EU Research Summer 2023

EU Research

Summer 2023

PRIDE IN RESEARCH

EU Research Commissioner Mariya Gabriel resigns

A new phase of matter called the ‘chiral bose-liquid state’ discovered

How magnetism affects animal behaviour

Scientists predict complete end to Artic sea ice by 2030

Disseminating the latest research from around Europe and Horizon 2020

Editor’s Note

With every issue of EU Research, we discover glimpses of tomorrow but also glimpses of yesterday. The past is often as fragmented, uncharted, and uncertain as the future. We are constantly losing and rediscovering the past, which is fragile and broken, and not always treated with the reverence it deserves.

We’re still discovering answers about our past, uncovering secrets lost in the relentless march of time, and even when we have our discoveries, they can be too easily forgotten all over again. A digital archiving project in this issue made me think of how such archiving might progress, going forward, for us all.

Today’s potential with digital archiving, multi-media storytelling and open access, means we can reignite the past and make time detectives of us all. We can find original sources of historical events from digital hubs, we can offer insights into discoveries, and we can immerse ourselves in stories with online searches. Archiving can now be a way of storytelling too, not just filing. We can animate, film, and present different formats for better, wider engagement.

As we go forward in time there will be more media, more immersive technologies, and more available data including raw data for citizen science projects, so we can even become part of the story of discovering.

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.

Consider that our entire lives are now digitised as standard, so future generations may be able to have more insight than we currently do, into how we lived and what we were like, our ideas, our language, our mistakes, and our insights. We are recording our lives in ways that future generations may be able to truly understand who we were.

In terms of archiving science, EU Research is doing its bit. We are free to read online, and every issue is digitised in its entirety. Science is for everyone and should be for the benefit of everyone, that’s what we believe.

Hope you enjoy the issue.

Richard Forsyth Editor

Contents

4 Research News

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

10 Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura - role of ADAMTS13 and long-term outcome

We spoke to PD Monica Schaller, PhD and Erika Tarasco,PhD, who both work in the group of worldrenowned expert Prof. Johanna Kremer Hovinga, MD, about their research into thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura.

12 OBSERVE

We spoke to Dr Pieter Vader, Diego Aguilar Rodriguez and Willemijn de Voogt about the work of the Observe project in developing extracellular vesiclebased systems to deliver RNA drugs into the body.

15 MIAMI

We spoke to Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen, about his work in using yeast to support sustainable, scalable production of complex chemical compounds in rare plants, aiming to harness their valuable healthcare and pharmaceutical properties.

18

CalorieRL

Dr. Oliveira-Maia and his research team at the CalorieRL project are working on a more exact understanding of the mechanisms that drive and reinforce foodseeking behaviour.

20 SignalingDynamics

Cells use different languages to communicate with each other, while they can also vary these signals. This ultimately affects the fate and behaviour of cells, as Dr Katharina Sonnen and Sonja Weterings explain.

22 SYNVIVO

We spoke to Dr Giulia Pasqual about her research into the interactions between dendritic- and T-cells, and how this interaction influences the subsequent fate of T-cells.

24 SESE

Bacteria cooperate in many different ways. Researchers in the SESE project are developing a model system for looking at social behaviours in infection, as Professor Ashleigh Griffin explains.

27 TACT

We spoke to Dr Guilhem Chaubet , Lorenzo Turelli and Ilias Koutsopetras about the work of the TACT project in training the next generation of scientists and helping to develop effective, targeted cancer treatments.

30

The Weather Makers

A group of eco engineers are set on plans to regreen the Sinai and with that, to proactively influence the weather, in an effort to counter climate desolation and create new landscapes, ecosystems and industries along the way. Richard Forsyth reports.

34 PANI WATER

Around 2.1 billion people across the world lack access to safe water. The PANIWATER project is developing new technologies to remove dangerous contaminants from water, as Dr Fabio Ugolini explains.

37 INTERACT

The Interact consortium coordinates efforts to send scientists to conduct research in the Arctic, which will lead to a deeper understanding of the extent of environmental change in the region, as Professor Margareta Johansson explains.

40 FluxWIN

Recent research shows that decompositional processes in soil can still continue during the colder months. Dr Claire Treat aims to gain deeper insights into the processes behind Winter emissions of greenhouse gases

42 CINCHRON

Researchers in the CINCHRON project are investigating the circadian clock in different insects, work that has relevance for understanding daily rhythms in humans, as Professor Charalambos Kyriacou explains.

44 ResponDrone

Researchers in the ResponDrone project are developing an integrated solution designed to give first responders a fuller picture of a disaster situation, as Max Friedrich and Joonas Lieb explain.

46 LiftWEC

Could the lift forces within ocean waves provide a sustainable source of power? Matt Folley, Principal Researcher in the LiftWEC project, seeks to finally prove waves can make sense as the next big renewable.

49 ENHANCE

We spoke to Professor Ausrine Bartasyte, Associate Professor Samuel Margueron and Doctor Giacomo Clementi about European ITN ENHANCE project’s work in developing piezoelectric energy harvesters that could reduce the environmental impact of the automotive and information sector.

52 Science a Casualty of War

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, it was a decision that would alter the world, not just in terms of loss, bloodshed and borders, but also in the dissolving of long-standing collaborations between the Western nations and Russia. For science, the conflict would bring about its own shockwave.

By Richard Forsyth.

56 SCORES

Technical Project Coordinator, Pavol Bodis of SCORES explains how new combined technologies can collect renewable energy locally, store it and use it in smarter, more optimised ways to improve efficiency.

59 THE EXTERIOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Confucianism is an important Chinese tradition. We spoke to Dr Philippe Major and Professor Ralph Weber about their work investigating modern Confucianism, and its importance to understanding contemporary China.

62 A PROMISE IS A

PROMISE!

A willingness to compromise was once seen as a sign of political maturity, many voters now see it as selling out, an issue Dr Mariken van der Velden is exploring in her research.

65 THE NEURO-ECONOMICS OF CONFLICT

Professor Carlos Alós-Ferrer is bringing together insights from several different fields to work more effectively with random utility models, the standard approach for estimating preferences in economics.

68 iv4XR

We spoke to Rui Filipe Fernandes Prada about the work of the iv4XR project in developing autonomous testing agents that promise significant benefits to developers of Extended (XR) reality systems.

70

Reflexive Decision and Game Theory

We spoke to Professor Wolfgang Spohn about his work in reexamining basic normative questions about rationality, which could shift the normative reference point for empirical research.

73 ESTEEM3

The ESTEEM3 initiative coordinates an integrated network of the leading European Transmission Electron Microscopy installations, enabling them to pool their resources and knowhow. We spoke to project coordinator Prof. Dr Peter A. van Aken

76

PLANET

The PLANET project aims to use ideas from the physical internet to help transport and logistics companies work in a smarter and greener way, as Dr Konstantinos Zavitsas explains.

78 BEATS

The BEATS project aims to design and construct a new beamline for tomography at SESAME, which will open up new research opportunities, as Dr Axel Kaprolat , Dr Gianluca Iori and Dr Andrea Lausi explain.

EDITORIAL

Managing Editor Richard Forsyth info@euresearcher.com

Deputy Editor Patrick Truss patrick@euresearcher.com

Science Writer Holly Cave www.hollycave.co.uk

Science Writer Nevena Nikolova nikolovan31@gmail.com

Science Writer Ruth Sullivan editor@euresearcher.com

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

Ten-year countdown to sea-ice-free Arctic

If the world keeps increasing greenhouse gas emissions at its current speed, all sea ice in the Arctic will disappear in the 2030s, an event that could at best be postponed until the 2050s should emissions be somehow reduced. The prediction is a decade earlier than what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected: an ice-free Arctic by the 2040s.

A possible ice-free Arctic in the 2030-2050s was projected regardless of humanity’s efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by Professor Seung-Ki Min and Research Professor Yeon-Hee Kim from the Division of Environmental Science and Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and a joint team of researchers from the Environment Climate Change Canada and Universität Hamburg, Germany. The research was published in the international journal, Nature Communications.

The term global warming has become a household name since it was first used by a climate scientist at NASA in 1988. The Earth has seen a rapid decline in the Arctic sea ice area as its temperature has increased over the past several decades. This reduction in Arctic sea ice has induced the acceleration of Arctic warming, which is suggested to contribute to the increased frequency of extreme weather events in mid-latitude regions.

To predict the timing of Arctic sea ice depletion, the research team analysed 41 years of data from 1979 to 2019. By comparing the results of multiple model simulations with three satellite observational datasets, it was confirmed that the primary cause of the decline is attributed to ‘human-made greenhouse gas emissions’. Greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human fossil fuel combustion and deforestation have been the primary drivers of Arctic sea ice decline over the past 41 years, while the influence of aerosols, solar and volcanic activities has been found to be minimal. Monthly analysis found that increased greenhouse gas emissions were reducing Arctic sea ice all year round, regardless of season or timing, although September exhibited the smallest extent of sea ice reduction.

Furthermore, it was revealed that climate models used in previous IPCC predictions generally underestimated the declining trend of sea ice area, which was taken into account to adjust the simulation values for future predictions. The results showed accelerated decline rates across all scenarios, most importantly confirming that Arctic sea ice could completely disappear by the 2050s even with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This finding highlights for the first time that the extinction of Arctic sea ice is possible irrespective of achieving ‘carbon neutrality.’

The accelerated decline of Arctic sea ice, faster than previously anticipated, is expected to have significant impacts not only on the Arctic region but also on human societies and ecosystems worldwide. The reduction of sea ice can result in more frequent occurrences of extreme weather events such as severe cold waves, heat waves, and heavy rainfalls all across the globe, with the thawing of the Siberian permafrost in the Arctic region possibly intensifying global warming further. We may witness terrifying scenarios, which we have seen only in disaster movies, unfold right before our eyes.

Professor Seung-Ki Min, who led the study, explained, “We have confirmed an even faster timing of Arctic sea ice depletion than previous IPCC predictions after scaling model simulations based on observational data.” He added, “We need to be vigilant about the potential disappearance of Arctic sea ice, regardless of carbon neutrality policies.” He also expressed the importance of “evaluating the various climate change impacts resulting from the disappearance of Arctic sea ice and developing adaptation measures alongside carbon emission reduction policies.” The study was funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea (MidCareer Researcher program).

© ESA

Research team predicts Arctic without ice by the end of 2030s if the current increasing rate of greenhouse gas emission continues.

© NASA/Kathryn Hansen

The G6 is preparing the future of European research

Following a symposium in April, the presidents of the G6, including the CNRS Chairman and CEO, are presenting today their joint recommendations for the next European Union Framework Programme on Research and Innovation. Making research a top priority for the European Union, and reflecting this ambition in a strong budget for frontier basic research and targeted research— that is the first of seven recommendations made by the G6 to the European Commission regarding the next European Union Framework Programme on Research and Innovation “FP10,” which will succeed the Horizon Europe Framework Programme in 2028.

The G6 is an influence network consisting of the primary European multidisciplinary research organisations: the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, Italy), the CNRS (France), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, Spain), the Helmholtz Association, the Leibniz Association, and the Max Planck Society (MPG, Germany). It represents over 142,000 collaborators in Europe, and brings together the leading national actors in European research in terms of expertise, networks, and infrastructure. It regularly communicates the joint positions of its members, for example with regard to the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, open science, freedom of research, and support for the European Research Council (ERC).

The presidents of G6 members–Maria Chiara Carrozza (CNR), Antoine Petit (CNRS), Eloísa del Pino Matute (CSIC), Otmar Wiestler (Helmholtz Association), Martina Brockmeier (Leibniz Association), and Martin Stratmann (MPG)–met for a symposium in April 2023 to lay the groundwork for the next European Framework Programme. “The end date of the next Framework Programme may seem far, but experience has shown that it is never too early to begin conveying a few important messages,” assures Alain Mermet, the Director of the CNRS Branch Office in Brussels.

In fact, a number of working groups have been established in Brussels, such as the Commission Expert Group on the Interim Evaluation of Horizon Europe1 . Comparable to the committee led by Pascal Lamy, the former Director General of the World Trade Organization, as part of preparations for the 9th Framework Programme, one of the group’s missions will be to reflect on the strategic orientations of the FP10. With its European Research Area and Innovation Committee (ERAC), the Council of the European Union has also created a working group on the subject. “It is therefore timely for the G6 to position itself starting today as a contact for these various groups, with a view to promoting the joint interests of its members,” adds Mermet.

The April symposium was thus an opportunity to discuss the vision of France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the European Commission on the future of European research. Notably present were representatives from the European Commission, including Maria Leptin, the President of the ERC, and Claire Giry on behalf of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, in addition to her German, Spanish, and Italian counterparts. Scientists from G6 members also presented their points of view, such as the physicist Bérengère Dubrulle2 , who was named scientific woman of the year (in French) by the French Academy of Sciences in 2022, and the chemist Jean-Marie Tarascon3 , winner of the 2022 CNRS Gold Medal for his research on energy storage.

The discussions explored multiple subjects that today are part of G6 recommendations, such as the implementation of innovative solutions to facilitate international cooperation. Other subjects explored include the role of basic science in ground breaking innovation, and the importance of maintaining European scientific and industrial leadership in key domains connected to major societal challenges, such as the energy transition. The G6 recommends strengthening Europe’s ties with countries across the globe that share its values, as well as creating alliances of excellence around strategic fields, such as artificial intelligence or quantum technology, in addition to bolstering the interface with industrial actors and SMBs, and creating a European institute focusing on energy. To stimulate innovation and creativity, the evaluation of projects should concentrate more on the process rather than the impact.

Antoine Petit, the CNRS Chairman and CEO, led the dialogue regarding the need to maintain basic research of excellence in all European Union programmes, akin to ERC grants (in French), as well as to provide the means needed for Europe to remain one of the world’s most attractive and competitive centres for research. “Research excellence is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity to address pressing global, social, and industrial challenges, for the benefit of all European citizens,” stresses Petit. Open science (in French) and support for policy-making based on conclusive data are also among the recommendations, along with funding for cutting-edge research infrastructure, such as the EOSC, which should be better coordinated on both the national and European levels. The G6’s 7 recommendations for the FP10 are laid out in a white paper that will be submitted to the European Commissioner.

Representatives of the European Commission, ministries of European countries, members of the G6, as well as scientists, discussed the future of European research.

Key building block for life found at Saturn’s moon Enceladus

SwRI helped find evidence for phosphorus in the liquid water ocean beneath the moon’s icy surface.

The search for extra-terrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Christopher Glein has discovered new evidence that the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus contains a key building block for life. The team directly detected phosphorus in the form of phosphates originating from the moon’s ice-covered global ocean using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Cassini explored Saturn and its system of rings and moons for over 13 years. “In 2020 (published in 2022), we used geochemical modelling to predict that phosphorus should be abundant in Enceladus’ ocean,” said Glein, a leading expert in extra-terrestrial oceanography. He is a co-author of a paper in the journal Nature describing this research. “Now, we have found abundant phosphorus in plume ice samples spraying out of the subsurface ocean.”

The Cassini spacecraft discovered Enceladus’ subsurface liquid water and analysed samples in a plume of ice grains and gases erupting into space from cracks in the moon’s icy surface. Analysis of a class of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer showed the presence of sodium phosphates. The team’s observational results, together with laboratory analogue experiments, suggest that phosphorus is readily available in Enceladus’ ocean as phosphates.

Phosphorus in the form of phosphates is vital for all life on Earth. It is essential for the creation of DNA and RNA, energycarrying molecules, cell membranes, bones and teeth in people

EU commissioner

for

and animals, and even the sea’s microbiome of plankton. Life as we know it is simply not possible without phosphates. “We found phosphate concentrations at least 100 times higher in the moon’s plume-forming ocean waters than in Earth’s oceans,” Glein said. “Using a model to predict the presence of phosphate is one thing, but actually finding the evidence for phosphate is incredibly exciting. This is a stunning result for astrobiology and a major step forward in the search for life beyond Earth.”

One of the most profound discoveries in planetary science over the past 25 years is that worlds with oceans beneath a surface layer of ice are common in our solar system. Such worlds include the icy satellites of the giant planets, such as Europa, Titan and Enceladus, as well as more distant bodies like Pluto. Worlds like Earth with surface oceans must reside within a narrow range of distances from their host stars to maintain the temperatures that support surface liquid water. Interior ocean worlds, however, can occur over a much wider range of distances, greatly expanding the number of habitable worlds likely to exist across the galaxy.

