressed a desire to shed, such as excessive drinking or smoking, whether for health or professional reasons. This research challenges the idea that certain aspects of our personality become more fixed as we grow older and cannot be changed through technological interventions. A group of around 500 people have been assessed over the course of the project, giving researchers a solid foundation on which to draw wider insights. The intervention approach itself is scalable, so could be applied more widely if it proves to be effective, potentially opening up new means of managing public health.

Project Funding

Funding agency: Swiss National Science Foundation (No. 162724)

Project Partners

• E TH Zurich, Center for Digital Health Interventions, Chair of Information Management, • University of Zurich, Psychological Interventions and Psychotherapy, •U niversity of St. Gallen, Center for Digital Health Interventions, Institute of Technology Management

Contact Details

Prof. Dr. Mathias Allemand, Assistant Professor Differenzielle Gesundheitsforschung des Alterns Universität Zürich, Psychologisches Institut & UFSP „Dynamik Gesunden Alterns“ Andreasstrasse 15 CH-8050 Zurich Schweiz T: +41 44 635 34 12 E: m.allemand@psychologie.uzh.ch W: www.psychologie.uzh.ch/de/diffges W: www.dynage.uzh.ch W: www.personalitycoach.ch W: https://youtu.be/l9ab7etQYPg Prof. Dr. Mathias Allemand

Dr. Mathias Allemand is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Zurich, where he heads a research group investigating differential healthy aging. His main research interests lie in personality dynamics, development and assessment, as well as in personality-informed interventions.

Redefining the experience of reading Many of us think of reading as being a silent and inward act of mental interpretation, where the reader sits still, scans a page and absorbs information, yet recent studies suggest it’s important to also consider how we use the body. Dr Sarah Bro Trasmundi is conducting a cognitive ethnography study into how students read. The current theoretical

models of reading are primarily built on the idea that all of us have an encoding and decoding system within the brain, which enables us to understand and interpret the meaning of a text. However, recent pilot studies suggest that this doesn’t cover the full picture of how we read, a topic at the heart of Dr Trasmundi’s research. “We believe that we need to investigate reading very differently and see how the body is involved in the process of reading,” she outlines. This means looking at reading as an embodied activity, where different factors need to be considered in terms of assessing the effectiveness of an individual’s approach to reading. “People may organise their environment and use their body in a particular way in reading, so we need to investigate how the body has an impact,” explains Dr Trasmundi. “This is both in terms of how we scaffold the activity, and also how we make sense of it and experience the whole action of reading.”

The study focuses on how reading on paper differs from reading on screen.

What is reading? This research is built on the idea that cognition is distributed rather than being a purely internal and brain-bound phenomenon. While traditionally reading has been understood as a silent, mental process used to interpret ‘text’, Dr Trasmundi says this is just one of the actions involved in reading. “We use hands to fetch the text, fingers to turn the pages or touch the keyboard, the voice to bring forth aesthetic and rhythmic flow and, as we experience the results, we write notes, we draw, imagine sounds, use visible expression and give structure to information. Therefore, much of what we do is future-oriented,” she says. These strategies can help people to focus on challenging or difficult parts of the text, whether it’s on paper or in digital form, and prevent their attention from wandering. “The easy way out when you get to a difficult passage of text is to do something else, but when people read aloud, they are unable to think of other things. So this form of reading helps you to focus your attention,” continues Dr Trasmundi. “We can see that in difficult passages some people rely much more on

Pictures taken during vivid discussions in the core research group.

A student organises his working space before he starts reading.

the materials available and become more creative. They may start to use a ruler, to take more notes, or to read aloud.” Evidence suggests that those individuals who do become more animated and embodied when reading a challenging passage are more effective at dealing with it than those who remain more passive, a topic central to Dr Trasmundi’s research. Based at the University of Southern Denmark, Dr Trasmundi is conducting a research study which brings together researchers from languages and cognitive sciences to investigate reading processes among social education students using cognitive ethnography methods. “One thing we are doing is video recording students when they read. So we can see when they become frustrated and find it difficult to move on,” she outlines. One important aim in the study is to identify what precedes this. “What characterises phases in the reading where students find it difficult? What happens as they struggle?” continues Dr Trasmundi. “We also have physiological measures together with the video recordings. By using physiological measures we can determine the correlation between observational changes in the student’s reading behavior and physiological alterations. So, we investigate how a student’s display of emotional changes such as frustration, relief or laughter is interdependent with physiological alterations, and how such results relate to the function of the overall reading process.” From a recent pilot study Dr Trasmundi conducted, it is clear that the students find it easier to manipulate printed texts than digital ones. Empirically, this was observed as a more tool-based and richer embodied engagement with printed texts, which points towards how students can learn to read more effectively. “We need insight into how rich embodiment can be used as a strategy – for instance to overcome obstacles during reading – as well as informed information about when different media are appropriate for various reading tasks,” argues Dr Trasmundi. The literature is scarce when it comes to explaining how and when students apply different embodied strategies – such as

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voicing, drawing, note-taking, touching, gesturing, underlining etc. – to give the text a different materiality or ‘life’ and what function this has for the reading experience and learning outcome respectively. Also, Dr Trasmundi mentions that negative reading experiences are more likely to occur when a student is narrowly focused on gaining information from the text rather than engaging with it more creatively. This idea of reading as a kind of constrained activity, as a means of getting the information required to pass an exam for example, is another topic of interest to Dr Trasmundi. “We need to better understand how students constrain their reading due to a very narrow understanding of what it is and how they are supposed to read,” she says. As students progress through the education system exam pressure increases, and students need to learn material from books if they want to be successful, yet this does not preclude students from engaging creatively with books. “There’s a balance to be struck there,” argues Dr Trasmundi. “Students may think that there is one right way to read – to find the meaning in a text and be able to memorise as much as possible. However, the best students are actually able to do more than just understanding the meaning of a text on a very literal level.”

HOW DO UNIVERSITY COLLEGE STUDENTS READ? Project Objectives

In the ACE-Lab the reading group continuously discusses and evaluates the incoming data and results.

Reading practices This is an important issue in terms of the project’s wider agenda, with the aim being to help students establish more efficient reading practices, while this research could also hold relevance to teaching right down to primary level. Young children generally love stories and learning to read, yet this enjoyment gradually seeps away as they get older. “Something goes wrong there, when we take away creativity in reading practices. For example, there was a study looking at a 5-year old child who had started to read and was doing well. 6 years later it seemed like he had got worse - there were pauses and mistakes when he read,” says Dr Trasmundi. “However, when this was investigated in more depth, it was found that this was because he was anticipating what the story was about, using his real-life experience. These mistakes may occur because they are being

Is there a phase in reading where students find it difficult? What happens as they struggle? We have physiological measures together with the video recordings. So we can correlate physiological data with video observations. The students will be observed over the course of a year during the study, with researchers looking to investigate whether students adapt their strategies to deal with reading challenges in different contexts. This involves following students during preparatory, background reading, in groups where they discuss texts with their peers, and then in class as well. This work holds important implications in terms of reducing the high drop-out rate among social education students, an issue of which Dr Trasmundi is well aware. “It is a problem if we lose someone from their studies because they are unable to establish efficient reading practices. This may be not because they lack talent or interest in a certain theme or topic, but because we have expectations about what they should do when they read,” she continues. “The problem is more due to our misunderstanding of what reading is, rather than their talent or actual reading skills.”

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creative and trying to work with the text and may have less to do with their actual reading skills.” A teacher may correct a student in this situation, with the aim of encouraging them to focus on accurate reading aloud, which could have a negative impact on the child’s enjoyment. While encoding and decoding information are of course central to reading, Dr Trasmundi believes that it’s important to also consider the creative processes going on beyond that. “It’s really important that we integrate that knowledge into the theory and models of language and reading,” she stresses. A second aim is to build a deeper understanding of why particular groups of people struggle with reading. “What’s really going on there? Is reading always a struggle? It’s about understanding what’s going on, and using those results to identify how we can improve education,” continues Dr Trasmundi. “How can we inform teachers, help them understand what reading is about in more detail, and how they should organise their lessons?”

Many students read passively and fail to construct accurate comprehension without the guidance of a purpose or goal for reading. This an important factor behind the stubbornly high drop-out rate in University, with around 30 percent of all BA students dropping out of their studies. The project aims to help address this problem by building a rigorous and reliable evidence base. Physiological measures will be combined with video observation in a longitudinal cognitive, ethnographic study to explore the process and outcomes of reading from an embodied and ecological perspective

Project Funding

Independent Research Fund Denmark: 2.833.000DKR. /app. € 380.000

Project Partners

• Prof. Anne Mangen, University of Stavanger; • Prof Christian Benne, University of Copenhagen; • Prof Jürgen Streeck, University of Austin, Texas; • Prof. Stephen Cowley, University of Southern Denmark • Bettina Buch, University College Absalon.

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Sarah Bro Trasmundi Associate Professor, PhD Director, Advanced Cognitive Ethnography Lab Director, Centre of Human Interactivity Department of Language and Communication University of Southern Denmark Campusvej 55 5230 Odense M T: +45 65 50 45 42 E: sarbro@sdu.dk W: www.sdu.dk W: sdu.dk/en/ace-lab Sarah Bro Trasmundi

Sarah Bro Trasmundi is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark. Her main research interests are cognitive ethnography, distributed cognition and distributed language.

How can teachers stimulate interest in reading? Recent PISA studies found that Swiss and German students did not have as high a reading literacy level as might have been expected – in response education research and policy has focussed on reading competence in everyday life. Does this come at the cost of an encompassing literary education? We spoke to Professor Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann about her and her collegues work in this area.

The 2000 PISA

Figure 1: Emphasis on literature and reading comprehension

Number of classes

study found that Swiss and German children did not have as high a literacy level as might have been expected in developed countries with wellestablished education systems, findings that were backed up by subsequent editions of the study. This prompted intense scrutiny of reading competence related to everyday and non-fiction texts. However, there is concern that the question of how students deal with literature is neglected – a topic that Professor Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann and her colleagues are addressing in the TAMoLi (Texts, Activities and Motivations in Literature Education) research project. With their new interdisciplinary study combining quantitative and qualitative research, the TAMoLi team is building an evidence base in this area. “One of the questions we asked in our study was, what are the priorities of individual teachers?” Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann says. “Are they aiming primarily to improve reading competence, and to help students read effectively in everyday life? Or are they concerned more with giving them an education in literature?” The initial findings show that the answer to this depends to a significant degree on the students’ academic abilities. In Switzerland, secondary school students are separated into three streams (A, B and C) according to ability. While teachers in all three streams facilitate access to literature, the balance between training reading competence and literary reading varies according to the streams and academic level of their students. “Teachers of students in level C primarily focus on training reading competence. In level B, more teachers give attention to literary reading, but training reading competence still

Access to Literature

Both areas are equally important

Promotion of reading comprehension of everyday texts Figure 1 shows teachers’ answers to the question how they weight access to literature on the one hand and promotion of reading comprehension on the other, for school types A, B and C for Switzerland and Germany combined. In type A (progymnasium and gymnasium) literary education is more pronounced compared to a sole focus on reading comprehension of everyday texts and than literary education in types B and C. Teachers in type A schools also most frequently balance both goals. In type B and C schools, literature is not prioritized. In type C, which primarily develops basic competences, reading comprehension of everyday texts clearly outweighs the focus on literary education as well as the balanced weighting of literary education and reading comprehension of everyday texts.

dominates. In level A teachers mostly treat both goals equally: they promote literary reading as well as train students’ competence to read,” explains Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. “One can interpret this strong emphasis on reading competence as an effect of PISA, which has however not resulted in a complete eclipse of literature.” A survey of the types of texts that teachers select for their classes clearly shows that, although the distribution is uneven, literary texts do play some role in all the streams and a considerable part of the learning time is devoted to them (see Figure 2). “From the perspective of literature education, this is a gratifying result, as in literature you find the big ideas, the language and concepts that help you form your worldview,” points out Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann.