“Geochemical experiments and modelling demonstrate that such high phosphate concentrations result from enhanced phosphate mineral solubility, in Enceladus and possibly other icy ocean worlds in the solar system beyond Jupiter,” Glein said. “With this finding, the ocean of Enceladus is now known to satisfy what is generally considered to be the strictest requirement for life. The next step is clear -- we need to go back to Enceladus to see if the habitable ocean is actually inhabited.”

research and innovation Mariya Gabriel resigns

Bulgarian Centre-right party nominates Mariya Gabriel to become the next prime minister.

The European Union’s Commissioner for Research and Innovation Mariya Gabriel has resigned from her EU post as she takes on the challenge of forming a new Bulgarian coalition government. Gabriel was picked last week by the leader of her party Boyko Borissov to become Bulgaria’s next prime minister. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev gave her the institutional mandate on Monday to form a government. The Bulgarian centre-right politician joined the EU executive as commissioner for digital affairs in 2017 and took on the portfolio of research, innovation, education and culture at the start of the current mandate, in 2019.

Her track record in Brussels was mixed — she enjoyed a reputation as a young, dynamic commissioner with a genuine passion for technological progress, but one who lacked the gravitas to advance her agenda and who would push her staff to the breaking point. In a statement, Commission

President Ursula von der Leyen said that she’d accepted the resignation and thanked Gabriel for her “constructive and friendly contribution” to the college. “I wish Mariya Gabriel all the best and I am confident that her European experience, in this and the previous College of Commissioners, will be put to good use for the country,” she said. Gabriel’s portfolio will be handled by Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager and Vice President Margaritis Schinas, with Vestager overseeing innovation and research issues and Schinas taking care of education and cultural issues.

In the meantime, Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager and Vice-President Margaritis Schinas will be in charge of overseeing Commissioner Gabriel’s portfolio, with immediate effect. Executive Vice-President Vestager will be responsible for innovation and research, while Vice-President Schinas will be in charge of education, culture and youth.

Quantum frustration leads to a new state of matter: chiral Bose-liquid state

A team of physicists recently announced that they have discovered a new phase of matter which has been called the ‘chiral bose-liquid state,’

Correlation and frustration play essential roles in physics, giving rise to novel quantum phases. A typical frustrated system is correlated bosons on moat bands, which could host topological orders with long-range quantum entanglement. A team of physicists, including University of Massachusetts assistant professor Tigran Sedrakyan have discovered a new phase of matter called the chiral bose-liquid state. This discovery opens a new path in the age-old effort to understand the nature of the physical world.

Scientists are particularly interested in the prospect of what physicists refer to as “band degeneracy,” “moat bands,” or “kinetic frustration” in highly interacting quantum matter. Scientists have spent years researching these crazy quantum states. In most cases, when particles collide in any system, the results are predictable, much like how billiard balls collide and react predictably. Therefore, there is a correlation between the effects and the particles. The billiard ball might levitate or fly off at an inconceivable angle in a frustrated quantum system. Still, there are unlimited possibilities that result from particle interaction, and some of these infinite possibilities can give rise to new quantum states.

A bilayer semiconducting device has been created by scientists as a frustration machine. The top layer has a lot of electrons that are free to move about. The lowest layer contains “holes,” or locations where roving electrons could reside. The two layers are brought incredibly close—interatomic close—to one another. Scientists created the bottom layer, so there is a local imbalance between the number of electrons and holes in the bottom layer. If the number of electrons in the top layer and the number of holes in the bottom layer were equal, then you would expect to see the particles acting correlatedly. Sedrakyan said, “It’s like a game of musical chairs designed to frustrate

the electrons. Instead of each electron having one chair to go to, they must now scramble and have many possibilities in where they ‘sit.’”

The unique chiral edge state, which possesses several unexpected properties, is initiated by this dissatisfaction. The electrons, for instance, freeze into a predictable pattern when the quantum matter in a chiral state is cooled to absolute zero, and the emergent charge-neutral particles in this state will all either spin clockwise or anticlockwise. One of these electrons’ spin cannot be changed by any force, including collisions with other particles and the application of magnetic fields; this makes them astonishingly resilient and even suitable for fault-tolerant digital data encoding.

What transpires when an outside particle does collide with one of the particles in the chiral edge state is even more unexpected. In keeping with the billiard ball analogy, you would anticipate the cue ball striking the eight-ball to send it flying. However, if the 15 pool balls were in a chiral bose-liquid condition, they would all respond identically to the striking of the eight-ball. The long-range entanglement that exists in this quantum system is what causes this phenomenon. Observing the chiral bose-liquid state is challenging, which is why it has remained hidden for so long. To do so, the team of scientists designed a theory and an experiment that used a powerful magnetic field capable of measuring the movements of the electrons as they race for chairs.

Lingjie Du said, “On the edge of the semiconductor bilayer, electrons and holes move with the same velocities. This leads to helical-like transport, which can be further modulated by external magnetic fields as the electron and hole channels are gradually separated under higher fields.” The magneto-transport experiments, therefore, successfully reveal the first piece of evidence of the chiral bose-liquid, which scientists call the ‘excitonic topological order.’

© European Union, 2022

Conflict in marriage less harmful for kids when dad keeps it constructive

Conflict is unavoidable in all marriages. When it erupts in families with children, stressed or angry parents may take their pain out on the kids, projecting their anger or withdrawing emotionally or physically. In the worst cases, children’s socioemotional development can suffer. But the way parents, especially fathers, deal with marital conflict can make a difference to kids, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “In the past, marital conflict has always been considered a negative thing in reference to various aspects of child development. But what’s more important than having conflict is how people deal with it. Our study looked at whether constructive conflict resolution could buffer some of the negative influence of marital conflict on parenting practices,” said lead author Qiujie Gong, a doctoral student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois.

Some studies have shown father-child relationships may be more impacted by conflict than mother-child relationships, and can lead to negative development for kids. That’s why the authors chose to focus on fathers in their study. “We wanted to pay more attention to fathers, because while mothers have always been considered the main caregiver, fathers can also significantly influence children’s development,” Gong said.

The authors, including HDFS professors Karen Kramer and Kelly Tu, accessed a longitudinal dataset from the U.S. Department of Education tracing children’s experiences from 9 months to kindergarten. Recognizing the importance of the preschool years for learning socioemotional skills, they analysed the subset of data for families with 4-year-olds and, controlling for mother’s parenting styles, honed in on fathers’ responses to survey questions about marital conflict and resolution strategies. Building links in a chain, they connected fathers’ reports of conflict to their parenting practices, then to the socioemotional impacts of those practices on children. “Beyond looking separately at mothers, fathers, and conflict, as previous studies have done, we put it all together in one model, not only to see the family as an interconnected system but also to not forget the father: How his perceptions of conflict and approaches to resolution affect child socioemotional development,” said Kramer. “That’s the uniqueness of this study.”

Analysing a diverse sample of 3,955 heterosexual families with resident fathers, the authors found when fathers reported more frequent marital conflict, it increased their parenting stress and decreased their warmth toward their child. According to the analysis, those factors then decreased the child’s socioemotional skills reported by mothers in the surveys. Gong emphasizes preschool-age children are at a crucial stage for developing socioemotional skills. These early experiences set the stage for later peer relationships, mental health, and more, so parents of small children should consider how their interactions may spill over to their kids, she says. Next, Gong factored in how fathers resolved conflict. “We found fathers who reported using more constructive conflict resolution -- like open communication and reaching compromise, as opposed to hitting, criticizing, or throwing things -- showed more involvement and warmth toward their kids, compared to their counterparts,” she said.

Not surprisingly, children benefited from these warmer interactions with their dads. “Fathers using constructive conflict resolution led to more parental involvement, which led to more positive child development,” Kramer said. “Destructive conflict has the opposite effect on kids.” In the end, Gong says parents shouldn’t shy away from conflict. Instead, what’s more important is to find constructive resolution strategies that minimize stress and maintain a father’s ability to interact warmly with his children. “If we could have more clinical or educational programs that teach parents how to openly communicate with each other, how to listen to each other, and maintain good relationships with family members, it might be effective in promoting healthier family and child development,” Gong said. “It’s also important to not only consider the amount of parenting, but the quality of parenting. Even if fathers have a lot of involvement, if their warmth is super low, that might not be beneficial for the child.”

Kramer adds that although the study focused exclusively on married couples, fathers in other family arrangements can still learn from the study. “These lessons don’t only apply to married couples. In fact, I would say they are even more important when you are not living together, or you’re separated or divorced,” she said. “You might have even more conflict in those cases, so the process of solving it might be even more important to the development of the child.”

The study found fathers who reported using more constructive conflict resolution showed more involvement and warmth toward their kids.

Tracking how magnetism affects animal behaviour

Scientists summarize the methods used to explore how the Earth’s magnetic field influences the behaviour of a wide variety of animal species.

For over 50 years, scientists have observed that the behaviour of a wide variety of animals can be influenced by the Earth’s magnetic field. However, despite decades of research, the exact nature of this ‘magnetic sense’ remains elusive. Will Schneider and Richard Holland from Bangor University in Wales and their coworker Oliver Lindecke from the Institute for Biology, Oldenburg, Germany have now written a comprehensive overview of this cross-disciplinary field, with an emphasis on the methodology involved. This work is now published in the journal EPJ Special Topics. This magnetic sense, or ‘magnetoreception’, was first noticed in birds, and particularly in migratory songbirds. It has now been observed in many other species including mammals, fish and insects. However, the exact relationship between the magnetic field and the behaviour is difficult to pin down because it can be masked by other environmental factors. Experiments must be very carefully designed if their results are to be statistically sound.

“We aim to provide a balanced overview for researchers who wish to enter this exciting area of sensory biology,” explains Schneider. He and his co-authors outlined a range of methods that are used to deduce whether an animal’s behaviour is affected by a magnetic field. These include using GPS to mark animals’ alignment with the Earth’s field during normal activities, such as cows grazing; observing behaviour after tissues thought to be responsible for magnetoreception have been removed, or genes knocked out; and attaching small magnets on or near the animals’ bodies to disrupt the mechanism. Further work by animal physiologists, neuroscientists, geneticists and others will also be necessary to truly understand this phenomenon. And this research is not only of academic interest. “Understanding animal magnetoreception will help us to protect animals released into unknown environments in the wild,” adds Lindecke.

Cambridge researchers discover our earliest ancestors were walking tall

First hominin muscle reconstruction shows 3.2 million-year-old ‘Lucy’ could stand as erect as we can.

A Cambridge University researcher has digitally reconstructed the missing soft tissue of an early human ancestor -- or hominin -- for the first time, revealing a capability to stand as erect as we do today. Dr Ashleigh Wiseman has 3D-modelled the leg and pelvis muscles of the hominin Australopithecus afarensis using scans of ‘Lucy’: the famous fossil specimen discovered in Ethiopia in the mid-1970s.

Australopithecus afarensis was an early human species that lived in East Africa over three million years ago. Shorter than us, with an apelike face and smaller brain, but able to walk on two legs, it adapted to both tree and savannah dwelling -- helping the species survive for almost a million years. Named for the Beatles classic ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, Lucy is one of the most complete examples to be unearthed of any type of Australopithecus -- with 40% of her skeleton recovered. Wiseman was able to use recently published open source data on the Lucy fossil to create a digital model of the 3.2 million-year-old hominin’s lower body muscle structure. The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

The research recreated 36 muscles in each leg, most of which were much larger in Lucy and occupied greater space in the legs compared to modern humans. For example, major muscles in Lucy’s calves and thighs were over twice the size of those in modern humans, as we have a much higher fat to muscle ratio. Muscles made up 74% of the total mass in Lucy’s thigh, compared

to just 50% in humans. Paleoanthropologists agree that Lucy was bipedal, but disagree on how she walked. Some have argued that she moved in a crouching waddle, similar to chimpanzees -- our common ancestor -- when they walk on two legs. Others believe that her movement was closer to our own upright bipedalism. These reconstructions can now help scientists understand how this human ancestor walked. “Muscle reconstructions have already been used to gauge running speeds of a T-Rex, for example,” said Wiseman. “By applying similar techniques to ancestral humans, we want to reveal the spectrum of physical movement that propelled our evolution -- including those capabilities we have lost.”

A digitisation of the muscle attachment areas used to build the model of Lucy’s muscles, next to the completed 3D muscle model.

Credit: Dr Ashleigh Wiseman

Credit:

A digitisation of the muscle attachment areas used to build the model of Lucy’s muscles, next to the completed 3D muscle model.

Dr Ashleigh Wiseman

Casting new light on thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a life-threatening disorder, where blood clots develop spontaneously without any previous injuries. We spoke to PD Monica Schaller, PhD and Erika Tarasco, PhD, who both work in the group of Prof. Johanna Kremer Hovinga, MD, a world-renowned expert in the field of TTP, about their research.

A disorder which leads to the spontaneous formation of blood clots, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a serious threat to health. When blood clots form in an uncontrolled fashion, they will attract and activate platelets and form blood clots together with von Willebrand factor (VWF), which obstruct the small vessels. “If the condition is left untreated then the organ becomes ischemic and dysfunctional. The major organs that can be affected are the kidneys, the brain and the heart,” explains Dr Monica Schaller. Based at the Department of Hematology at the University Hospital Bern, Dr Schaller is part of a research project which aims to shed new light on both the immunemediated (iTTP) and hereditary (hTTP) forms of TTP, which share some clinical features. “First of all in both forms there is a reduction in the activity of an enzyme called ADAMTS13,” says Erika Tarasco, a post-doctoral fellow at the University Hospital Bern, Inselspital who is also the project manager of the international hereditary TTP registry ( HYPERLINK “http:// www.ttpregistry.net/”www.ttpregistry.net).

ADAMTS13

This particular enzyme, that was discovered in Professor Kremer Hovinga’s laboratory in 1996 (Furlan et al, Blood 1996), plays a crucial role in cleaving VWF, which forms ultra-large multimeres at the origin of the observed blood clotting. In iTTP and hTTP, the ability of ADAMTS13 to cleave VWF is limited. “In hTTP mutations lead to decreased expression of ADAMTS13 or a less functional variant. In iTTP, there are antibodies that block ADAMTS13,” outlines Dr Schaller. As an immunologist, the focus of Dr Schaller’s research is iTTP. “What kinds of antibodies do those patients have that block ADAMTS13? Characterization of the antibodies (genetically and functionally) might give insights into how inhibition of ADAMTS13 can be prevented. What triggers them?” she says. “Children aren’t affected by the immunemediated form – in general it starts in the third decade – so something must act as an additional trigger. We are trying to figure out how the disease starts and is maintained.”

Researchers are using cells from the spleen, which is known to be a major reservoir of

antibodies and autoantibodies, to probe deeper in this area. Dr Schaller is analysing material from the spleens of eight patients, which she says opens up a variety of interesting avenues of investigation. “With these spleens we have access to the B-cells that produce the pathogenic antibodies. We can then extract those antibodies with a technique called phage display technology,”

This is a topic that Dr Tarasco is exploring further in the project, using data from the international hTTP registry, which brings together information on hTTP patients from across this world. The registry was initiated by Prof. Johanna Kremer Hovinga from a collection of several case studies and was officially approved by the ethics committee in 2006.

she explains. Building from these foundations, researchers can then generate antibodies in the lab in a recombinant way. “We use those as tools to select for any molecules that would bind those antibodies,” continues Dr Schaller. “In a very broad sense, the idea is to inject small molecules that bind very strongly to those anti-ADAMTS13 antibodies, thus essentially preventing them from binding to ADAMTS13. ”

The wider aim here is to essentially restore the function of ADAMTS13 and prevent VWF from growing too long, with Dr Schaller looking at whether small molecules called Designed-Ankyrin-Repeat Proteins (DARPIns) can block these antibodies. This work is at a relatively early stage, and is still a long way from clinical translation. Alongside this work on iTTP, the project’s agenda also includes research into hTTP, the two of which have historically been considered to be very similar. “Some of the clinical features that we see with patients are similar. However, there are also aspects in which they differ,” says Dr Tarasco. “The two forms of the disease are fairly similar, but I would not say that they are exactly the same.”

TTP is a rare and complex disease, so Prof Kremer Hovinga and Dr Tarasco say it’s important to share information. “Our laboratory is one of the major reference centres on TTP in the world, so we are part of a network,” they explain. This kind of network can help physicians – some of whom may not have seen many patients with TTP – to diagnose it rapidly when they do come across a case, while the registry is also a valuable research resource. “Hereditary TTP is a very heterogeneous disease,” says Dr Tarasco. “We

NORMAL CONDITION

B-cells

How can we raise awareness for this rare disease to optimize treatment and develop new therapy approaches for the iTTP and hTTP? Antibodytargeted therapies would be highly desirable for iTTP.