Improving reading motivation This research centres on students in the eighth and ninth grade, an age group that is of interest for several reasons. On the one hand, adolescents are at a critical reading age, as they begin to engage in shared activities with peers, which may crowd out reading. On the other hand, this period towards the end of compulsory schooling is an opportunity to offer students from all three streams access to reading and literature education. “It’s crucial to know if students access literature during their education. And how that access is linked to their reading motivation,” says Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. A student’s reading ability is closely linked to their motivation, and their perception of their own progress. “There is a clear connection between reading activities and reading interests on the

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one hand and the concept of one’s abilities on the other. Do I believe that I am a good reader and that I have access to attractive and culturally interesting texts?” acknowledges Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. The relationships between, on the one side, reading promotion at school and on the other, motivation and individual aptitude, is a major topic of interest in the project. It has been known for a long time that a student’s home environment is an important factor in this respect, the foundation on

A key part of this research is based on the use of questionnaires, tests that determine cognitive and reading competence, and documentation of texts provided in lessons. In addition, qualitative methods are being used to analyse interviews with teachers and students and videodata to identifiy their priorities. “It’s a mixed methods study. We gave questionnaires to 58 teachers and 1,118 students in Switzerland,” outlines Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. “A comparable sample has also been analysed in Lower Saxony.”

What are the priorities of individual teachers? Are they aiming primarily to improve reading competence, and to help students read effectively in everyday life? Or are they concerned more with giving them an education in literature? which students develop their school career. “There’s a very strong social link between reading competence and reading motivation. A family’s social background, the parents’ educational level and the number of books in the home, are known to be major factors behind reading motivation and competence,” outlines Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. The role of teachers and schools in improving reading motivation is, however, a matter of debate; Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann hopes to help identify how teachers can effectively encourage students to develop their own literary interests. “We’re looking at the link between teachers’ actions and students’ reading motivation, to try and identify those features with a positive effect that can be developed in schools,” she continues.

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In order to capture the perspectives of both the teachers and the students, the questionnaires given to teachers and students included a number of parallel topics. These questions included the extent to which teachers leaned towards either reading comprehension or literary education, whether the emphasis was on the learners or the texts, how literary texts were taught, and the criteria by which texts were selected. The TAMoLi team has gained some clear insights from this work: “When we ask teachers, they report that their main criterion for text selection is to share literature that – they think – interests their students,” Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann continues. “But when we look at their actual selection, we see that they also pursue additional goals. One

goal in reading and literature education is to promote reading motivation. Yet another goal is cultural education and exposing students to socially important texts.” The nation’s linguistic diversity is an important consideration in this respect. Switzerland has four national languages – German, French, Italian and Romansh; Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann and her colleagues are gathering evidence from German-speaking cantons. “Each Swiss region has its own cultural orientation,” she explains. This diversity is one of the main reasons why there is no tradition of a common national literary canon in Switzerland, so Swiss teachers have a considerable degree of autonomy when choosing texts. Researchers are looking at how this affects the construction of the canon, compared to countries where there historically was an established canon. “Germany, in contrast, for a long time adhered to fairly strict rules around literature selection. In Switzerland, this traditional lack of a common canon imposed on schools means that we have never had such clear directives, which is why the comparison to Germany was also interesting,” says Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. In Switzerland teachers have traditionally chosen texts they find interesting and believe will stimulate their students, drawing on their own past experience and their colleagues’ knowledge. While this leads to the creation of something of a de facto canon, teachers have still always enjoyed a level of freedom to make their own choices. “There are a number of classics in Swiss literature from the 19th century for example, and some more modern authors are also read in schools. But they are

TAMoLi

Figure 2: Learning time converted per text for literary and non-literary texts in lessons (of 45 minutes)

Project Objectives

Since PISA, the attention of the public and researchers has focused strongly on general reading competence. There is some critical discussion as to whether and to what extent this focus is at the expense of literary education. The TAMoLi project examined literature teaching practice at lower secondary level in German-speaking Switzerland and, in a parallel study, in Germany. The aim was to capture the perspectives of both the teachers and the students.

Percentage of the different text types

Texts activities and motivations in literature education at the lower secondary level

Project Funding

The Swiss TAMoLi-study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and conducted at the School of Education of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (PH FHNW) in cooperation with the German universities of Potsdam and Hildesheim. The German study was funded by the “Niedersächsisches Vorab” programme of the Volkswagen Foundation and the Ministry for Science and Culture of the German State of Lower Saxony.

Contact Details

Prof. Dr. Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann Campus Brugg-Windisch Bahnhofstrasse 6 5210 Windisch T: +41 61 851 16 66 E: andrea.bertschi@unibas.ch W: http://www.literaturunterricht.ch Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann, Dr. phil. Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann, Dr. phil., is Professor Emeritus of Reading Research and Literature Learning and Teaching at the School of Education of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland and Lecturer at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Her work focuses on literacy and literary learning and its development in children and adults. andrea.bertschi@unibas.ch Katrin Böhme, Dr. phil., is Professor for Inclusive Education with Emphasis on Language at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Her work focuses on L1 and L2 language learning and instruction in diverse classrooms, easy language in education, accessible language testing, and educational research. katrin.boehme@uni-potsdam.de Irene Pieper, Dr. phil. is Professor of Literary Studies and Literature Education at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Her research focuses on literary development and practices in the literature classroom. Current projects explore metaphoric understanding in lower secondary school students and forms of verbal interaction in literature education. pieperi@uni-hildesheim.de

Time spent on text (in number of lessons) Literary texts

not set because the state prescribes them,” stresses Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. Similar results were detected in the German sample, which means that the differences in traditional canon construction in the two countries seems to play a relatively insignificant role in how teachers select texts nowadays. While classic novels are central to literary education, it’s important that students also read material relevant to the world they live in now, which is a major consideration for teachers when selecting texts. “We found that teachers select several texts about the problems facing young people, or politically important situations,” says Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. Despite teachers’ efforts to find engaging material, the study nevertheless revealed significant differences between teachers’ text selections and students’ interests. Analysis of students’ responses to the questionnaire leads to further insights. “We asked students what they liked to read in their leisure time, along with what they would like to read in school. Reading interests vary a lot, especially along gender lines,” outlines Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann, Dr. phil.

Non-literary texts

The wider goal of the study is to help teachers identify how they can engage their students more effectively and encourage a deeper interest in literature. “One of our main interests was in investigating the relationship between teachers’ actions – their goals, their text selection, their methodologies – and the level of motivation of students,” says Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. The relationship is complex, but multi-level analysis did lead to some revealing insights. “When students perceive and understand teachers’ goals and the ideas behind their actions, their motivation is higher,” continues Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann. When teachers’ goals are clear, in particular when students notice that these goals are more learner centered rather than text centred, researchers see that students respond with higher levels of motivation. This is central to raising their educational prospects. “Students’ perception of their teachers, of their skills and goals, in particular of goals that foreground learners, is an important factor in levels of motivation. That’s a very interesting point for us,” says Professor Bertschi-Kaufmann.

Katrin Böhme, Dr. phil.

Irene Pieper, Dr. phil.

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Inside family firms The name, heritage and cultural legacy of a family business can be important assets in today’s commercial landscape. We spoke to Professor Morten Bennedsen about his work in investigating what distinguishes family businesses from other companies, and in quantifying the value of these seemingly intangible assets. Many major companies

across the world are family-owned, including Hermes, Cargill and Walmart, to name just a few of the most prominent examples. These companies differ significantly from businesses that aren’t family owned, a topic of great interest to Morten Bennedsen, Professor of Economics at the University of Copenhagen. “A family firm is owned or managed – or part-owned or partmanaged – by a group of family members,” he outlines. A number of the world’s biggest companies are family-owned, but this structure is particularly predominant among small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs). “Across the world there are far more owner-managed and family owned businesses than companies with other structures. Of the top 500 companies in the US, around 40 percent are owned by families, while in the UK and Europe it’s around 50-60 percent,” says Professor Bennedsen. “In parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the proportion is even higher.”

Family businesses As the Principal Investigator of a research project looking at family firms, Professor Bennedsen aims to probe deeper into what distinguishes these companies from other businesses. Professor Bennedsen and his colleagues are gathering data from a wide range of sources and running projects looking at a variety of different questions. “For instance we’re interested in what goes on in SMEs, which you can find anywhere in the world,” he explains.

One part of the research involves looking at data from an entire population of firms in Denmark, from which Professor Bennedsen can then look to draw wider conclusions. “Privately owned or managed firms are very similar across different countries, thus we can derive insights that are relevant beyond

The example of Japanese construction company Kongō Gumi, founded in 570, shows that a long history is no guarantee of continued commercial success. “Kongō Gumi built Buddhist temples, but went bankrupt in 2006 after over 1,400 years in operation,” says Professor Bennedsen.

First of all, which culture survives in this type of situation? Is it always those who buy other firms and import their culture who survive? the Danish context,” he says. “Some projects have been addressing issues like; can we measure values in family firms?” The values and heritage of a familyowned company can be major assets, as they create value in the business and can be integrated into the commercial strategy. However, at the same time these companies also need to adapt to changes in the marketplace if they are to attract customers. “This can be challenging, because family firms are so used to things working fine,” points out Professor Bennedsen.

This story provides some important insights into the factors that may affect the longevity of a family-owned business, another major area of interest in the project. While Kongō Gumi were well-known for their role in building and re-building some of Japan’s most famous landmarks, the company diversified into property investment in the ‘80s, sowing the seeds for its eventual demise.

The first Buddhist temple in Japan, Shitennō-ji, in Osaka. Construction was said to have begun in 593 by Kongo Gumi. GNU Free Documentation License. Source: 663highland

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The Six Key elements of Longevity in family firms.

“In January 2006, Kongō Gumi went into liquidation having run up arrears of $340 million,” says Professor Bennedsen. “No family firm can take survival for granted. Each generation has to create value and fight to deliver the business to the next. Most long-living family businesses that go out of business do so because the business becomes irrelevant, or the family leaders make bad business decisions.” There are however many instances of family-owned businesses that have successfully adapted to changing market conditions. For example, there is a hotel in Japan called Hōshi Ryokan, which was opened in 718 and is still thriving today. “It is the oldest company in the world to have been run by the same family throughout its history and maintained its independence,” says Professor Bennedsen. Professor Bennedsen has identified six key elements – business strategies, transitions, ownership, corporate governance and leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship and family governance – which he believes are central to the longevity of a family-owned business. “For family firms, the secrets of longevity are bound up with the outcomes of these six elements, which overlap in time according to the challenges faced by each generation,” he outlines. “However, the implementation of these elements will take many different forms, depending on the size, geography and age of the business.”

Organisational structure A further topic of interest in the project is a company’s organisational structure, which is typically less complex in a family business than other companies. However, family businesses also have less checks and balances,

so ensuring the right level of oversight on commercial decisions can be an important issue. “Some of the most short-sighted decisions that we’ve seen have been made by family businesses,” says Professor Bennedsen. A good example is the Parmalat scandal, eventually resulting in the bankruptcy of the company, which involved the outright falsification of commercial information. “You would never be able to get away with that in a non-family business, because there would be a board there to prevent those actions,” points out Professor Bennedsen. The project is also looking at the working

he outlines. Researchers are looking at the working environment in family firms and exploring what benefits employees enjoy in return for accepting lower wages. “They may get a better working environment and employment protection,” says Professor Bennedsen. Researchers are looking at these implicit labour contracts, aiming to gain deeper

The challenge is that family firms can be too conservative, lack checks and balances, and

take too many things for granted. environment and remuneration culture within family-owned companies, which again often differs from other businesses. While family firms often pay lower wages, there are compensations for employees, a topic that Professor Bennedsen and his colleagues are exploring. “A non-family firm may pay more, but as an employee you’ve got less security and can be fired more easily. A family firm may be loyal to their workforce, but the cost is that they don’t pay as well – we think of that as a kind of implicit labour contract,”

insights into the incentive structure and working environment within family-owned companies. While pay is of course a major motivation in work, Professor Bennedsen says that analysis shows that there are other factors that help family-owned companies retain staff. “Very often staff are loyal because the company provides better working conditions,” he explains. These companies still operate in an intensely competitive business environment however. “There are competitors across the globe in today’s