Bone Marrow Spleen

see some patients who have been diagnosed, had one episode, and then are subsequently fine - with or without treatment. We also see patients who are regularly sick. They are constantly having blood-clotting episodes, requiring additional treatment.”

The main treatment option for both forms available at the moment is plasma exchange, for which a patient typically needs to travel to hospital. If a patient feels fine and is not experiencing symptoms they might ask whether the inconvenience is really necessary, so preventing over-treatment is also an important issue. “We hope that the clinical trial studies on recombinant ADAMTS13 will lead to greater possibilities for patients to have home treatment,” says Dr Tarasco. More data on TTP would help researchers probe deeper into the disease, and Dr Tarasco says she and her colleagues are keen to widen the network in future. “We are interested in expanding the network and collaborating with researchers in different countries, while we also want to share knowledge of unusual cases,” she continues. “It would be interesting to get data on these patients in our registry, and then we can look deeper into the course of the disease in these cases.”

Rare disease

This remains an extremely rare condition, yet there has been an increase in the number of cases over the last 10 years which is largely due to heightened awareness of the disease among clinical professionals. Even so, Dr Tarasco believes it is important to raise awareness of the disease still further, which would improve the treatment prospects of patients. “Often it’s only in the later stages, when all the other possible microangiopathies have been excluded, that somebody will raise the possibility that a patient has TTP,” she says. By measuring levels of ADAMTS13 activity, Prof. Kremer Hovinga and her group can help diagnose cases of TTP. “For hTTP we do this nearly free of charge for the countries that would like to collaborate with us and become part of the registry. Then we can strengthen the network and plant the seeds of future collaboration,” she continues.

THROMBOTIC THROMBOCYTOPENIC PURPURA - ROLE OF ADAMTS13 AND LONG-TERM OUTCOME

Project Objectives

Research at Professor Dr Kremer Hovinga’s lab is centered on underlying the mechanisms behind immune-mediated and hereditary TTP.

Project Funding

This project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant 310030-185233)

Contact Details

Erika Tarasco, PhD

Project Manager Hereditary TTP Registry

INSELSPITAL, University Hospital Bern

University Clinic of Hematology & Central Hematology Laboratory

Department for BioMedical Research (DBMR), University of Bern

T: +41 31 632 56 90

E: erika.tarasco@insel.ch

W: www.ttpregistry.net

W: http://www.hzl.insel.ch/de/lehreund-forschung/blood-research-program/ research-group-kremer-hovinga

Erika Tarasco is project manager of the hereditary TTP registry at Inselspital in Bern. In her role she manages and monitors the database, reviews and writes medical information reports, and presents registry data in national and international congresses.

Prof Johanna Kremer Hovinga has a longstanding expertise in hemophilia, von Willebrand disease and thrombotic microangiopathies with a particular interest in Von Willebrand factor, ADAMTS13 and TTP. Her lab acts as a national and international reference laboratory for Von Willebrand factor and ADAMTS13 testing. She has authored and co-authored more than 140 papers published in international scientific journals and heads the international hereditary TTP registry. www.ttpregistry.net

Monica Schaller is a Group Leader in the thrombotic autoimmune diseases lab at Inselspital in Bern. Her research is dedicated to unravelling the pathophysiology of different autoimmune diseases, including TTP.

Johanna Kremer Hovinga Erika Tarasco Monica Schaller

Delivering on the potential of RNA therapeutics

RNA therapeutics hold great potential as a means of treating a range of diseases, yet they are also immunogenic and it is difficult to transport these molecules to specific locations in the body. We spoke to Dr Pieter Vader, Diego Aguilar Rodriguez and Willemijn de Voogt about the work of the OBSERVE project in developing extracellular vesicle-based systems to deliver RNA drugs into the body.

The potential of RNA therapeutics is enormous, with researchers investigating possible applications in vaccine development, cancer treatment and several other areas of medicine, yet RNAs are also difficult molecules to work with. These molecules are fragile and can be degraded by various different enzymes, while there are also further issues to overcome before they can be applied more widely. “They are immunogenic, while they are also large and negatively charged, so they cannot spontaneously enter cells, which is necessary for them to perform their function,” says Dr Pieter Vader, Associate Professor in CDL Research and the Department of Experimental Cardiology at the University Medical Center Utrecht. As the Principal Investigator of the OBSERVE project, in which he is working together with PhD students Diego Aguilar Rodriguez and Willemijn de Voogt, Dr Vader is investigating the possibility of using extracellular vesicles (EVs) as a way to deliver RNA therapeutics and help overcome the issues which are currently limiting their application. “These

EVs are vesicles that are secreted by the cell, towards the extracellular milieu,” he outlines.

Extracellular communication

These EVs are thought to have a variety of roles, with Dr Vader primarily interested in their role in intercellular communication. Some EVs are able to deliver content including proteins, RNAs and other small molecules in a

it?” he explains. A tool based on the CRISPRCas9 machinery is being used in the project to study EV-mediated RNA delivery on the single cell level. “With this tool we can see which cells in a dish or an organoid have taken up RNA via our vesicles,” continues Dr Vader. “We can then try comparing different types of vesicles in terms of which deliver most efficiently. We can perhaps then modify them

We’re studying naturally occurring extracellular vesicles – we study what they carry, how they carry it, as well as how they deliver it. We’re really trying to map that – which vesicles can deliver RNA and how do they do it?

functional manner to other cells, a topic that Dr Vader and his colleagues in the project are investigating. “We’re studying naturally occurring EVs – we study what they carry, how they carry it, as well as how they deliver it. We’re really trying to map that – which vesicles can deliver RNA and how do they do

a little bit and ask the question; does their delivery capacity improve?”

This is an important issue in terms of using these vesicles therapeutically, an issue high on the project’s agenda. Researchers are using naturally-occurring vesicles, but certain changes are necessary in order to

load them with exogenous, therapeutic RNA. “We need to modify the EVs in order to give them the ability to carry RNA, so we are applying certain tricks, including hybridization with synthetic nanoparticles and other approaches, to load sufficient amounts of exogenous RNA into them,” says Dr Vader. This is a significant challenge, as typically there is nothing inside the vesicle to ‘hold’ on to the RNA; Dr Vader is developing hybrid nanoparticles, comprised of an EV and a liposome, to address this. “The liposomes carry a bit of positive charge and the RNA is negatively charged, so we were able to get one of the lipid components to hold on to the RNA,” he explains. “We then essentially merged the two nanoparticles – the liposomes and the EVs – together through extrusion.”

The liposome is a bi-layer structure, effectively a very simple model system of an EV. With the addition of a bit of charge to hold onto the RNA, these two nanoparticles are merged together through extrusion, resulting in a hybrid structure. “This structure resembles an EV, but we’ve added some exogenous lipids, and it can now carry this therapeutic RNA,” outlines Dr Vader. By modifying the amounts of liposome and EVs used in forming these structures, Dr Vader and his colleagues are able to change the way they function. “We see that if we use a higher ratio of EVs compared to liposomes, then the mechanism of uptake is dictated by the EVs. Whereas if we have a lower ratio of EVs, we see that the liposome dictates where they go,” he says. “The problem is that at the moment we can’t really increase the proportion of EVs in the hybrid nanoparticle any further, just from a practical standpoint. We want to go even higher and investigate what happens, but first we have to optimise our manufacturing process.”

Microfluidic mixing

This is an issue that is being addressed in the project, with researchers investigating other methods of producing these hybrid nanoparticles. One possibility that Dr Vader is looking at is microfluidic mixing, which involves performing rapid mixing in a highly controlled manner, using very small volumes. “This is done on a chip. You have an inlet of the vesicle components, an inlet of the synthetic lipids, and then a highly controlled, rapid, chaotic mixing, before we get our end product,” he explains. The ultimate objective here is to develop a hybrid structure that can be loaded with a

A more effective way of delivering RNA therapeutics into the body would represent a significant step towards realising their potential. The main benefits of RNA therapeutics are firstly that they are highly specific, and secondly that they target a disease at its source. “They target the genetic disorder, or a gene that is wrongly expressed for example,” says Dr Vader. The EVs could also be used to deliver different types of RNA molecules, opening up wider possibilities. “The general demand from the delivery system is very similar for these RNA molecules, because they all have to be delivered to the cytosol of the target cells. So in principle if you can deliver one RNA, you can also deliver another,” continues Dr Vader. “However the loading, and the strategy for loading, may be different for a small RNA in comparison to a large one. Ideally you would want to load as much RNA as you can into a single EV.”

therapeutic RNA; while this approach could be used to treat a variety of conditions, the focus in the OBSERVE project is on heart failure. “The structure will be based on stem- or progenitor cell-derived vesicles, which hold intrinsic regenerative properties. We will evaluate those in a mouse model of heart failure, of ischemia re-perfusion damage,” outlines Dr Vader. “We believe that we can combine the RNA delivery properties of EVs with their natural properties.”

These EVs also represent a safer and more versatile approach to delivering RNA than synthetic lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), which have been used in Covid-19 vaccines. While synthetic LNPs work effectively in delivering vaccines, they can lead to adverse reactions in other applications, which is not the case with EVs. “As a natural vehicle, EVs may not cause adverse reactions, so they are a much safer option,” explains Dr Vader. There is more work to do before EVs can be applied more widely however, and at this stage Dr Vader is still working to improve the hybrid nanoparticles. “We’re looking at the liposome-EV hybrids, using microfluidic mixing. We’re also looking at other hybrid structures, using for example polymeric nanoparticles,” he outlines. “Once we have prototypes that work, and that we can make at sufficient scale for a mouse model, we can look to move on. We are hoping to start some very preliminary testing in mouse models in the coming year .”

Microfluidic mixing for manufacturing hybrid nanoparticles. Synthetic lipids are dissolved in the organic phase prior to mixing with the aqueous phase containing extracellular vesicles. Upon mixing under controlled conditions, hybrid nanoparticles can be formed.

Super-resolution microscopy image (dSTORM) of single extracellular vesicles (EVs). EVs are labeled with the general membrane dye Memglow560 (cyan). Transmembrane proteins CD81 (magenta) and CD63 (yellow) are detected on the EVs through staining with specific antibodies. Imaging was performed on the Nanoimager S (ONI). Top right: Zoom-in of an individual EV containing both CD81 and CD63.

OBSERVE

Overcoming cellular barriers to therapeutic RNA delivery using extracellular vesicles

Project Objectives

The OBSERVE project aims at exploring the potential of extracellular vesicles (EVs) as a means of delivering RNA therapeutics to cells. These EVs are secreted by cells into the extra-cellular milieu, and play an important role in inter-cellular communication. These EVs essentially transport different materials between cells, including proteins, RNAs, lipids and other small molecules. Researchers are probing how EVs deliver RNAs, and looking to explore the wider therapeutic possibilities.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Starting Grant (StG), LS7, ERC-2019-STG.

Contact Details

Dr Pieter Vader, PhD

Associate Professor

CDL Research & Department of Experimental Cardiology

Room G03.644

University Medical Center Utrecht

Heidelberglaan 100

3584 CX Utrecht

The Netherlands

T: +31 88 7557654

E: pvader@umcutrecht.nl

W: https://www.umcutrecht.nl/en/research/ researchers/vader-pieter-p

OBSERVE Project Research Roles

Researchers in the OBSERVE project are investigating several issues around EVs, with the aim of eventually using them to deliver RNA therapeutics. We spoke to Diego Aguilar Rodriguez and Willemijn de Voogt , PhD students at UMC Utrecht, about their role in the project, the methods they’re using, and the wider possibilities of RNA therapeutics.

EU Researcher: Could I ask you both about your respective roles in the project?

Willemijn de Voogt: My role is on the fundamental part of the project. I’m trying to unravel the biology behind EVs – how are they taken up? Which proteins or RNAs are involved in functional EV transfer? I’m looking at the pathways of intra-cellular trafficking, and the pathways underlying the transfer of RNA molecules.

Diego Aguilar Rodriguez: I’m focused more on the potential therapeutic applications of EVs, with the goal of developing novel therapeutic tools to deliver mRNA. We’re looking to harness the properties of these EVs and trying to apply them in drug delivery. We’re trying to learn about these EVs and the potential benefits of their use in terms of things like uptake, targeting and preferential accumulation.

EUR: Could you then look to bring these attributes to synthetic drug delivery systems?

DAR: This is what we’re trying to do. Both EVs and synthetic drug delivery systems have limitations - we’re trying to get the best of both worlds.

EUR: How does the relationship between basic and applied research work? Do you need to collaborate quite closely?

WdV: Not yet, as the project is still at quite an early stage, but hopefully more so later on. For instance, if I find that certain proteins are essential for uptake or functional delivery in a certain cell type, then potentially Diego can design hybrids that contain specifically these proteins.

EUR: How will you use microfluidic mixing to create hybrids?

DAR: One of the phases is the organic phase, with synthetic lipids. In the aqueous phase we’ll have EVs with the therapeutic reagent, in this case mRNA. Then we will hybridise them with a microfluidic chip, then at the end we purify the sample.

EUR: Do you see wider potential in RNA therapeutics?

Pieter Vader is Associate Professor at CDL Research and at the Department of Experimental Cardiology at the University Medical Center Utrecht. His main research interests are in the field of therapeutic applications of extracellular vesicles, including unraveling the mechanisms underlying extracellular vesicle-mediated cargo transfer. In 2021, Pieter was award the Prix Galien Research Award for his work on drug delivery.

WdV: Very much so, we’ve seen the therapeutic potential of RNAs in recent times, for example with the development of vaccines against Covid-19. By exploiting these delivery vehicles, we can look to target specific diseases in multiple ways, such as by trying to express certain genes or knock down certain genes.

Dr Pieter Vader, PhD

New scalable strategy for challenging plant-based medicines

A European consortium working on the MIAMi project is using yeast to support sustainable, scalable production of complex chemical compounds in rare plants, to harness their valuable healthcare and pharmaceutical properties. We speak to Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen, Group Leader & Senior Researcher from the Technical University of Denmark.

About half of modern medicines are plant-based and plants provide the ingredients of highly effective medicines for several debilitating and life-threatening conditions. For just a couple of examples to show the usefulness of plant-derived medicines, take the anti-malarial drug Artemisinin, from the sweet wormwood plant – it damages the malaria parasite in red blood cells, or the opium poppy, harbouring opiates for pain medicine and used in morphine. Plants are invaluable and can provide us with an enormous range of uses for healthcare.

The MIAMi project focuses specifically on tropical plants possessing the molecules known as MIAs (monoterpenoid indole alkaloids), which are plant secondary metabolites. There are more than 2000 MIAs in nature, but they can be rare, so studying them is not always possible. This rarity also means it is near impossible to harvest them and furthermore, exploiting them could lead to their extinction. However, it is known they can be used for anti-cancer therapeutics, anti-psychotic drugs and anaesthetics so finding better methods to utilise them for treatments is an important goal in healthcare.

The challenges of extracting MIAs

“We have millions of species of plant on this planet, most of them full of interesting chemicals and apart from problems like habitat destruction, and the extinction of plants, even if we find interesting substances in a plant this does not mean we can directly use them, because if you use a substance you have to have it in sufficient amounts, you need to produce them cheaply and sustainably and that’s where we often find problems,” said Linus Naumann, from the Max-Planck Institute, who is working on MIAMi. “Some plants require you to harvest tonnes of them for milligrams of the substance. Some may grow extremely slowly. There may be some that you cannot cultivate at all because they need symbiotic interactions that only occur in their natural habitat. Many interesting plants are also very rare so they would become extinct if exploited. You can see the dilemma.”

As if this wasn’t enough to dissuade the exploitation of the plants, the process for extracting them can involve solvents and large amounts of energy which shows it’s not kind to the environment. Production of pharmaceutical ingredients can also be hindered when there are gaps in knowledge about biosynthetic pathways.

“Sometimes, these molecules quickly become so complex and intricate that even our biochemists cannot efficiently reproduce them in the lab. Even in the year 2020, we rely on growing these plants and extracting the molecules.”

The chemical mastery of plants

It may seem strange that modern science cannot keep pace with this natural manufacturing process but there are good reasons. Plants rely on chemicals for nearly

all of their interaction with their environment because plants cannot move from where their seed falls. They face threats such as being attacked by insects and eaten by larger grazing animals, they have to deal with extremes in weather and they must be attractive to pollinators to reproduce. Therefore, they rely on a specific, targeting, chemical production for each job, for defence, for attraction, even for signalling and conveying warnings of attack, to other plants. They have developed chemical mastery in nature and this specialism, honed over evolutionary time frames is beyond our abilities to mimic and reproduce them.