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market, and so the ability to communicate is increasingly important as the world gets smaller,” continues Professor Bennedsen. “There is a lot of pressure on SMEs, and also on the growth prospects of a business.” An ambitious company with plans to expand may need to sacrifice a degree of control over the company in return for investment, which can represent a major dilemma for familyowned businesses. Meanwhile businesses that merge with another firm, or are acquired by another firm, may lose core elements of their identity and culture, another topic of interest to Professor Bennedsen. “First of all, which culture survives in this type of situation? Is it always those who buy other firms and import their culture who survive?” he outlines. These are important issues for authorities and regulators, who are often keen to provide the right kind of environment in which SMEs can survive and thrive. “What can we do as a society to promote these kinds of structures, or organisations?” says Professor Bennedsen. This is a widely shared goal among governments across the world, regardless of political ideology, yet it remains difficult to

develop the right kind of environment to support and encourage the development of SMEs. Professor Bennedsen hopes the project will make an important contribution in these terms. “This research could help us to identify how we can develop policies to promote these SMEs,” he says. Debate also continues about levels of taxation and the rules around different classes of shares, which could affect the structure and ownership of family-owned businesses. “Some lawyers have argued that it should not be legal to have dual class shares, which hold more voting power,” explains Professor Bennedsen. “This could change the ownership of larger family businesses in Europe.” The main goal in the project is to gain deeper insights into the nature of family-owned companies however, and research in this area is ongoing. “We are developing case studies on several family firms, and will publicise our work in research journals. I have written books, case studies, research articles and around 100 popular articles, which have been published in China, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, India and other places as part of this project,” continues Professor Bennedsen. “There is a huge well of knowledge about family businesses, as they are so common across the world, and we aim to tap into this knowledge.”

INSIDE THE FAMILY FIRM Inside the Family Firm: How preferences and values cause differences in business organization, decision-making & outcomes

Project Objectives

The FAMBUSS research project investigate the interaction between ownermanaged firms organization and outcome and the organization, structure and dynamics of the family behind the firm. We look at intangible assets such as names, legacy, networks and values and investigate how they are transferred into firm strategy and corporate governance.

Project Funding

This project is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation.

Project Participants

• Bocconi University • INSEAD • The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Copenhagen Business School • Oxford University • KenanFlagler Business School • Cornell University • National University of Singapore • Columbia University • Michigan University

Contact Details

Principal Investigator, Professor Morten Bennedsen Department of Economics University of Copenhagen Øster Farimagsgade 5, Bygn 26 T: +45 28 74 45 25 E: mobe@econ.ku.dk W: https://www.economics.ku.dk/fambuss/

Professor Morten Bennedsen

The worlds oldest independent family firm today, the Japanese Hoshi Ryokan, founded in 618.

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Morten Bennedsen is Niels Bohr Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Hoffmann Chaired Professor of Family Enterprise at INSEAD. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University. He is an expert on ownermanaged and family business. He has published 1 book, 27 articles in top economics and finance journals, 200 global cases, reports and media articles on 6 continents and writes regular columns in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. He served as an advisor to the Danish and UK Government, EU, private equity funds and the World Bank. He gives talks and consults with families in Europe and Asia.

Risky Business: Managing in a world with extreme exposures The competitive landscape can change rapidly, and while some businesses are able to adapt effectively to the evolving social and economic environment, many others are not. We spoke to Professor Torben Juul Andersen about his research into this long ‘negative tail’ of companies, and what distinguishes those organisations that adapt effectively from those that don’t. The business sector faces a challenging environment, with cyber-attacks, financial instability and climate change just some of the issues that major companies need to consider if they are to build a sustainable, profitable future. While some companies are able to adapt to these types of challenges and continue to thrive, many others fail, a topic that Professor Torben Juul Andersen is investigating in a new research project. “We see a very long, consistent negative tail of sub-performance across different industries and time periods,” he explains. Only a small proportion of organisations seem to be able to sustain high performance over extended periods, now Professor Andersen aims to probe deeper into the underlying reasons behind this. “Why do we have such a dominant negative tail of companies that don’t seem to be able to cope with these challenges and why is it so difficult to persevere?” he asks. An inability to adapt to the changing business conditions is often a major reason, yet Professor Andersen believes that other factors are often involved. Within the project, the researchers plan to examine data over

RISKY BUSINESS

Managing in a world with extreme exposures Torben Juul Andersen, Professor, PhD, MBA, MSc (cand. polit.)/ Director (GSR) Department of International Economics, Government and Business Global Strategic Responsiveness Initiative (GSR) Copenhagen Business School Porcelænshaven 24A, #1.57 DK-2000 Frederiksberg Denmark T: +45 3815-2572 E: tja.egb@cbs.dk W: https://www.cbs.dk/en/research/ cbs-research-projects/researchprojects-overview/ca4050b4-cac54aca-86c2-5a511fff1564

extended time-periods to build a deeper understanding of the negative tail. “How long and persistent can the negative outcomes be? Is it something that happens in just a couple of years? Or is it actually something that can happen persistently?” asks Professor Andersen. The focus here is on firms above a certain minimum threshold in terms of size and turnover, as small start-ups are particularly vulnerable to failure; Professor Andersen and his colleagues want to investigate why some companies perform better than others. “What it is that explains high versus low risk-adjusted performance?” he continues. They will look at performance data over extended time-periods to investigate the performance of certain firms within comparable contexts. A firm in a given industry may go from low performance to high performance in risk-return terms between consecutive periods for example, and further investigation can help uncover the reasons why. “We can use this as a selection mechanism to undertake deeper case studies,” says Professor Andersen. He and his colleagues will examine websites, reports from analysts and other sources of information to identify the causes for shifts in performance. The aim is to look at relative performance measures. “We will take out a number of indicators – say return on assets, return on sales, or return on invested capital,” continues Professor Andersen. “We will group the data into specific industry contexts, where they all face the same kind of external conditions, then we will make comparative studies over different time periods. We might also do more detailed

analyses around specific events like the global financial crisis in 2008.” Further investigation of periods around other major market events, such as Black Monday in 1987 or the dotcom bubble in the early 1990s, can also add fresh insights. “The idea is to look at the organisational context and the factors that can explain good versus poor adaptive behaviour,” says Professor Andersen. With issues like climate change and environmental impact growing ever more pressing, Professor Andersen believes that companies need to consider how they will adapt if they are to maintain their commercial viability. “The average lifetime of organisations is decreasing, and firms are becoming increasingly vulnerable. The business conditions are becoming increasingly uncertain and unpredictable,” he explains. “The challenges we are faced with today, like the climate issues, are really daunting, and it’s difficult to foresee the consequences.” The solution to this will require not just individual change, but also collective and societal shifts, so Professor Andersen’s research does hold relevance to public policy development, although this is not a key focus in the current research. “We’re looking at the institutional context,” outlines Professor Andersen. The nature of this research obviously means that it is difficult to forecast the final results from the project, yet a number of articles and case studies will be produced on the basis of the project, while Professor Andersen hopes to make an important contribution to the wider field of strategic risk management. “Hopefully we will gain new insights as we progress,” he says.