The impracticalities and inefficiencies in the process from extraction to synthesis, mean that whilst the range of plant-derived pharmaceuticals is potentially vast, only a fraction can be used for medical treatments.

By machine learning-guided elucidation of biosynthetic pathways for monoterpenoid indole alkaloids found in plants, the EU-funded MIAMi consortium are refactoring alkaloid biosynthesis in yeast cells using computer-aided design tools, advanced genome engineering, mass-spectrometry-assisted imaging, and enzyme characterization to enable fermentation-based manufacturing of natural and new-to-nature alkaloids from engineered yeast cells. Lærke M.M. Lassen

New solutions and strategies

The secret to these substances is encoded in the organism’s DNA. The best hope is in genetic engineering, finding a way to trick the natural production of the valuable chemical in a more accessible, quick growing, cheap and abundant organism, compared to the rare plant. That ideal organism would take on the task of ramping up chemical production.

To accomplish this feat, you first need to extract the genetic sequence from the plant, then analyse it and create a new DNA construct, and finally insert it into the alternative organism. Each of these processes is incredibly complex and there are many unknowns, so trial and error and going back to the start are part of the painstaking process.

The MIAMi project is made up of four university groups and three industry partners collaborating to address the challenge to develop a sustainable bioproduction route based on yeast, which can ferment simple and cheap feedstocks such as sugar into bioactive MIAs. It essentially means taking the DNA from the plants and placing it into yeast to grow it.

“This organism, yeast, that has been used for baking bread and brewing beer for thousands of years, grows quickly and on cheap media, and it possesses advanced cellular machinery. This organism is already part of many great achievements in biotechnology. It provides a means of cheaper, more sustainable production,” says Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen.

Who’s involved?

The Dutch company, Future Genomics Technologies take on the task of sequencing the plant. The company showcases one of the most advanced DNA sequencing technologies available, called Nanopore sequencing.

Nanopore sequencing relies on a thin electrically insulating membrane in a small liquid-filled well. In the membrane is one tiny hole called a pore protein which allows

measuring these changes in the electrical current, it is possible to calculate each and every base that passes through the hole. The sequence of changes in electrical current can be matched with correlating DNA bases. This is the method used to sequence genomes for the MIAMi project.

For reading and deciphering the sequence, Universite de Tours, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and University of

DNA

DNA to pass through it. The scientists put the DNA that needs to be sequenced on one side of the membrane. DNA is a negatively charged molecule which means when an electrical voltage is fed into the membrane the DNA gets sucked to the positive pole, through the one single pore. When it passes through the pore, every base of this DNA changes the electrical current that flows through it for a short amount of time. By

Copenhagen step in with their expertise. After finding out which part of the genome produces which compound, Explorer Biotech and their business unit, Doulix, attempt to streamline and automate DNA construct design. The next step is the production of these sought-out substances, when they are inserted into yeast cells, which act as busy high-throughput biological factories for the desired molecular compounds.

Doulix has created a tool for biologists to upload the

sequences, which returns a recommendation on how to assemble them to fit the new target organism. Building a library of well characterised and standardised biological parts means it will become possible for plug-and-play designs of new genetic circuits, over time. This kind of innovation is key to accelerating biosynthetic solutions.

MIAMi Team Photo

There will need to be ‘bug-fixes’ in the genetic pathways but using yeast allows scientists to refine the process, testing variable genetic constructs until an adequate ‘pilot’ design is reached. Optimisation will also need consideration, determining the best conditions to grow the compounds on media, taking account of criteria such as Ph value, nutrients, oxygen levels and other environmental variables.

One of the partners in the programme is the French company, Axythtis, which has experience in pharmaceutical compounds and can medically test new substances in pre-clinical studies like animal testing, for example measuring the bio-activity of compounds introduced in mice. When scaleup is approved, large, industrial bio-reactors can be used for production.

Saving lives with MIAs

In summary, the project discovers genes in the target plants that need to be assembled in a new way, to be suitable to genetically engineer in yeast cells.

Doulix has created a tool for biologists to upload the DNA sequences, which returns a recommendation on how to assemble them to fit the new target organism. Building a library of well characterised and standardised biological parts means it will become possible for plug-and-play designs of new genetic circuits, over time. This

kind of innovation is key to accelerating biosynthetic solutions.

The project intends to deliver at least three lead MIA chemicals, and 15 MIA analogues. An important milestone has already been accomplished when researchers from the University of Tours, France, working on the MIAMi project, assembled a complex seven-step biosynthetic pathway of the MIA, vindoline, the precursor of the cancer medications vinblastine and vincristine. Furthermore, the DTU team has recently showcased the biosynthesis of vindoline and catharanthine in yeast, and from those compounds enabled synthesis of vinblastine, purely from fermentation of sugar and amino acid feedstocks by yeast (ref: Zhang et al., Nature, 2022). Currently, cancer patients face shortages in the supply chain, so the achievement is a positive step toward a more reliable, sustainable production of the drugs.

The wider implications of this process, mean taking the emphasis off discovering the plants and manufacturing drugs directly from the harvest. It would be game-changing for increasing production without destroying the source. It would save on resources like land and water and it would also save time. Most of all, it makes possible the creation and mass production of new drugs with these key pharmaceutical ingredients, that could change healthcare outcomes and save lives, potentially for millions of people.

MIAMI

Refactoring monoterpenoid indole alkaloid production in microbial cell factories

Project Objectives

Our mission is to develop new tools and methodologies to discover complex biosynthetic pathways of bioactive natural products from plants, and to optimize their production in yeast cell factories in order to establish robust fermentation-based manufacturing of essential plant-derived medicines facing supply chain challenges and environmental concerns related to their sourcing from plants.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No 814645.

Project Partners

https://www.miami-project.eu/about-us/ meet_the_team/

Contact Details

Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen

Group leader & Senior researcher Technical University of Denmark

DTU Biosustain

Kemitorvet 220

DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby Denmark

T: +45 61284850

E: mije@biosustain.dtu.dk

W: http://www.miami-project.eu

animation video: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=PSRY0oGu4x0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plwcUWIKWts https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=eS9cFjagaY0&t=984s

Newsletter: https://www.miami-project.eu/ newsletter-2021/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36045295/

Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen

Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen is Principal Investigator at the Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark, and coordinator of the Horizon 2020 consortium MIAMi focused on developing new supply chains of human therapies using yeast cell factories. He is a molecular biologist by training, and conducted his post-doctoral research at Max-Planck Institute in Germany, University of Copenhagen, and Stanford University in the US.

The intricate details behind the formation of food preferences

Extensive research across several species suggests that, in addition to sensory properties such as taste, smell, texture, appearance, as well as other environmental signals, regulation and selection of food are also influenced by the caloric content of the meal. Indeed, after being swallowed, i.e. during the post-ingestive phase, food is analyzed for its caloric and nutritional content, and this post-ingestive assessment is responsible for the formation of long-term food preferences. Specifically, many studies have shown, both in animal models and in humans, that learning associations between food cues and post-ingestive consequences will lead to development of preferences toward highcalorie foods that, in the long term, is thought to alter food-seeking behaviour.

Dr. Oliveira-Maia developed an interest in post-ingestive reinforcement during his Ph.D. “We had access to a transgenic mouse with a modification in a gene relevant for taste transduction in taste receptor cells. This mouse was engineered specifically to study taste, and it had been previously shown to be unable to sense sweetness, i.e., it was ‘sweet-blind’. We decided to study if the animal could detect the rewarding and reinforcing properties of calorie-rich sugar solutions, even though it was unable to sense their sweet taste. Indeed, we demonstrated that these animals were still capable of identifying the presence of sugar, since they would prefer solutions with sugar over water, namely when the different alternatives were left in the same place across several days” explains Dr. Oliveira-Maia. In this study, the research team further demonstrated that reward-related brain areas such as the ventral striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex were activated when the animals were consuming sugar, relative to consumption of a noncaloric sweetener, used as a control. They also demonstrated that dopamine was released in the ventral striatum, also when the animals were drinking sugar. “This revealed to us that a non-oral component of sugar could be identified by the organism, and this process of identification was somehow related to activation of reward circuits in the brain and to the release of dopamine. This was the first

paper which proved that animals can identify the post-ingestive nutritional value of sugars, in a manner that is fully independent of any orosensory properties” says Dr. OliveiraMaia, who has continued to work in this area. More recently, to identify how the metabolic reward coming from sugar induces learning, Dr. Oliveira-Maia and his team developed a protocol for conditioning lever-pressing behaviour in mice, using another method to

bypass sweet taste and oral stimulation. In this task, whenever the animal pressed a lever, the researchers would inject solutions into its stomach via a surgically implanted catheter. Injecting solutions directly into the animal’s stomach bypasses the mouth, and eliminates the palatable effects of food. Once the animals had established lever-pressing behaviour to obtain only water, the researchers would change the rewards to either sugar or a non-caloric

How do we choose what we would like to eat? Revealing the factors that influence food selection has been a crucial question in the study of eating behaviour. Dr. Oliveira-Maia and his research team at the CalorieRL project are working on a more exact understanding of the mechanisms that drive and reinforce food-seeking behaviour.

sweetener, delivered directly into the stomach. While the non-caloric sweetener was not sufficient to stimulate continued lever-pressing, the animals receiving sugar persisted in lever pressing across many days, and could actually significantly increase these behaviours given certain conditions. “This gave us insight into the fact that post-ingestive metabolic signals were having an important impact on the maintenance of these learned behaviours across time, and we became quite interested in understanding how this could have a more global impact in terms of feeding behaviours” says Dr. Oliveira-Maia. In this paper, the researchers also demonstrated that injecting sugar into the stomach would increase the firing rate of subpopulations of midbrain dopaminergic neurons. Furthermore, in what Dr. Oliveira-Maia considers one of the most interesting findings from the paper, once the researchers cut the branch of the vagus nerve that carries information from the liver, the capacity of animals to learn from postingestive administration of sugar was severely impacted. This paper was the main inspiration for CalorieRL. It formed the hypothesis that behaviours conditioned by the nutrient value of sugar has a dopaminergic substrate associated with neural activity in brain reward circuits, resulting from sensory information transmitted through the vagus nerve.

of the liver, for many reasons such as the presence of a tumor. Depending on the part of the liver that is being removed, this will require cutting a part of the innervation during surgery. However, some patients will also have conserved innervation of the liver, and that will allow for a comparison with those that have nerve lesions” explains Dr. Oliveira-Maia. The researchers will use functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural activation, with brain activity measured while the patient is in the scanner performing the post-ingestive task. Dr. Oliveira-Maia and his team plan to identify the computations that the person is doing within the task, to extract parameters that are significant in terms of decision making and correlate them with brain activity. If relevant parameters of the computational model of the behaviour are reflected in the neural activity during the task, it is assumed that a similar computation is happening with a similar time course in a specific area of the brain. In parallel, the researchers will also assess neurochemical activation using a molecular imaging approach. Using a radioactive marker for dopamine receptors, the researchers can observe changes in radioactivity intensity that occur following consumption of food in areas of the brain that are rich in dopamine

CalorieRL

Reinforcement learning from postingestive calories: from body to brain in health and disease

Project Objectives

Reinforcement learning from post-ingestive calories: from body to brain in health and disease. In CalorieRL, computational reinforcement models and brain functional imaging will be applied to instrumental conditioning in healthy volunteers and liver patients with and without surgically induced lesion of the hepatic branch of the vagus nerve. Our aim is to explore post-ingestive reinforcement of food-seeking behavior and the contribution of vagus nerve signalling for post-ingestive conditioning in humans.

Project Funding

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº950357.

Project Partners

• Dr. Hugo Pinto Marques

• Dr. Eric J. DeWitt

• Dr. Durval C. Costa

• Dr. Francisco P. M. Oliveira

Contact Details

Albino Jorge Oliveira-Maia, MD, MPH, PhD Group Leader @ Champalimaud Research

Neuropsychiatry Director @ Champalimaud Clinical Centre

Champalimaud Foundation

Av. Brasilia, Doca de Pedrouços 1400-038 Lisbon, Portugal

T: (00351) 21 0480 115

E: albino.maia@neuro.fchampalimaud.org

W: https://www.fchampalimaud.org/ researchfc/groups/grupo-neuropsychiatry

The idea of CalorieRL is transferring what has been found in mice, into humans.

According to Dr. Oliveira-Maia, the main goals are to develop methods for a very well-defined measurement of post-ingestive reinforcement in humans and to understand the impact of the innervation of the liver, namely by the vagus nerve, on this behaviour. The researchers are recruiting healthy volunteers, as well as patients who have surgical lesions of the vagus nerve innervating the liver, and then understand how behaviour and neural activation from post-ingestive reinforcement are relevant in the context of obesity. “There are two possible approaches that would allow us to understand the impact of hepatic innervation. One is with patients who have received a liver transplant, since after a liver transplant one does not have any neural connections between the liver and the central nervous system. The other alternative is with patients that need to remove part

receptors, and that reflect the concentration and release of dopamine in the synapse.

Dr. Oliveira-Maia is also a practicing psychiatrist and, naturally, one of the research team’s interests is also to uncover to what degree post-ingestive reinforcement is modified in individuals with disorders of eating behaviour. Their specific interest is in obesity. Obesity has become a problem of epidemic proportions with over 4 million people dying each year due to being overweight or obese. Patients with severe forms of obesity may require invasive bariatric surgery for long-term treatment and weight loss. “If we better understand the impact of the autonomic nervous system and gutbrain communication, this could provide opportunities for treatments that are less invasive, or treatments for those patients that do not respond or cannot access currently available options, like bariatric surgery” explains Dr. Oliveira-Maia.

Albino J. Oliveira Maia is the director of the Neuropsychiatry Unit at the Champalimaud Foundation. In addition to being a physician he holds a master’s degree in public health and a doctorate in neuroscience, and was trained at Porto, Duke and Harvard Universities. He is currently a practicing psychiatrist at the Champalimaud Clinical Centre, group leader at Champalimaud Research and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at NOVA Medical School.

Albino J. Oliveira Maia

This gave us insight into the fact that post-ingestive metabolic signals were having an important impact on the maintenance of these learned behaviours across time, and we became quite interested in understanding how this can have a more global impact in terms of feeding behaviours.

How do cells communicate?

The fields of developmental biology and adult tissue homeostasis have traditionally been viewed as separate, with scientists tending to communicate primarily with peers in their own area of research. However, similar cell signalling processes are involved in development and tissue maintenance. “There are certain principles in an adult organism that control whether a cell duplicates, or whether it becomes a muscle cell or a skin cell for example. These principles also apply in development,

Cell signalling

As the head of the laboratory, Dr Sonnen is now working to gain deeper insights into cell signalling pathways and the transmission of biological information, using two model systems. The first of these model systems is somitogenesis, a phase of embryonic development. “In this phase the vertebrae are formed in a step-wise way, while several different organs form at the same

simplified model of the small intestine,” outlines Sonja Weterings, a PhD student in the lab. “We dissect the small intestine of a mouse and then grow these cells as mini-guts in a dish, which we then use in our research into cell signalling.”

A variety of different techniques are being used in this research to visualize and investigate the mode-of-action of cell-cell communication, one of which is fluorescence real-time

We’ve seen that cell communication in the embryo is dynamic, and

Cells use different languages to communicate with each other, while they can also vary the volume or duration of these signals to send information, which ultimately affects the fate and behaviour of cells. We spoke to Dr Katharina Sonnen and Sonja Weterings about their work in using new technologies to investigate how cells talk to each other, which could open up new therapeutics avenues in future.

Figure 1: Study of signalling dynamics in embryonic development and tissue homeostasis.

a neighbouring cell or one further away – then it will start to produce a colour,” explains Dr Sonnen. The nature of that signal can then be related to the subsequent behaviour of the cell. “We can look at the signal the cell receives, and then at what happens next. Does it proliferate, or die, or do something else entirely?” continues Dr Sonnen. “Then we change the signal and see what happens then. The main aim for us is to understand the communication system, to understand how cells talk to each other.”

This might be between neighbouring cells or over larger distances, with cells effectively using different languages to communicate with each other at different ranges. Cells can also vary a single sound to transmit information, in what has been described as the Morse code of biology. “With Morse code, varying a single sound – making it long or short, or combining long or short – allows you to transmit information,” says Dr Sonnen. Through the use of a technique called microfluidics, Dr Sonnen is able to change the nature of cell communication, then she can assess the effects. “We don’t just look at what’s going on, but can now also change the signal and then see what’s going on. We basically combine fluorescence realtime imaging with microfluidics,” she explains. “We can inactivate communication for some time then activate it, and in this way we can externally control the periodic activation.”