Torben Juul Andersen is Professor of Strategy and International Management, and Director of Global Strategic Responsiveness Initiative, at Copenhagen Business School. He achieved an MSc at Copenhagen, an MBA at McGill, and his PhD at UNC - Chapel Hill. He has also held senior positions with Hagler-Bailly, SDS, Unibank, and Citicorp/ Citibank.

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New architecture for the computers of the future

Most computers today have separate data storage and processing units, and data is shuttled back and forth every time a computation is performed. Now researchers in the Real-PIMSystem project are investigating a new computer architecture which promises to help improve both speed and energy efficiency, as Associate Professor Shahar Kvatinsky explains. The majority of

computers today are based on two units, a processing unit and the memory, which can be thought of as a kind of warehouse where data is stored. Currently, data is moved between these processing and memory units in order to perform computations. “Every time you want to perform a computation, you have to retrieve the relevant data, bring it to the processor, then do the processing. Then you need to put the result back in the warehouse,” explains Shahar Kvatinsky, an Associate Professor at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. This architecture, described by John von Neumann in 1945, is central to today’s computers, yet relentlessly moving data between these two units can limit speed and energy efficiency, particularly with dataintensive applications like image processing and artificial intelligence. “Moving the data takes much more time and energy than the data processing itself. This is called the von Neumann bottleneck,” says Professor Kvatinsky. As the Principal Investigator of the ERCfunded Real-PIM-System project, Professor Kvatinsky now aims to develop a new computer

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Fig. 1: (a) The structure of a NOR logic gate based on memristors and (b) its integration inside a memory array.

architecture that promises to improve both performance and energy efficiency. While von Neumann is a towering figure in the history of mathematics, engineering and computer science, Professor Kvatinsky and his colleagues are now looking to move beyond the architecture that he described. “We want to develop an architecture where we can send a command that data should be processed inside the memory. We will not even take the data outside the memory,” he outlines. This is not an entirely new idea, yet earlier investigators looked more into processing near the memory; by processing data actually within the memory, researchers

aim to completely eliminate the need to move the data. “The place where the data is located is also where the data is processed,” explains Professor Kvatinsky.

Memristive memory processing unit The aim here is to develop a memristive memory processing unit (mMPU) capable of both storing and processing data, with researchers looking at both the design and fabrication of the architecture. A key step in this work involves giving the memory cells – memristors – computation capabilities; conventional memory cells cannot perform

these dual roles, so Professor Kvatinsky is looking towards new technologies. “With emerging memory technologies, such as resistive random access memory (RRAM) and phase change memory (PCM), we can store data and do computations using the same cells,” he says. Researchers are using a technique called memristor aided logic (MAGIC), developed by Professor Kvatinsky and his colleagues, to give these memristors the additional ability to perform computations. “We’ve developed several techniques so that we can perform computations inside the cell structure of a memory array,” he continues. A memory array is formed by rows and columns of cells which represent data. When a current flows across an array in one direction the resistance of the memristors drops, while if it flows in the other direction the resistance increases. “With the basic MAGIC NOR gate we have two input memristors. The initial resistance of the input memristors is the input – high resistance is 0, low resistance is 1,” explains Professor Kvatinsky. Data is represented within the architecture by these different levels of resistance; it has been shown that through the application of an external voltage, a memory array can be used for computation. “We need only two states to support memristor-aided logic, so the memory cells can be represented by either 0 or 1,” says Professor Kvatinsky. “Usually with memory arrays we select multiple cells, for the purpose of reading/writing. This operation is limited to a specific row.”

Parallelism This means that multiple operations can be performed in parallel on different rows and columns within the memory array, while Professor Kvatinsky and his colleagues have also identified how to isolate and select specific cells. These attributes could hold relevance to certain applications; for example internet searches. “If one million people try to use Google at the same time, how many are served in a second? This requires a lot of parallelism. One of the main advantages of the types of applications that we are looking at is that we can build very parallel machines,” stresses Professor Kvatinsky.

parallel, then you need the memory size to be large enough to support those operations,” points out Professor Kvatinsky. Power consumption is another major factor, while Professor Kvatinsky says it’s also important to think about the nature of the operation and whether it is sequential. “If an operation depends on the result of a previous operation, then you cannot run them simultaneously,” he explains. “Some applications are sequential – you need to perform something, and then you use the results on the next sequence.” A number of models have been developed within the project to evaluate the likely performance of the architecture in different

We’ve developed several techniques so that we can perform computations inside the cell structure of a memory array. Researchers are also looking at big data and various other applications where this architecture could have an impact. “We are trying to find where our system could help to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and other major applications,” continues Professor Kvatinsky. “The ideal scenario would be to help accelerate well-known algorithms.” There are however a number of limitations to consider in terms of the potential application of this system. One is the size of the memory required for a specific operation. “If you want to run 1,000 operations in

applications, which could provide important insights and help guide the future direction of research. This includes smaller models of elements within an architecture, up to larger models of the architecture as a whole. “The model evaluates the potential throughput, the potential performance of the architecture. We can then compare it to other systems and look to assess if it will make sense to run it in certain circumstances,” says Professor Kvatinsky. With this approach, the amount of time required to perform a computation can be quantified, so it’s possible to assess

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Fig. 2: Improvements in speed and energy for different image processing tasks performed in the mMPU versus state-of-the-art hardware.

REAL-PIM-SYSTEM Memristive In-Memory Processing System

Project Objectives

Research objectives: - Create and design the memristive memory processing unit (mMPU) - a system that truly combines processing and storage of data using the same devices. - Demonstrating the superiority of the mMPU in terms of performance and energy efficiency over standard computers.

Project Funding

The Real-PIM-System project is funded by an ERC-STG - European Research Council Starting Grant for the amount of € 1 500 000.