Translational impact

A deeper understanding of cell signalling could also help researchers develop treatments for conditions associated with certain aberrations in cell function. Researchers in Dr Sonnen’s group are investigating how cell-cell communication is changed in the context of cancer. “In this context there is too much cellular proliferation and too little cell specification or cell death, so the control mechanisms don’t work properly any more. How is that changed in a tumour? Can we maybe change it back to induce differentiation for instance, so that

the cell doesn’t proliferate?” she outlines. Certain chemotherapeutics are available that block this cell communication, yet internal mechanisms may keep a system running, while these treatments also typically cause adverse side-effects; now Dr Sonnen is investigating the possibility of a more targeted approach. “If we target the signalling dynamics more specifically it may be that we have a better outcome and less severe side-effects for the patient as well,” she says.

This research provides a solid foundation for potential translational work in future, yet this rests first on a thorough understanding of cell signalling under healthy conditions. While very much aware of the long-term therapeutic possibilities which could arise from her research, Dr Sonnen says the priority in the lab at this stage is to dig deeper into cell signalling mechanisms, both in somitogenesis and the small intestine. “We’ve seen that cell communication in the embryo is dynamic, and we want to understand how it works. What is really going on? How does it control cell proliferation? And is the mechanism similar in adult tissues?” she says. Similar cell signalling dynamics have been observed in adult tissue, now researchers aim to heighten awareness of these similarities. “We go to conferences on development, as well as those that are more related to organoids or adult tissues,” continues Dr Sonnen. “We’re trying to basically build a bridge between research into development and homeostasis.”

The project is currently at around the midway point of its funding term, and various different tools have been set up which will help researchers gain deeper insights. These signals have been shown to play a significant role in the development of cancer, underlining the wider importance of the project’s work. “More research is required before we can move towards translational work. But in the longer term, understanding cell signalling could allow us to control differentiation,” says Dr Sonnen.

SignalingDynamics

Signaling dynamics in the control of cell proliferation and differentiation during development and homeostasis

Project Objectives

The objectives of SignalingDynamics are to understand how signalling dynamics control cell proliferation and cell differentiation in the context of embryonic development and adult tissue homeostasis. To this end, the segmenting vertebrate embryo is used as model system of embryonic development and the small intestine as model system of tissue homeostasis. By comparing these two systems, we aim to derive general principles of cell-cell communication in multicellular systems.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Starting Grant (StG), LS3, ERC-2019-STG.

Grant agreement ID: 850554

Contact Details

Project Coordinator: Katharina Sonnen, PhD, Group Leader Hubrecht Institute

Uppsalalaan 8

3584 CT Utrecht

The Netherlands

T: +31 (0) 30 212 18 00

E: k.sonnen@hubrecht.eu

W: https://www.sonnenlab.org/

W: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/850554

Katharina Sonnen: After a PhD in cell biology (University of Basel), Ina did a Postdoc at EMBL Heidelberg to study cell-cell communication in vertebrate embryos. In 2018, she established her own research group at the Hubrecht Institute to study how cells communicate with each other both during embryonic development and in adult tissues. For this work she received an ERC starting grant in 2019.

Sonja Weterings: Sonja is one of the PhD students working on the ERC-funded project SignalingDynamics. Her work focusses on signaling dynamics in adult tissues, mainly the small intestine. She studied Molecular Biology and Biomedical Sciences in Utrecht.

Katharina Sonnen Sonja Weterings

Figure 2: The “morse code of biology”

Characterising cell-cell interactions

T-cells are an important part of the immune system, but they need to interact with dendritic cells before they can be activated and acquire specific functions. We spoke to Dr Giulia Pasqual about her research into the interactions between dendritic- and T-cells, and how this interaction influences the subsequent fate of T-cells.

The nature of interactions between cells is an important topic in all areas of biology, including in the immune system. For example, T-cells must interact with dendritic cells in order to be activated, a topic that lies at the heart of Dr Giulia Pasqual’s research in the Synvivo project. “I am studying cell-cell interaction in the context of the immune system. More specifically, I am studying interactions between dendritic cells and T-cells,” she outlines. Once T-cells have been activated, they can then acquire different types of function in the immune system. “Each program secretes a defined sub-set of cytokines, some are more active in dealing with bacterial infections, while other types of T-cells can suppress or negatively regulate the immune function,” explains Dr Pasqual. “The messages that are exchanged in the context of this interaction between T-cells and dendritic cells are highly relevant in terms of the eventual fate of the T-cells.”

Synvivo project

As the Principal Investigator of the Synvivo project, Dr Pasqual is working to characterise these interactions in greater depth, conducting in vivo research using mice as a model system. The focus in this research is on three specific aspects of these interactions, one of which is the identity of the dendritic cells that are involved, with researchers aiming to deconvolute the heterogeneity of the immune system. “The dendritic cell population is very heterogenous, there is a high degree of diversity within it,” says Dr Pasqual. It is difficult to study these cells using existing genetic tools, so Dr Pasqual and her colleagues are employing a new labelling technique called LIPSTIC, which helps researchers gain deeper insights than previously possible. “There are basically three components to the LIPSTIC technique. On the one side there is an enzyme, and on another cell there is a moiety that is recognised by the enzyme,” she explains. “The third component is the substrate.”

The LIPSTIC technique allows researchers to effectively attach a label to the cells involved in an interaction, such as a fluorophore or something else that can easily be detected with other reagents. One cell marks the other when they interact, and while this labelling is not permanent it does last for a few hours, providing a window of opportunity for researchers. “There is the possibility to then retrieve the cells that are involved in the interaction, and to analyse them with other methods, such as proteomics or gene expression analysis. Or we can just perform phenotyping on the cells,” says Dr Pasqual. Researchers can then compare the cells that underwent interactions with those that didn’t, and in the process learn more about the influence of those interactions on cell fate. “Using this LIPSTIC tool, or variations of it, we can map the dendritic cells that are interacting with the T-cells,” continues Dr Pasqual.

A second major topic Dr Pasqual is addressing in the project is the spatial localisation of the interaction. It has been

A ligand and receptor pair involved in interaction are equipped with an enzyme and an acceptor moiety. In presence of the substrate (red kiss), and upon cell-cell interaction, the LIPSTIC reaction takes place so that one cell labels the interacting partner, which can later be identified, retrieved and analysed.

hypothesised that the anatomical niche where an interaction takes place is highly relevant in shaping different types of T-cell response, an idea which Dr Pasqual is exploring further through in vivo research.

“In order to investigate this hypothesis, we need to observe it in the natural or physiological context. When we extract cells and distribute them on a dish, we lose the complexity of different types of microanatomical niches. We want to first observe what happens in vivo, then we can use other types of tools or experimental set-ups,” she outlines. The third area of research involves performing single-cell analysis, as it’s now possible to distinguish the cells that did interact from the ones that didn’t, and then analyse them. “We’re looking at the gene expression of the different cells that were involved in interactions,” says Dr Pasqual.

the immune response, yet Dr Pasqual says there is a possible alternative approach. “A different approach could be to effectively instruct T-cells to become suppressive, to become tolerogenic,” she outlines. “It is currently challenging to tune the response in a suppressive manner.”

There are tools currently available to tune the immune response in a specific direction. However, these tools are based largely on experimental evidence, and the molecular mechanism that leads to the measured effect is not always clear. “Knowing exactly what signals lead to a particular type of response would help us to rationally develop novel tools to tune the immune response,” says Dr Pasqual. The project’s work could represent an important step forward in this respect. “If, in 10 years time, we know exactly what signals are important to induce cells to be

SYNVIVO

Revealing dendritic cell-CD4+ T cell communication by using synthetic biology in vivo

Project Objectives

Interactions between different cell types are key for immune function. By coupling chemical and synthetic biology with mouse genetics, our research aims at developing innovative technologies to study cell-cell communication in the immune system, and to use these novel experimental approaches to track interactions between antigenpresenting cells and T cells, with the ultimate goal of revealing the molecular pathways governing the T cell response in vivo

Project Funding

This project is funded by the European Research Council Starting Grant “Revealing dendritic cell-CD4+ T cell communication by using synthetic biology in vivo - SYNVIVO”, grant agreement 853179

Contact Details

Principal Investigator,

Giulia Pasqual, Associate Professor

Department Of Surgery Oncology and Gastroenterology

Università degli Studi di Padova via Gattamelata 64 35128 Padova PD Italy

T: +39 049 8215891

E: giulia.pasqual@unipd.it

W: https://www.pasqual-lab.org/

Auto-immune disease

The aim in this research is to describe the process that leads to T-cell activation in a more detailed way, at both the cellular and molecular level, while it also holds wider relevance in terms of the treatment of immune mediated diseases. For instance, in autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and coeliac disease the immune response damages healthy cells, leading to wider health problems. “For example, in MS the T-cells recognise some components as attackers. They attack those components, and this leads to disease,” says Dr Pasqual. The majority of auto-immune diseases like MS are currently treated by broadly suppressing

tolerogenic or suppressive, then we will have an additional tool that could be very valuable for the treatment of autoimmune diseases,” continues Dr Pasqual.

This is a more general goal for researchers in the immunology field however, rather than a specific objective in Synvivo. For Dr Pasqual and her colleagues in the project, the more immediate priority is to pursue fundamental research into the interaction between dendritic cells and T-cells. “We want to more accurately describe - at both the cellular and the molecular levels - the process that leads to T-cell activation, with particular attention to both inflammatory and tolerogenic programmes,” she says.

Giulia Pasqual obtained a PhD in Life Sciences from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. From 2012 to 2018 she trained as a postdoctoral fellow in immunology, first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later at the Rockefeller University, USA. Since 2019 she is professor of immunology at the University of Padova, Italy.

Giulia Pasqual

I am studying cell-cell interaction in the context of the immune system. More specifically, I am studying interactions between dendritic cells and T-cells . Once T-cells have been activated, they can then acquire different types of function in the immune system.

Confocal microscopy images of immune cells in mouse lymph node.

Behind the social lives of bacteria

Bacteria cooperate in many different ways, and this cooperation can increase the virulence of infections. Researchers in the SESE project are developing a model system for looking at social behaviours in infection, as well as exploring the possibility of disrupting infection through social cheat bacteria, as Professor Ashleigh Griffin explains.

The propensity to cooperate has evolved in many species over time, from ants, to humans, to monkeys, as it has become apparent that it can have a positive effect on the fitness of another individual. Cooperative behaviour can also be observed in bacteria, says Ashleigh Griffin, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Oxford. “Previously I worked to show that bacterial cells affected the fitness of their neighbours through their actions, either positively or negatively. These behaviours are then expected to evolve as a result of these fitness effects on others,” she outlines. This idea has largely entered the scientific mainstream, now Professor Griffin is the Principal Investigator of the SESE project, in which she and her collaborators are looking at social behaviour in bacterial infections. “In this project we’re trying to develop a model system to look at how social behaviours evolve in infection,” she explains.

Social behaviour

This primarily means how cells influence each other. One way in which bacteria do this is by releasing enzymes into the surrounding environment to extract nutrients. “In the case of bacteria, enzyme degradation has to happen outside the organism, as they don’t

have a gut. Bacteria must release enzymes into the environment,” outlines Professor Griffin. If a bacterial cell’s neighbour is doing the same thing then they both have the opportunity to benefit from each other’s behaviour, an example of the kind of cooperative behaviour that Professor Griffin is investigating with her postdoc, Dr Melanie Ghoul. “We have been able to understand these cooperative behaviours by growing cooperative and non-cooperative bacteria together in test-tubes and watching how they evolve over time,” she says.

The aim here is to identify the different factors that affect the extent to which bacterial cells cooperate. Researchers typically take a number of different issues into consideration. “We can look at what happens if we mix them together with relatives or non-relatives for example, or if we mix them together very densely. We can make all kinds of different adjustments to the conditions in the flask and ask the question; what’s the effect on

Cooperative green colonies and selfish white colonies growing on an agar plate.

cooperation?” outlines Professor Griffin. It has been shown in the lab that microorganisms do in fact cooperate, now Professor Griffin is investigating the importance of this to bacterial infections. “Does this cooperative behaviour have any relevance to bacteria in the real world?” she asks.

The focus in this research is on a group of patients with cystic fibrosis whose lungs are infected with a bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), which is known to be resistant to antibiotics. This particular species of bacteria is what’s called an opportunistic pathogen. “It makes the best of the circumstances in which it finds itself. You can find it in seawater, in mushrooms you buy from the supermarket, in plugholes and other places. When it gets into someone’s lungs it’s able to carve out a living there. It’s very versatile,” outlines Professor Griffin. The bacteria can persist for many years in cystic fibrosis patients once it has established a foothold, leading to long-term lung infection. “Because cystic fibrosis patients’ mucus is so thick, anything they breathe in gets stuck,” explains Professor Griffin.

Bacteria form biofilms in the lung, formed through cooperative behaviour among bacteria, which makes them even harder to treat. These biofilms can become less sticky over time, which was described in a paper by the Danish microbiologist Professor Soeren Molin almost twenty years ago. “I suggested to Professor Molin that this could be due to an invasion of cheater cells. We’ve since worked together several times, and we’re collaborating on this grant,” says Professor Griffin. This collaboration gives Professor Griffin access to a lot of information. “Soeren has been systematically taking samples from patients for many years in collaboration with Professor Helle Krogh-Johansen from the Rigshospitalet in Copenhegen,” continues Professor Griffin. “We have got detailed information on the history of these samples.”

Cystic fibrosis patients are typically infected for a long time with P. aeruginosa, so researchers have been able to monitor changes over quite long periods. “There’s many more generations of bacteria than there are with humans. So we’re able to observe a huge sweep of evolutionary time: bacteria can have as many generations in a ten year infection as we have had since our species first existed.” explains Professor Griffin. The sputa samples provide a picture of a patient’s current condition, while Professor Griffin says it’s also possible to monitor trends over time. “We can tell whether the cells we isolate from patients lungs are evolving to potentially be more cooperative, or less,” she continues.

Disrupting infection

The project’s agenda includes not just research into the social evolution of bacteria, but also social engineering, as identifying conditions under which bacteria won’t cooperate with each other could represent a route to disrupting infection. This is a topic Professor Griffin and her team are exploring through the use of social cheat bacteria. “These social cheats are often less virulent than the cooperative ones, because they don’t release these toxins and enzymes into the environment in the same way as the

cooperative bacteria,” she explains. The basic idea would be to replace a cooperative, virulent wild-type infection with these cheats that can’t communicate with one another effectively. “That would reduce virulence. We can go one step further, by using synthetic biology to make a cheat that is engineered to carry a medically beneficial trait,” says Professor Griffin.

Researchers are trying to create a social cheat in the lab that’s very good at invading an infection, but is also sensitive to antibiotics. Driving sensitive alleles into the bacterial

Bacterial cells can be engineered to cheat (C) and invade a population of virulent wild type bacteria (W). The cheating strain can also be engineered to carry medically beneficial alleles such as antibiotic sensitivity. Using this approach, it may be possible to turn manipulate the genetic composition of infections to become more susceptible to antibiotic treatment.

Cooperative green colonies and selfish white colonies growing on an agar plate.

SESE Social Evolution and Social Engineering of bacterial Infections

Project Objectives

I have three primary objectives:

(1) to develop a model system for investigating social behaviour in long-term bacterial infections;

(2) to identify evolutionary mechanisms driving dynamics of social behaviour in longterm infections and;

(3) to exploit social dynamics in the treatment of bacterial infection. My project applies evolutionary theory to the clinical challenge of bacterial infection to develop novel intervention strategies beyond the scope of conventional medicine.

Project Funding

The project is funded under H2020-EU.1.1.EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC). ERC CoG SESE Social Evolution and Social Engineering - ERC Consolidator Grant agreement ID: 647586. Overall budget € 1 954 633

Contact Details

Ashleigh Griffin

Professor of Evolutionary Biology

Tutorial Fellow in Biological Sciences (New College)

Department of Zoology

University of Oxford

Mansfield Road

Oxford

OX1 3SZ

T: + 01865 79483

E: ashleigh.griffin@zoo.ox.ac.uk

W: https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/ professor-ashleigh-griffin#/

population through cheat invasion could turn a resistant population into a sensitive one, although Professor Griffin says this approach is still at an early stage. “We’re in the process of trialling that first in vitro, in the lab, as well as in various in vivo models, like beans and potatoes.” she outlines. The idea of introducing bacteria into an infection may sound counter-intuitive, but with concern growing over the spread of antibiotic-resistant strains, there is a need for new ideas. “It might eventually work in humans, but the first step is to make it work in a petri-dish or a plant, or in anything!” cautions Professor Griffin.

This will involve further research into the nature of these social cheat bacteria and the conditions in which they can successfully invade an infection. While these cheats are very

Further investigation is required before this research can be translated into therapeutic application, which forms a major part of Professor Griffin’s plans for the future. The aim is to move on from the basic proof-ofprinciple that has been established through the ERC grant, and to try to develop it further.

“We call it a Trojan horse because we’re using these cheating bacteria to drive medically beneficial alleles into a population,” outlines Professor Griffin.

Alongside her research into the social behaviour of P. aeruginosa in lungs, a member of Professor Griffin’s team, Josh Thomas, is also investigating another opportunistic pathogen called Staphylococcus aureus. “We’ve got a longtitudinal study of samples

good at invading when there are cooperating bacteria around, they’re often less effective at colonising an uninfected host or starting off their own population. “This may be because they don’t cooperate by producing a compound like pyoverdine, an iron chelator,” says Professor Griffin. Without pyoverdine, the bacteria have to exploit their neighbours’ resources in order to get enough iron. “They need to be with those neighbours, and acquiring iron, otherwise they’re iron-starved,” continues Professor Griffin. “When pyoverdine disappears from someone’s lung these invaders can take over the whole lung, there’s no longer any cooperators there. Then they’re iron-starved, and they switch to a different iron-acquisition mechanism.”

from people with nasal infections of staphylococcus aureus, as well as samples from healthy people. We’re looking at the bacteria in noses, and how they interact with one another,” she says. This study is throwing up new questions and new mysteries that would never have been discovered by just looking at lab strains. “The only way to understand bacterial interactions is to investigate how they live, where they live, wherever that might be,” explains Professor Griffin. “Funding from the ERC has helped me to show that cooperative behaviours in bacteria are real and driving evolutionary change which has the potential to alter clinical outcomes for infected patients.”

Ashleigh Griffin is Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford. She began her career as a PhD student studying cooperative behavior in meerkats and since then has developed two main areas of focus in her research: looking for patterns in behavior across cooperatively breeding mammals and birds, and trying to understand social behavior in bacteria, especially in species which cause human disease.

Professor Ashleigh Griffin (left) Soeren Molin (Centre) Helle Krogh Johansen (right)

Pseudomonas aeruginosa makes the best of where it finds itself. You can find it in seawater, in mushrooms you buy from the supermarket, in plugholes and other places. When it gets into someone’s lungs it’s able to carve out a living there

TACT projects

There are 11 PhD students working in the TACT project, investigating different questions related to the development of targeted anti-cancer therapies. We spoke to two PhD students at the University of Strasbourg, Lorenzo Turelli and Ilias Koutsopetras, about their research and its importance to the wider goal of developing more targeted anti-cancer therapies.

MULTI-COMPONENT REACTIONS

EU Researcher: What is the main focus in your research?

Ilias Koutsopetras: I am looking at the use of multi-component reactions for the conjugation of antibodies, where we add several small-molecule reactants to an antibody to produce a final antibody conjugate with precise modification sites.

EUR: Are you able to modify particular sites within the antibody for connection to a linker?

IK: One of the biggest challenges we face in developing antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) is to identify which regions of an antibody we modify for connection to a chemical linker. We have made good progress in this.

EUR: How did you identify those regions?

IK: We tried out a lot of different conditions and conducted many optimisation trials, then we sent our conjugated antibodies to our analytical collaborators – the Cianferani lab, another member of our consortium in this project. They use a technique called native MS (Mass Spectrometry) to determine the conversion and average degree of conjugation of our antibodies – i.e. the number of sites modified by our multicomponent reaction. Then we move on to LCMS techniques to determine precisely the identity of these conjugation sites, using a technique called peptide mapping.

EUR: Did these results from the LCMS help guide your research?

IK: The results from the LCMS tell us in which regions of the antibody we had the conjugation. If we find specific sites of conjugation from our experiments, then we try to reproduce it and see if our method provides a repeatable result.

The nature of the conjugation site is important as it can have an impact on the

Keywords:Multicomponent

Lorenzo Turelli, PHD STUDENT

Keywords: Linker synthesis, antibody-drug-conjugates

conjugated antibody’s behaviour in vivo: conjugation in the region responsible for antigen recognition – called the paratope –can lead to diminished affinity, making the antibody less able to recognize and bind its target antigen.

TRACELESS LINKERS

Q A &

EUR: What is the role of a linker in an antibody-drug conjugate?

Lorenzo Turelli: A linker is an essential component of an ADC connecting the monoclonal antibody to a cytotoxic drug. Linkers are mainly divided in two categories: cleavable and non-cleavable. We are mostly interested in cleavable linkers: motifs whose cleavage can be operated by enzymes or chemically (acidic pH, reductive conditions, etc.), as this will dictate how and when the drug will be released.

EUR: What are the main challenges in developing linkers?

LT: For cleavable linkers, the main challenge is to design a system whose cleavage takes place in the tumoral cell to avoid toxicity.

EUR: Is this an issue you’re addressing in your research?

LT: I aim to develop new types of acidcleavable linkers responsive in a very narrow pH range: stable in plasma, but rapidly cleaved in the more acidic environment of tumoral cells (pH around 5).

Once such selectivity is proved, we attach to the linker a cytotoxic drug and eventually we put in place the bioconjugation to the monoclonal antibody.

EUR: What results have you gained so far?

LT: We have recently developed a new type of acid cleavable linker which proved to be specifically cleaved in a tumoral cell, but stable in plasma. We then attached to it an highly potent drug called MMAF, prior to connecting it through a mAb by means of a specific reaction (CuAAC). This work has been recently published

EUR: Have you been able to test this?

LT: We tested this novel ADC in vitro, on a cancer cell type. After we got some good results in vitro, we then moved to an in vivo test and compared it with a commercially available ADC called Kadcyla.

We found that our new ADC was highly effective, highly potent, leading to full tumour regression within 23 days.

Ilias Koutsopetras, PHD STUDENT

reactions, bioconjugation

Faculty of Pharmacy, 74 route du Rhin, 67401 Illkirch cedex

Targeted therapies to combat cancer

Antibody-drug conjugates are a class of drugs that can be targeted specifically at cancer cells, so reducing the side-effects of treatment. We spoke to Dr Guilhem Chaubet , Lorenzo Turelli and Ilias Koutsopetras about the work of the TACT project in training the next generation of scientists and helping to develop effective, targeted cancer treatments.

A lot of attention in research is focused on the development of antibody-drug conjugates, in which a cytotoxic drug is connected to an antibody via a chemical linker, as a means of treating different types of cancer. Based at the University of Strasbourg, Dr Guilhem Chaubet is coordinator of the TACT project, an EU-backed initiative which brings together both academic and commercial partners. “We’re exploring new possibilities in anti-cancer therapies,” he outlines. There are 11 PhD students in TACT, working on research projects addressing different topics around the development of new anti-cancer therapies. “Some of the projects in TACT are about investigating the influence of a linker on the overall potency of an antibody-drug conjugate, others are looking at the use of nanoparticles,” continues Dr Chaubet. “Researchers are also working with mass spectrometry, which is a sophisticated analytical method used to study antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).”

Antibody-drug conjugates

The wider goal in the project is to develop effective, targeted anti-cancer therapies, which involves several different strands of research. As head of the BioFunctional Chemistry group at the University of Strasbourg, Dr Chaubet is deeply interested in a strategy called bioconjugation. “This is a strategy for grafting a cytotoxic drug onto an antibody in a specific manner at a specific site. Antibodies are massive molecules, they’re gigantic compared with the cytotoxic drugs that we’re trying to attach to them,” he says. There are a number of complex challenges to deal with in this research. “The molecules are

too small to be seen by the naked eye, so it’s really hard to precisely control where we’re going to put our molecule, the specific site on the antibody,” explains Dr Chaubet. “It’s also quite complicated to control the amount of cytotoxic drugs that we’re going to graft onto the antibody.”

These are issues that Dr Chaubet and his colleagues are working to address in the laboratory, alongside investigating other aspects of the project’s overall agenda, such as the development of chemical linkers to connect the cytotoxic drug to an antibody in a covalent manner. These linkers have a strong influence on the therapeutic potency of an ADC. “The linker can balance the hydrophobicity of the cytotoxic drug. Essentially proteins are very polar – they really like water as a solvent. However, the cytotoxic drugs are not that polar, so they don’t really

do well in water,” says Dr Chaubet. “If you start putting a lot of cytotoxic drugs onto your antibody, you’re affecting the solubility of your antibody. This causes heavily loaded antibodies to precipitate, so they’re no longer soluble in water. By using specific linkers, you can effectively balance this to make heavilyloaded conjugates more soluble.”

The majority of these linkers are cleavable, so they will get cleaved under certain conditions, such as a change in pH. This point holds wider interest because of the way that ADCs work in vivo. “They’re injected in vivo and they circulate in the body, via the bloodstream. Near a tumour, some of the ADC will escape the bloodstream and bind to this tumour, because the antibody we’re using can selectively recognise certain proteins called antigens, which may be present on the surface of certain cancer cells,” explains Dr

Group photograph taken of the third TACT project meeting in Strasbourg, 21st to 25th March 2022.

Chaubet. When an ADC gets in contact with the antigen, the whole complex is internalised into a cell, sometimes into highly acidic locations rich in enzymes, conditions which Dr Chaubet is using to help target therapies more effectively. “We can put linkers into our ADCs that are highly sensitive to acidic pH. So when this ADC ends up in a cellular compartment with very low pH, then our linker gets cleaved and the drug is released,” he outlines. This occurs inside the cell, which is key to the therapeutic activity and potency of an ADC. The aim is to deliver a cytotoxic drug just to cancer cells and not to healthy cells, which represents a significant improvement on conventional chemotherapies. “In chemotherapy a really cytotoxic drug is

testing of new treatments. The students themselves are conducting complex indepth research during their PhD studies, yet alongside the scientific training they also learn some softer skills in TACT. “Training is provided on things like legal affairs, entrepreneurship and how to write grant proposals and presentations,” says Dr Chaubet. This is part of the wider goal of training the next generation of scientific leaders and equipping them with the skills they will need for their future careers, both scientific and non-scientific. “Some of the students may want to go into industry while others may want to stay in academia. We sit down with the students every few months and have a chat about what they want to do in the future,” continues Dr Chaubet.

TACT

Targeted Anti-Cancer Therapies

Project Objectives

TACT is a European Training Networks funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Action Grant Agreement No 859458. TACT brings together six academic and three industrial European institutions in a research consortium dedicated to the training of eleven PhD students on the development of next-generation treatments against cancer.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Action Grant Agreement No 859458.

Project Partners

• University of Strasbourg (coordinator) and CNRS – France

• Queen’s University Belfast, University College London and Almac Discovery – U. K.

• Wageningen University & Research – the Netherlands

• Technical University of Munich and Heidelberg Pharma – Germany

• SpiroChem AG – Switzerland

Contact Details

Project Coordinator,

used to kill cancer cells, but because it’s not targeted, some of this cytotoxic drug can also reach healthy cells, especially the cells that replicate and multiply a lot,” he explains. These cytotoxic drugs cannot kill cells when they are grafted onto an antibody. “The only way they can kill a cell is if they are released from the antibody,” continues Dr Chaubet. “This is the importance of the linker, to make sure that these drugs get detached – or cleaved – from the antibody only once they have entered a cancer cell. Otherwise you start having the same side-effects as we observe with chemotherapy.”

Training

The TACT project overall includes research into a wide variety of topics related to ADCs, including not just the development of the

The training can then be adapted to reflect the students’ priorities, for example by helping them build contacts in industry and present their research at meetings. Communication skills are very important in this context, a topic which is being addressed within TACT. “We’re trying to help the students to develop their communication skills,” says Dr Chaubet. A lot of effort is also being devoted to communicating the project’s work to the broadest possible audience, the majority of whom are likely to not have a scientific background; Dr Chaubet says two main activities have been identified. “The first is with an illustrator who is putting a kind of graphic novel together to communicate our work and our results,” he outlines. “With this graphic novel we’re trying to give a fairly general picture of what cancer really is. The

Dr Guilhem Chaubet

BIOFUNCTIONAL CHEMISTRY

Faculty of Pharmacy

74 route du Rhin

67401 Illkirch cedex

E: chaubet@unistra.fr : @EtnTact : @BFC_UMR7199

W: http://www.biofunctional.eu/

W: https://tact-etn.eu/

Dr Guilhem Chaubet is a researcher in the Pharmacy Faculty at the University of Strasbourg. His research interests include the development of new tools for the bioconjugation of tyrosine residues, and the application of multi-component reactions to the site-specific bioconjugation of native proteins.

We can put linkers into our ADCs that are highly sensitive to acidic pH. So when this ADC ends up in a cellular compartment with very low pH, then our linker gets cleaved and the drug is released.

Dr Guilhem Chaubet

Cartoon representation of an antibody and an ADC, made by Lison Bernet for TACT’s graphic novel.

Engineering land, weather and a greener future

By Richard Forsyth

We have come to expect a rhythmic cycle of well used prophecies of doom and gloom from climate scientists. It is refreshing therefore, to hear a signal of hope from an ambitious Dutch company of eco-engineers called The Weather Makers, who are gaining attention for their pioneering work in countering desertification and degraded areas of nature, with the promise of rebalancing ecosystems and further to this, restoring industries and prosperity in the regions that have been impacted. Indeed, there is a link between environment and prosperity, security and peace, this is not just an exercise in climate change but also an exercise in creating sustainable economic revival.

The Weather Makers comprises a group of international engineers and scientists. They are working with data from physics, social economics, geology, microbiology, botany, morphology, hydrology, meteorology and human history and they are open to experts who wish to join their ranks. Their goal, put simply, is to regenerate and restore watersheds. Could they be key to putting the brakes on runaway climate change? And not through industry-centric ideas like switching energy sources and changing and reducing industrial processes, but from kickstarting nature back into a balanced cycle, restarting it where it has been dying and heating up the planet as a result.

Regreening the Sinai

Regreening is widely seen as an attractive strategy for combating climate change. In areas where desertification is spreading, where high temperatures and lack of rain are making infertile land expand in already desolate regions, innovative and radical thinking looks to transform drylands back into lush and green nature reserves.

Regreening is being championed in a number of largescale initiatives around the world. For example, Regreening Africa looks to restore eight countries across Saharan Africa to reverse land degradation across one million hectares. China is regreening on a massive scale, accounting for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area, replanting forests and croplands. India is set to restore 25 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. Regenerating nature and relying on restoration and conservation, for using land to increase carbon storage, is arguably the best and most attractive of solutions to our current climate crisis. Governments recognise more and more that land assumed dead, can be revived, and beyond the implications for saving our environment, opportunities for economies to benefit and flourish can be an attractive consequence.

On a surface level it sounds easy but there is more to regreening than planting trees. For nature to grow you need to make the land fertile again and kickstarting that fertility is the battle. What The

A group of eco engineers are set on plans to regreen the Sinai and with that, to proactively influence the weather, in an effort to counter climate desolation and create new landscapes, ecosystems and industries along the way. The implications, if successful, are far reaching.

Weather Makers are doing is looking at a region as a whole and how its component parts can be connected together to become sustainable, to change the dynamics of its natural processes, to an extent that changes will influence new local weather patterns. It’s a very holistic approach, developing land along with ecosystems and climate. As they say: ‘A healthy climate is all about balanced ecosystems.’

Van der Hoeven, one of the founders of The Weather Makers, is moving forward with a project to regreen the Sinai peninsula, a triangle of land which connects Egypt to Asia, and the Egyptian government is onside. Working for a company called Deme, he was contacted in 2016 by the Egyptian representative from the company, who in turn had been approached by the Egyptian Government to see if it was possible to restore Lake Bardawil. A year later, Van der Hoeven and his colleagues created The Weather Makers, as the catalyst in the form of a company, to make it happen.

Van der Hoeven’s ardent belief in the project was matched by his enthusiasm. He told a group of influential people in the Egyptian government, military and academia: “If anybody doubts that the Sinai can be regreened, then you have to understand that landing on the moon was once thought unrealistic. They didn’t lay out a full, detailed

roadmap when they started, but they had the vision. And step by step they made it happen.”