Contact Details Fig. 3: (a) Standard computer architecture consists of a processor and a memory. (b) The proposed mMPU system that can compute and store data using the same memory array.

Project Coordinator, Shahar Kvatinsky, PhD, MBA Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Haifa 3200003, Israel T: +972 77 887 4638 E: shahar@ee.technion.ac.il W: https://asic2.group W: https://kvatinsky.com

Shahar Kvatinsky, PhD, MBA

whether a specific application will benefit from the architecture. “For example, think about a demonstrator for image processing. Let’s say there are a million pixels in an image, and you want to make the image brighter,” outlines Professor Kvatinsky. This means modifying the brightness of each pixel separately with one million operations, all of which are independent from each other, as the result of one calculation is not required to successfully complete another. The situation is different with image recognition, however. “With image recognition, there is some correlation between the pixels. If you want to find the eyes in an image of a face for example, then you need multiple pixels,” points out Professor Kvatinsky. By using these models and rigorously assessing the performance of the architecture, Professor Kvatinsky hopes

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to identify those areas and applications in which it could have a significant impact. “We aim to find out the most promising applications for this kind of architecture – to identify those areas where we will really improve performance and energy efficiency in comparison to conventional machines,” he explains. The technical work on the design of the architecture is also continuing, with the aim of developing and producing a full system come the conclusion of the project’s five-year funding term. The project is still at a relatively early stage, with researchers investigating questions around the design and fabrication of the system, yet Professor Kvatinsky says good progress has already been made. “We have developed a circuit in what we think of as the basic operations, and we’ve started to develop automatic flows,” he outlines.

Shahar Kvatinsky, PhD, MBA is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, from where he also gained his PhD. Previously he worked as a circuit designer at Intel, before later taking up a post-doctoral position at Stanford University. His current research is focused on designing circuits and architectures with emerging memory technologies.

A new perspective on Einstein’s field equations

Riemannian geometry and Einstein’s field equations are both extremely important in the study of pure mathematics. We spoke to Dr Joel Fine, the Principal Investigator of the Symplectic Einstein project, about his work in reformulating Einstein’s equations in dimension 4, work which is opening up new avenues of investigation. The Einstein field

equations remain a source of great interest in both physics and pure mathematics over a century after they were published. As the Principal Investigator of the Symplectic Einstein project, Dr Joel Fine is working to develop a new formulation of Einstein’s equations in dimension 4. “There are two distinct, ultimately related, problems in this work. One is, can we find a fourdimensional solution to Einstein’s equations in Riemannian geometry? Then, if we find such a solution, what can it tell us about the geometric space in which it lives?” he outlines. In his research, Dr Fine uses gauge theory to derive metrics, a form of distance function, with the aim of building a deeper understanding of abstract geometric spaces. “Einstein’s equations are extremely useful in helping us to understand geometry, which is my main motivation for studying them. I’m taking ideas from physics and using them to solve problems in mathematics.” he explains.

Manifolds A number of these problems centre on the properties of geometric structures called manifolds, such as the surface of a ball, which is an example of a 2-dimensional manifold. If we take a finite 2-dimensional surface, with two different possible directions of movement and on which any loop can be shrunk without

causing damage, then it can be proved to be the surface of a sphere. “The way to prove it is to use the information to construct a metric that is completely round. This metric is positively curved to the same extent in every single direction, and the only surface that has such a property is a 2-dimensional sphere,” says Dr Fine. The same statement can be made about a 3-dimensional manifold on a sphere, following Perelman’s proof of Thurston’s geometerization

in 4 dimensions. “The more information we can get the better. I want to find hypotheses under which you can find solutions to Einstein’s equations, and to find situations in which you can say something about those manifolds once you know that you’ve solved Einstein’s equations,” he outlines. There is currently no kind of roadmap or guide for this work. “We don’t have a 4-dimensional analogue of Thurston’s geometerization conjecture. We don’t have a candidate for

Einstein’s equations are extremely useful in helping us to understand geometry, which is my main motivation for studying them. I’m taking ideas from physics and using them to solve problems in mathematics. conjecture. “Thurston conjectured – and then Perelman proved – that you can break any 3-dimensional manifold into separate pieces, and each of these pieces houses one of these special geometries,” explains Dr Fine. The focus of Dr Fine’s attention in the project is now on 4-dimensional manifolds, where classifying the solutions to Einstein’s equations is a complex task. While it has been demonstrated that Einstein’s equations can be solved in 3 dimensions given the right hypothesis, Dr Fine says this is not the case

the different sorts of pieces that you might be able to break a 4-dimensional manifold into,” explains Dr Fine. A class of 4-manifolds with a certain type of geometry that produces a Riemannian metric on the 4-manifold has been identified. Additionally, these 4-manifolds also produce a type of symplectic 6-manifold, which is another important dimension of Dr Fine’s research. “We should perhaps think about physics as taking place not in a 3-dimensional world, for example with a ball

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SymplecticEinstein The symplectic geometry of anti-selfdual Einstein metrics Project Objectives

moving through a 3-dimensional space, but rather a 6-dimensional world. This means 3 dimensions telling you the position of the ball, and 3 dimensions telling you the momentum of the ball. This 6-dimensional space has something called a symplectic structure, which weaves together position and momentum in an intricate way,” he outlines. The specific 6-manifold which is produced from the 4-manifold is called a symplectic Fano. “The Riemannian metric and the symplectic structure both come from a geometric object called a definite connection,” continues Dr Fine.

Definite connection This definite connection can be changed until the metric that it provides solves Einstein’s equations. The point can be illustrated by taking the example of a deflated football. “Imagine that you try to inflate the ball into a round sphere, so that you can recognise it. You do this with your definite connection – and you can change your definite connection until the metric that it gives you solves Einstein’s field equations,” explains Dr Fine. At the same time, this deformation will turn the original symplectic structure in 6 dimensions into one that can be more easily recognised. “It’s on a list which was produced by algebraic geometers around 30 years ago, it’s among the first Fano manifolds to be identified,” continues Dr Fine. “This would prove that the symplectic Fanos coming from this construction are never more exotic than those that the algebraic geometers already knew about. It’s a step towards classifying symplectic Fano manifolds.” A definite connection provides a Riemannian metric, which opens up new avenues in both maths and physics research, for example in developing a quantum field theory description of gravity. However, Dr Fine’s primary interest is in solving mathematical problems, such as developing an existence theory for Poincaré-Einstein metrics.