However, today The Weather Makers are indeed laying out defined steps in a plan to make their vision happen. In around twenty years, Van der Hoeven believes, with the work set out by The Weather Makers, they could transform the Sinai desert into a green landscape with rivers, fertile land for farming, and wilderness, which in turn would bring about new weather patterns, including increased precipitation.

If the group can regenerate life in the arid wastelands of the Sinai, they can arguably create a template to transform and regreen similar challenged environments. Van der Hoeven, like his colleagues, has sound credentials, he is a morphological engineer and has worked on some large projects like the artificial islands of Dubai. He developed relatively eco-friendly and cost-effective methods of dredging, using sensors to model maritime conditions in real time. He is reimagining how dredging, often perceived as a brutal industry for nature, could become used for opening up clogged arteries and basins in water systems, to stimulate life.

The team of thinkers have now set out a clear five step roadmap to regenerate nature in the Sinai.

“If anybody doubts that the Sinai can be regreened, then you have to understand that landing on the moon was once thought unrealistic. They didn’t lay out a full, detailed roadmap when they started, but they had the vision. And step by step they made it happen.”

5 steps to transformation

The Sinai project comprises of restoring interconnected areas. The specified steps to accomplish this include:

1

Dredging the lake inlets

The lagoon, Lake Bardawil on the northern coast of the Sinai, connects to the Mediterranean Sea by two inlets that have a minimal amount of seawater exchange due to sedimentation. It is only 1.5 metres deep (it was once between 20-40 metres deep). Salt levels are extremely high as there is little freshwater and there is high evaporation associated with its shallowness. The fish population has been severely impacted, as has the fishing industry for the region. Restoration of a marine ecosystem and fish population is planned by deepening the inlets and increasing the water exchange with the sea. The dredging could help restore the lake to its former glory, with more tidal activity. In combination with sustainable fishing practices the lake could, over time not only rebuild the marine habitat for many species but also the fishing industry in the area. 3

Recycling sediment from dredging

2

Developing the wetlands

With improvements in the lake and the marine ecosystem, the next step is restoring the surrounding wetlands, making it a more attractive stopover for migrating birds. The increased capacity of the lake will have a knock-on effect of rehydrating the lowlands, and make planting of salt-tolerant vegetation possible.

Dredging the inlets as described in the initial step, will mean marine sediments will be available in quantities including sand, silts, clay, peat and sabkhas which can be put to good use. They can be used for fertile soils when regreening, and for structural components such as dams and terraces and coastal reinforcement. One area of research is looking into the growth potential of Lake Bardawil sediments and the potential to desalinate the soils.

Regreening the desert Step

5

Restoring the watershed

There is a proposed focus on the water cycle of the northern watershed between Lake Bardawil and Gebel Katharina. Water harvesting and growing vegetation will lower temperatures and improve the local climate. There will be regreening in strategically selected locations. The regreening will owe a lot to enhancing evaporation, which although sounds like losing water, it is expected to lead to more water availability, lower temperatures, increased condensation, and improved moisture transport.

There is some evidence that thousands of years ago the Sinai was a green environment – ancient cave paintings depict trees and plants for example, which fuels the ambition that the landscape can, with the right science, once again sustain greenery. The end game on a local level is to increase food, fresh water, jobs, peace and sustainability for the local population but the implications for all of us, are that such large-scale greening projects hold the power to become the solution to the biggest challenge Mankind has faced to date, regaining stability of our climate.

Access to water is key for regreening. Fog nets will be used at high elevation to harvest fresh water from the air. Hills to the south of Bardawil Lake are 700 metres above sea level and suited for the fog nets. Storing water will mean the construction of dykes and dams with use of the clay-like material from the lake. This will help mitigate flash floods which impact the city of El Arish. Growing vegetation will stimulate industry, help alleviate poverty and increase much needed resources for the local population. A solar driven, natural technology that can be implemented is something called eco machines. An eco machine, in essence, is water flowing from one barrel to another where each barrel has its own ecosystem of algae, plants fungi, worms, insects, fish etc. As the water flows through each of these ponds it becomes cleaner and cleaner. They can clean waste or grow food, depending on the design. For the Sinai project, eco machines would be used to grow plants and produce fresh water. Developed in what amounts to a greenhouse, salt water would feed the machine and fresh water would condense within, that can irrigate plants. Eventually the plants and soil in the greenhouse mature and become self-sustaining. The green house can then be taken away. The premise would be nurturing hundreds of these miniature ecologies. Sediment from Lake Bardawil can be pumped 50km inland and used to feed the network of eco machines. The salt in the sediment initially preserves the nutrients, which is a bonus.

“In around twenty years, Van der Hoeven believes, with the work set out by The Weather Makers, they could transform the Sinai desert into a green landscape with rivers, fertile land for farming, and wilderness, which in turn would bring about new weather patterns, including increased precipitation.”

New technologies for safer water

Around 2.1 billion people across the world lack access to safe water, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the problem is particularly acute in India. The PANIWATER project is developing new technologies to remove dangerous contaminants from both wastewater and drinking water, as Dr Fabio Ugolini explains.

A significant proportion of the Indian population still lacks access to safe drinking water, while potentially hazardous contaminants are present in wastewater effluents across the world, representing a major threat to public health. Researchers in the PANIWATER project, an initiative bringing together partners from across Europe and India, are working to develop technologies to remove these contaminants from both drinking water and wastewater in periurban and rural areas across India. “There are six technologies under development in the project. Three are for the treatment of wastewater, and three are for the treatment of drinking water,” says Dr Fabio Ugolini, a project manager at Innova, one of the partners in the PANIWATER consortium. These technologies are all designed to remove contaminants from water, with five of the six using advanced oxidation processes in their function. “With advanced oxidation processes chemical or physical agents are used to generate hydroxyl radical species. These hydroxyl radical species are very powerful oxidants, and they can destroy contaminants,” he explains.

Contaminants of emerging concern

These technologies are designed to remove both known contaminants and contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) from wastewater and drinking water, such as certain pharmaceuticals, hormones and antibiotic resistant bacteria and genes. These CECs have typically not yet been included in water quality guidelines, as their impact on health and the environment is not fully understood, yet Dr Ugolini says that ideally they should not be present in water.

“Under the precautionary principle, as we don’t know exactly how they may affect health, these CECs should not be in water,” he outlines. These CECs are mostly the result of human activities and are typically present in trace amounts in drinking water, or in water discharged into the environment following primary and secondary treatment.

“In primary wastewater treatment, all the solids from the water are removed. Then in secondary treatment, most dissolved contaminants are broken down,” he says. “At this level wastewater is generally considered

to be legally safe for discharge into groundwater or to be used for irrigation, but an extra step can be added, which is tertiary treatment.”

This is what the wastewater technologies under development in the project are designed for, with researchers using advanced oxidation processes to eliminate trace amounts of different contaminants. The three drinking water technologies work on a different basis. “They work on raw water – essentially rainwater, ground water or surface water – which comes from an unimproved source prone to contamination,” explains Dr Ugolini. An unimproved source doesn’t have any sort of protection in place, which can leave the water vulnerable to contamination, an issue that the drinking water technologies are designed to address. “These technologies are focused specifically on the removal of biological contamination, which is an issue that can cause a lot of trouble in low-income countries,” he continues. “The transparent jerrycan being developed in the project removes only biological contaminants. If bacteria and

parasites are present in the water, then the transparent jerrycan is able to reduce their active concentration to a level that is considered safe by WHO standards.”

Transparent jerrycan

The transparent jerrycan uses sunlight to disinfect water, making it safe to drink. Jerrycans are commonly used by people across India to transfer their stored water, which is one of the reasons why Dr Ugolini and his colleagues in the project identified this as an important area of research. “We decided to go with a solution that people are familiar with, but we have engineered it in such a way that we can exploit solar disinfection,” he outlines. The transparent jerrycan is intended for use at the community level, and he says a lot of effort is being devoted to encouraging people to use it. “You need to work with the communities first, to explain why they need to change the way that they’ve been using or accessing their water, and you have to gain their trust. You have to essentially trigger a behavioural change,” he continues. “We work with organisations in India that are already present in rural communities through other development or education projects, so that they can first of all recruit the participants.”

Wastewater treatment

A further strand of the project centres around developing wastewater treatment technologies, where cost and efficacy are generally the most prominent considerations in deciding whether to adopt the technology. One technology under development is a multi-functional reactor, which is designed to work in combination with both centralised and de-centralised wastewater treatment plants. “These reactors can be applied to essentially any wastewater treatment plant facility,” says Dr Ugolini. These reactors can be added to the wastewater treatment train to improve the quality of water before it is discharged; the technology has already been validated in Italy, and he says its effectiveness will be assessed in field trials in India. “The scientific parameter is essentially water quality measurements after treatment in real conditions. We want to check the output of the technologies and the quality of the water that comes out – does this meet WHO standards for wastewater discharge and reuse?” he outlines. “If we are able to reduce the levels of any contaminant below what is expected, then it’s considered a success.” There are no clear guidelines for what are considered to be safe levels of CECs, so the

Multifunctional Reactor operated by project partner AQUASOIL in the tertiary wastewater treatment facility of Fasano (Italy)

Researchers Bhairavi Sawant (Royal College of Surgeons In Ireland, Dublin, Ireland) and Umakant Tripathi (TARAgram, Orchha, Bundelkhand, India) collecting water samples from the village of Bagan and performing on site water quality analysis.

Raw water from an unprotected source collected by a woman in Bundelkhand.

PANIWATER

Photo-irradiation and Adsorption based Novel Innovations for Water-treatment

Project Objectives

PANIWATER is validating six protypes for wastewater and drinking water treatment, which can remove Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs). The goal is to increase the availability of safe drinking water to the minimum level recommended by the WHO (at least 7.5 L/person/day) in target communities in India, and to produce at least 10000L /day, of irrigation-grade water from wastewater.

Project Funding

PANIWATER has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 820718, and is jointly funded by the European Commission and the Department of Science and Technology of India (DST).

Project Partners

http://www.paniwater.eu/about-us/

Contact Details

Dr. Fabio Ugolini Ph.D

Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Manager

INNOVA Srl

Via Giacomo Peroni, 386 00131 Rome - Italy

T: +39 06 40040358

E: f.ugolini@innova-eu.net

W: www.paniwater.eu

Project coordinator (EU): Prof. Kevin McGuigan, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

E: kmcguigan@rcsi.ie

Project coordinator (IN): Prof. Rita Dhodapkar, CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute.

E: rs_Dhodapkar@neeri.res.in

aim here will be to measure the reduction rate rather than relate it to a specific set of standards. The other five technologies will also be trialled at sites across India; with the transparent jerrycan, this will include not just measurements of water quality, but also other parameters. “We’re also going to measure adherence to the programme by the people recruited in the field trials,” says Dr Ugolini. Researchers are also looking at proxy parameters that can indicate whether the technology is having a positive impact on quality of life, such as the incidence of disease. “Diarrhea is pretty strongly associated with low-quality

a thorough understanding of the political context, resource constraints, social fabric, gender issues, economic and environmental vulnerabilities, and of the people´s own needs and desires. Our Indian partners have implemented a multi-stakeholder engagement approach, which includes extensive dialogue with the community leaders and the institutions, focus groups, workshops, activities with schools and a radio program” says Dr Ugolini. “It is not sufficient to simply handover a few flyers about the project without building trust and awareness in the community for whom the project is meant.”

Dr. Fabio Ugolini holds a Ph.D in natural sciences, focusing on drinking water microbiology. He works in several Horizon projects as Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Manager, as well as Coordinator. He is a hopeful environmentalist and a strong supporter of scientific communication.

water, so that would be the primary proxy indicator,” he continues. “Improvements in quality of life are normally assessed through questionnaires. However, certain biases may arise when we do that, as there is a tendency among the people being interviewed to try and please the interviewer.”

This issue is being considered within PANIWATER, with two of the consortium partners conducting social science research, part of the project’s work in engaging with local communities. The project’s Indian partners have carried out several different initiatives, aiming to communicate the benefits of these technologies and encourage people to accept them. “Our Indian partners have engaged extensively with community leaders. They have held a lot of meetings and talked to a lot of people, they’ve also set up a radio programme in order to reach out to the community,” he says. “We need to integrate social and cultural factors in our approach to promote the sustained uptake of new water technologies. Community outreach requires

The wider aim here is to encourage the adoption of these technologies. Once they have been applied, and their impact is clearer, they could then be produced in greater volumes. “The two technologies that are closest to wider adoption are the multi-functional reactor for wastewater treatment and the transparent jerrycan. We have identified an Indian manufacturer that can produce the jerrycans to the required specifications,” he outlines. Once the field trials have concluded and the effectiveness of the transparent jerrycan is clearer, then the manufacturer can look to take further steps. “They can then produce more of these jerrycans and put in place a distribution system,” continues Dr Ugolini. “We can look to take a more or less similar path with the other technologies. We need to locate an Indian stakeholder that can manufacture and distribute the technologies, then we would look towards transferring all the information and intellectual property rights to our partners in India.”

Dr. Fabio Ugolini Ph.D

With advanced oxidation processes chemical or physical agents are used to generate hydroxyl radical species. These hydroxyl radical species are very powerful oxidants, and they can destroy contaminants.

Consortium representatives and secondary school pupils meeting during the PANIWATER pre-pandemic general assembly in Goa (IN), 2020.

A one-stop-shop for research in the Arctic

The Arctic is highly sensitive to the effects of climate change and so is the focus of a great deal of attention in research, while scientists are also investigating a wide variety of other topics in the region. The Interact project, an international consortium bringing together partners from countries around the Arctic, plays an important role in helping scientists conduct research in the region. “Interact is an infrastructure project, with 89 research stations across the Arctic and beyond,” says Margareta Johansson, an Associate Professor at Lund University and the coordinator of the project. Interact started around 20 years ago, providing access to research stations around the North Atlantic, but its scope has since widened. “We started with research stations in Scotland, the Faroe Islands and several of the Scandinavian countries, but then Interact grew bigger and more research stations wanted to join,” outlines Professor Johansson. “We now have a much more Arctic focus than we had at the start, while we also have research stations located in high-Alpine areas.”

Interact project

There are a wide range of research stations within Interact, with varying environmental conditions and geographical features that may be of interest to scientists from different disciplines. Some stations are located close to glaciers for example, while

others give researchers the opportunity to investigate the condition of permafrost or track biodiversity; the common theme is that they are all involved in monitoring the climate. “All the research stations monitor the climate, and have been doing so for many years,” says Professor Johansson. These stations all have facilities to host external users, although Professor Johansson says it’s not always possible to provide year-round access. “Some stations in places like Greenland and northern Canada can be quite difficult to access, and it’s only possible to get to them during Summer,” she explains. “Funding from the EU is used to send people out into the field. At the moment, 53 of these 89 research stations offer trans-national access to researchers, so scientists can go there and do their research for free.”

Research proposals are evaluated by a trans-national access board in Interact, which brings together station managers and external scientists with expertise in a variety of different topics, from medicine, to ecology, to permafrost conditions. The board meets on an annual basis to evaluate proposals and decide which will be funded under the project, and Professor Johansson says the key criteria is the quality of the science. “We aim to support innovative and excellent science, but of course we also consider feasibility and value for money,”

The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of our planet, which is causing more sea ice to melt and accelerating permafrost thawing. The Interact consortium coordinates efforts to send scientists to conduct research in the Arctic, which will lead to a deeper understanding of the extent and impact of environmental change in the region, as Professor Margareta Johansson explains.

Photograph by Jennifer Kissinger.

Photograph by Sˆlvi R˙nar Vignisson.

Photograph by William Callaghan.

Finse research station ,

Photograph by Erika Leslie.

she stresses. Some of the field stations may be in particularly high demand at certain times, often due to their proximity to scientifically interesting areas, but this tends to vary. “We have been running this project since 2011, and we’ve found that it’s not always the same stations that are popular,” says Professor Johansson. “We usually manage to get people to all of the stations within Interact. If some stations are being under-utilised, then we can run campaigns to generate more interest.”

The research stations themselves benefit from inclusion within Interact, as it heightens their visibility and awareness of the facilities they offer amongst scientists, which in turn helps to attract further visitors. While a scientist may initially be funded under Interact to visit a research station, they may want to travel independently again at a later point to conduct further research. “If you come to an area as a scientist and set up an experiment, then the likelihood of you coming back next year and paying yourself is quite high, as many researchers need a lot of data. Often researchers need more than just a snapshot, they may need a couple of years worth of data,” points out Professor Johansson. The Interact project acts as a kind of one-stop-shop in this respect, raising awareness of research stations in

the Arctic and providing a base for scientists to conduct their research. “We have sent more than 1,000 scientists out into the field to the different stations so far, and a lot of interesting research has resulted from that,” says Professor Johansson.

can you reduce the carbon footprint around your research station?” continues Professor Johansson. “If the station managers can learn from each other and minimise their costs and the environmental impact of their operations, then that is beneficial.”