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“Poincaré-Einstein metrics are a very specific type of solution to Einstein’s equations. These spaces are not finite in extent, they extend out to infinity,” he explains. The further these spaces extend out towards infinity, the more closely they resemble hyperbolic geometry, which is negatively curved. “What you would normally think of as straight lines run away from each other very quickly. There’s an enormous amount of space out in infinity in these manifolds,” says Dr Fine. “These types of metric are a very important family of solutions to Einstein’s equations.” These Poincaré-Einstein spaces are again associated with 6-dimensional symplectic manifolds, this time of Calabi-Yau type, rather than Fano. By studying the symplectic geometry of this 6-dimensional manifold, Dr Fine aims to build a deeper understanding of the behaviour of the Einstein metrics. “I apply modern techniques in symplectic geometry, that tell us things about the symplectic manifold. Then I translate them back into new and interesting facts about the 4-dimensional manifold,” he outlines. The nature of this research means it is very difficult to predict the likely outcomes; however, Dr Fine says that the project has helped pave the way for further investigation. “With this kind of project it’s not necessarily about closing the door on a subject, the funding bodies would rather you open the door to lots of other researchers,” he says. “Some of the original goals in the project are still quite distant, but I’ve also found other things that were unexpected and very interesting.” A good example is Dr Fine’s achievement, together with his colleague Bruno Premoselli, in finding the first negatively curved solution to Einstein’s equations which is not just locally symmetric. “This was completely unexpected, and it has definitely opened up a new area of research, that people can try and understand these negatively curved Einstein metrics,” says Dr Fine.

My goal is to better understand 4-dimensional solutions to Einstein’s equations. I hope to do this by exploiting a new formulation of these equations which makes it possible to exploit ideas from different seemingly unrelated areas of geometry.

Project Funding

The main source of funding is the ERC grant (646649 SymplecticEinstein). Parts have also been funded by the FNRS MIS grant F.4522.15.

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Dr Joel Fine Department of Mathematics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Boulevard du Triomphe, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. T: +0032 (0) 2 650 58 42. E: joel.fine@ulb.ac.be W: http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~joelfine W: http://geometry.ulb.ac.be

Dr Joel Fine

Dr Joel Fine is a member of the Differential Geometry Group at Université Libre de Bruxelles. He gained his degree at the University of Oxford, before going on to further study at the Imperial College London, where he worked with Fields Medallist Sir Simon Donaldson. He specialises in geometric analysis and the study of Einstein’s equations.

Testing to destruction? Inclusion is a central principle in modern education, yet this does not seem to be compatible with the extensive testing of students to identify those with the most talent and motivation. Dr Christian Ydesen and his research team aim to analyse this dilemma, research which holds important implications for the education sector in general and the individual student in particular. As children

progress through education they typically go through several stages of tests and assessments, the results of which will then guide their future direction in life. On the surface, this testing agenda seems to be incompatible with the ideal of inclusion in education, a paradox that Dr Christian Ydesen is exploring in his research. “Testing is essentially about identifying who is performing well and who can go in which directions in education, whereas inclusion is tantamount to saying everyone is good enough, everyone can contribute,” he explains. Based at Aalborg University in Denmark, Dr Ydesen is the Principal Investigator of a project looking at how different countries balance social inclusion in education with the need to test and assess pupils, focusing mainly on compulsory education. “This is an international comparative project, looking at education systems in Argentina, England, Israel, Denmark and China,” he says. These countries all subscribe to ideals around inclusion in education, while also running testing programmes which assess students’ ability. The idea in the project is to investigate Education Access under the Reign of Testing and Inclusion Principal Investigator, Professor Christian Ydesen (MSO), PhD Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University Kroghstraede 3 9220 Aalborg Ø T: +45 29 72 44 81 E: cyd@hum.aau.dk W: www.en.aau.dk W: https://www.learning. aau.dk/forskning/centreprojekter/testinginclusion/ Christian Ydesen, Professor (MSO) at Aalborg University, Denmark. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh (2008-2009, 2016), the University of Birmingham (2013), and the University of Oxford (2019) and published several articles on topics such as educational testing, international organisations, accountability, educational psychology and diversity in education from historical and international perspectives.

how different countries balance these two concerns, using a very open definition of what a test actually is. “We want to ensure that we don’t exclude practices which could later prove to be important. A test could be multiple choice, an oral examination or a penand-paper based assessment for example,” points out Dr Ydesen. Researchers are working with a similarly open definition of inclusion, based around looking at how these different countries deal with diversity. “What practices

servants at the municipal and national levels, to assess their priorities and ideas. “How do teachers actually work in the classroom? Do they work alone, or do they have support?” he says. The hope is that this research will generate useful insights for policy-makers and decision makers at different levels, helping to inform the development of teaching practice, although Dr Ydesen says this is not an easy area to change. “Teaching practice changes to some extent with each new generation. But generally speaking, education has historically been a very conservative endeavour,” he says. “There have been many educational experiments over time. The normal pattern is that as soon as these experiments end, business as usual resumes.” This work touches on fundamental questions about the purpose of education, whether it’s primarily to help students develop skills they will need in their working lives, or if it is more about instilling certain values. While these two goals are not

Testing is essentially about identifying who is performing well and who can go in which direction in education, whereas inclusion is tantamount to saying everyone is good enough, everyone can contribute. have been enacted in these different national contexts? What works well, what doesn’t work so well?” asks Dr Ydesen. “By looking at this diverse range of countries, we hope to identify patterns and look at different practices with respect to testing and inclusion.” The nature of the teaching methodology is an important consideration in research. Dr Ydesen and his colleagues in the project will analyse policy documents and hold interviews with stakeholders in the education system, including teachers, school leaders and civil

mutually exclusive, teachers may place differing levels of emphasis on them. “A testing regime is really about measuring the outcomes of education, whereas inclusion is more formative, about citizenship,” says Dr Ydesen. The hope is that the project will make an important contribution to the ongoing debate around the balance between inclusion and testing within education systems. “We hope to provide valuable new insights for stakeholders at different levels of education systems,” concludes Dr Ydesen.

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