Many of these research stations are located in very remote areas prone to extreme weather, for example the mean annual temperature at the CEN Ward Island Research Station in Northern Canada is -17.3ºC, so managing them can be a major challenge. A forum within the Interact project gives station managers the opportunity to share knowledge and expertise, and to learn from each others’ experiences. “Many problems can arise when you are located in a very remote area,” stresses Professor Johansson. The managers meet together either once or twice a year and produce best practice guidelines on the management of these research stations. “This includes guidance on what to think about in terms of safety, as well as things like energy management. How

Climate data

A number of these research stations have been active for more than a century, and in some cases climate data has been gathered there over the entire period. This data is invaluable in terms of putting more recent trends in perspective and understanding how the climate has evolved over time, says Professor Johansson. “It’s over the last 3040 years that we have seen an acceleration in the rate of change in the Arctic,” she explains. This data may be recorded in notebooks or photographs however, not modern IT systems; rather than laboriously sifting through all this material researchers are looking to use the power of artificial intelligence. “We are working with a

“We have sent more than 1,000 scientists out into the field to the different stations so far, and a lot of interesting research has resulted from that, including a new bumble bee species in Alaska.”

Photograph by Katrine Raundrup.

Photograph by Marek Szymocha.

Photograph by Martin Proksch.

Photograph by Martin Nielsen.

Petuniabukta landscape, photograph by Jan Kavan.

company and trying to figure out how we can use artificial intelligence to retrieve all the data. Some ideas are being tested at the moment, and we hope they will be applicable to many research stations,” says Professor Johansson. “A further part of the project is the Joint Research Activities, where we are developing new monitoring methods.”

This represents an important contribution to the wider goal of protecting the Arctic and the people who live around the region from the effects of environmental change. Researchers in the project have been working with indigenous peoples around the Arctic and station managers, looking to harness their combined knowledge to strengthen protection. “We want to see how we can use the knowledge of indigenous people and the knowledge of people at these research stations to help local society in terms of adapting to environmental changes,” outlines Professor Johansson. These changes could be dramatic; for example, the coastal town of Barrow in Alaska is essentially slipping into the Sea due to permafrost coastal erosion, a topic on which Professor Johansson holds deep expertise. “There is a lot of debate about the impact of permafrost thawing. We know that there is twice as much carbon in the ground as there is in the atmosphere,” she says.

The thawing of permafrost leads to the decomposition of this carbon and to increased emissions of greenhouse gases. Many of the research stations within Interact have facilities to measure both carbon and methane fluxes, which Professor Johansson says will help scientists establish a more detailed picture of environmental change across the Arctic. “The research stations have got monitoring capabilities and are gathering data, which is then collected into a shared database, so that it is then more widely available,” she says.

INTERACT

International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic

Project Objectives

INTERACT is a circumarctic network of 89 terrestrial research stations with a main objective to build capacity for identifying, understanding, predicting and responding to diverse environmental changes throughout the Arctic. INTERACT is offering access to more than 50 research stations through the Transnational Access Program.

Project Funding

INTERACT 2: EU Horizon 2020 (GA 730938)

Project period: 2016-2021

Total funding 10 million EUR

INTERACT 3: EU Horizon 2020 (GA 871120)

Project period: 2020-2023

Total funding 10 million EUR

Project Partners

• https://eu-interact.org/partners/

Contact Details

Katharina Beckmann

INTERACT Secretariat

Dept. of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science

Lund University

Sölvegatan 12 223 62 Lund

Sweden

T: +46 46 222 0662

E: katharina.beckmann@nateko.lu.se

W: https://eu-interact.org

INTERACT 2020. INTERACT Stories of Arctic Science II. / Eds.: Callaghan, T.V., Savela, H., and Johansson, M. / DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy, Aarhus University, Denmark, p134. Printed in Denmark 2020 by Rosendahl-Schultz Grafisk.

INTERACT 2020. INTERACT Station Catalogue – 2020. / Eds.: Arndal, M.F. and Topp-Jørgensen, E. / DCE –Danish Centre for Environment and Energy, Aarhus University, Denmark. p190. Printed in Denmark 2020 by Rosendahls-Schultz Grafisk.

INTERACT Fieldwork Planning Handbook. / Eds.: Rasch, M. et al. / DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy, Aarhus University, Denmark. p148. Printed in Denmark 2019 by Rosendahls-Schultz Grafisk.

INTERACT 2019. INTERACT Practical Field Guide. Eds.: Rasch, M. et al. DCE – Danish Centre for Environment and Energy, Denmark, p68.

Associate Professor Margareta Johansson

Associate Professor Margareta Johansson is based at Lund University in Sweden. Margareta’s main research interest is the impacts of climate change in the Arctic focusing on permafrost. She has been involved in many Arctic impact assessments. Margareta is the Coordinator of INTERACT (eu-interact. org). She has a great interest in outreach.

Photograph by Kevin Hammonds.

Photograph by Marco Graziano.

Photograph by Ida Manfredsson.

Photograph by Martin Proksch.

Photograph by Jennifer Kissinger.

Photograph by Stephan Bernberg.

Look North for a deeper picture of decomposition

The soil in northern ecosystems may freeze in Winter, yet recent research shows that decompositional processes can still continue during the colder months. Researchers in the FluxWIN project are taking gas flux measurements throughout the year, aiming to gain deeper insights into the processes behind Winter emissions of greenhouse gases, as Dr Claire Treat explains.

A lot of studies on the carbon cycle and greenhouse gas emissions have been conducted during the growing season in Summer when plants are active, yet less attention has been paid to the Winter months. Extrapolations to the cold season have been based on our understanding of these growing season processes, yet earth system models of carbon emissions tend to break down over the Winter months, for reasons that are not fully understood. “We don’t really understand why the models don’t work, whether it’s something to do with the physical soil properties for example, or representations of the soil dynamics,” says Dr Claire Treat, a researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. As the head of the ERC-funded FluxWIN project, Dr Treat is looking at greenhouse gas emissions both in the growing season and also outside it, reflecting a recent shift in perspective. “Over the past 15 years or so it’s been found that soil microbes can be active at colder temperatures than modellers - who parameterise soil decomposition processeshad previously realised,” explains Dr Treat.

Greenhouse gas budgets

The nature of soil thermodynamics means that the surface of the soil can freeze before the layer underneath, so decompositional processes can in fact continue into the Winter. This may then affect the greenhouse gas budget, a topic that Dr Treat and her colleagues in the project are investigating. “One of the questions we’re looking at is whether the freezing of

unaffected by human activity. “They haven’t been used for agriculture, and they haven’t been logged recently,” continues Dr Treat. “We plan to conduct several campaigns over the Winter and Spring, and take measurements over some longer periods over the course of a year. We’re very interested in the transition between Spring and Summer when plants are starting to come out.”

the soil surface is enough to impede oxygen diffusion into the soil and make it anaerobic, and then turn a site that wouldn’t normally produce methane into a site where oxygen is sufficiently depleted that it does,” she outlines. Researchers are taking measurements at several ecosystems on the Siikenava II site in Finland, a location which has been relatively

This research involves using automated chambers to take the measurements throughout a whole year, without the need for a researcher to be physically present. Measurements are collected throughout the day at 6 hour intervals, providing researchers with a wealth of data. “These chambers are essentially like a gas sampling mechanism. They are highly portable,

This high-frequency greenhouse gas analyser lets us measure pretty small fluxes of both methane and nitrous oxide. Our focus really is on carbon dioxide and methane, and also on this nitrous oxide component.

The FluxWIN project investigates how greenhouse gas emissions and soil processes change throughout the year. In summer, warm soil temperatures and plant activity stimulate the production of methane (CH4) and net uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2). In the fall and spring, larger than expected emissions of CO2 and CH4 have been observed despite cooler soil temperatures and lack of plant activity. These periods are a focus of the project.

and can be used to take measurements for quite a long time” says Dr Treat. The chambers are being used together with a high-frequency gas analyser which is far more sensitive than the traditional gas chromatograph, enabling Dr Treat and her colleagues to detect smaller fluxes than was previously possible. “This highfrequency greenhouse gas analyser lets us measure pretty small fluxes of both methane and nitrous oxide (N2O). Our focus really is on carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, and also on this N2O component,” she continues. “We have some preliminary measurements which we’re currently analysing, and we’re also planning the second year of measurements.”

The project also has an experimental component, with PhD students working on experiments both in the field and the laboratory. The aim here is to tease out the processes underlying methane emissions during the cold season, particularly relating to methane production and oxidation. “These are the two main processes that contribute to the methane flux. We’re planning to do a comparison next Summer with data from another site much further north, in Finnish Lapland, that has some permafrost,” explains Dr Treat. A model has been developed to explain these processes, which Dr Treat plans to test using data from several sites. “The idea is to make sure that this model will work at Siikenava II, then we intend to test it at some other sites and assess whether it includes the right mechanisms. We have data from some long-term monitoring sites, such as Svalberg, and the Samoylov island station in the Lena River Delta in Siberia,” she says. “The idea is to investigate whether these mechanisms are important for climate models and models of the carbon cycle.”

Climate models

This research holds wider relevance in terms of refining complex climate models and understanding how the climate is likely to evolve in future as more permafrost thaws at northerly latitudes. The project will make an important contribution in this respect, with the establishment of measurement infrastructure at Siikenava II set to provide more data. “This will allow us to test and develop new instrumentation to improve methane flux measurements in particular,” stresses Dr Treat. However, the more immediate goal in the project is to build a deeper understanding of what controls these Winter emissions. “Is it related to some of these physical processes happening in the soil? Is it to do with the freeze-thaw dynamics, like the formation of an ice layer, that maybe results in anaerobic soil? Or is it changes in soil moisture dynamics, or soil biogeochemistry?” says Dr Treat. “It would be very exciting to identify a new mechanism. We should be able to have a complete annual budget of greenhouse gas emissions for a range of boreal sites, which will be very valuable.”

Researchers have a pretty good handle on the amount of greenhouse gases that are released during the Summer, but if emissions during Winter and the transition to the colder months turn out to be higher than previously thought then this would dramatically change the overall picture.

“If emissions during Winter, Spring and the shoulder seasons contribute an additional 20 percent on top of the growing season budget, then the picture looks very different,” points out Dr Treat.

FluxWIN

The role of non-growing season processes in the methane and nitrous oxide budgets in pristine northern ecosystems

Project Objectives

The importance of non-growing season greenhouse gas fluxes to annual budgets in pristine northern terrestrial ecosystems is growing in awareness. Greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes during the non-growing season and freeze-thaw dynamics are still underrepresented and may be a reason why current process-based models predict inadequate annual methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) budgets. FluxWIN is therefore investigating ecological and biogeochemical processes in global carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles during the non-growing and shoulder seasons by combining high-frequency greenhouse gas measurements, biogeochemical monitoring and process-based modeling.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement No. 851181

Project Partners

• University of Helsinki

• University of Eastern Finland

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Claire Treat

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research Telegrafenberg A45

14473 Potsdam

T: +49(331)58174 5412

E: claire.treat@awi.de

W: https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/ organisation/staff/single-view/claire-treat.html

Dr Claire Treat is Junior Research Group Leader for Permafrost Region Greenhouse Gas Fluxes at the Alfred Wegener Institute. Her research focuses on the response of greenhouse gas fluxes to environmental changes resulting from various factors, such as climate warming and permafrost thaw.

Dr Claire Treat

Automated, robotic chambers capture greenhouse gas emissions throughout the year. Here they are measuring CO2, CH4, and N2O exchange from a dry bog site.

The ticking of the biological clock

Biological rhythms have evolved so that organisms can anticipate both daily and seasonal changes in their environment and then adapt their behaviour accordingly. Researchers in the CINCHRON project are investigating the clock in a range of different insects, work that has relevance for understanding daily rhythms in humans, as Professor Charalambos Kyriacou explains.

A lot of research into the circadian clock has historically focused on Drosophila, the fruit fly. Indeed, a Nobel Prize in Medicine/ Physiology was awarded in 2017 to the three US geneticists who identified the major clock genes in the fly. However, less is known about clocks in other insects, an issue that researchers in the CINCHRON project are addressing. “The aim of CINCHRON is to expand our knowledge of the biological clock into other species beyond Drosophila,” outlines Professor Charalambos Kyriacou, the project’s coordinator. The idea of the project is to study clocks in insects such as the pea aphid, which has a significant impact on crop productivity, as well as species like bees and silkmoths which have clear economic value. This research is being conducted against a backdrop of wider concern about the impact of climate change. “With climate change, the range of tropical insects is expanding – we’re already seeing that around the Mediterranean,” explains Professor Kyriacou. “We’re getting these insects – disease vectors – expanding their ranges. We want to understand their basic biology, including their circadian clock, which controls the timing of everything they do.”

Circadian and seasonal clock

The circadian clock in these insects is typically localised in a very limited set of ‘clock’ neurons in the brain and these cells regulate rhythmic behaviour over the course of a day. Fruit flies tend to be crepuscular, meaning that they are very lively in the morning and just before dusk, but much less active in the middle of the day. “An insect wakes and has its morning burst of activity, then a siesta, then its evening behaviour. There is evidence that these neurons are divided into a ‘morning’ and an ‘evening’ oscillator, and they talk to each other. It’s important to be rhythmic, it’s a fitness character. An insect needs to anticipate when light’s coming on or off so they can get their physiology ready to meet the demands of the day or night. These rhythms are adaptive, and they can be adjusted,” explains Professor Kyriacou.

Inner clock: the circadian rhythm changes according to the light-dark cycle. This is the clock that regulates behaviours and physiological processes that change with a period of 24 hrs. DNA (the hour hand of the clock) hosts the genes that control the circadian system and it is possible to study them using molecular biology techniques, symbolised by the pipette (the minute hand). Medial clock: the seasonal clock controls those behaviours and processes that cycle with a period of one year (migration, hibernation etc). The seasonal clock is controlled by the changes in temperature and length of daylight.

Outer clock: the different insects that CINCHRON is exploiting as model organisms to study the clocks. There are 12 insects positioned along the circadian and seasonal clocks. If an insect is represented more than once, it means that more than one lab is working on it. The four fruit flies (at 1, 5, 7 and 11) are different from one another to show different mutations that are used in our studies.

There are 15 different PhD projects within CINCHRON, focusing on both the circadian and seasonal clock in several insect species. The seasonal ‘clock’ is important for hibernation. “An insect’s hibernation is called diapause. In some insects it’s brought on by reduction in temperature, but in most it’s photoperiodic, so short days and long nights (there is evidence that the 24 hour timer can measure these day/night lengths in some insects) heralds the oncoming winter so that insects can hibernate till the longer days of spring arrive,” outlines Professor Kyriacou. The relationship between the circadian and seasonal clocks has long

been a subject of scientific debate; Professor Kyriacou says recent evidence suggests that they are closely related. “If you disrupt some of the clock genes that build the molecular oscillator, you get very strong changes in what we call the seasonal phenotype,” he says. “For example, our colleagues in Groningen are studying a parasitic wasp called Nasonia that can be used for the biological control of pests. With techniques like Crispr-cas9, you can now disrupt these 24 hour clock genes and examine the effects on seasonal hibernation.”

This could open up new possibilities in the control of species like pea aphids or Drosophila

Figures created by Joanna Szramel, Terence Al Abaquita, and Giulia Manoli Early Stage Researchers of the CINCHRON project.

suzukii that in recent years has become a major world-wide fruit pest. The simplest solution to pest control is to spray insecticide in whatever quantities are required, and while this approach may kill the insect, Professor Kyriacou says it also often causes wider issues. “Indiscriminate spraying leads to serious pollution problems,” he points out. Disrupting the seasonal clock of these insects would represent a highly attractive alternative. “If we can disrupt the seasonal clock so that these insects don’t go into hibernation, then the winter climate will kill them. That’s the idea, but we’ve first got to understand hibernation in order to be able to manipulate it,” acknowledges Professor Kyriacou. “We’ve made considerable progress in terms of understanding how the circadian and seasonal clocks talk to each other. If we can somehow disrupt the seasonal clock with a biological compound that’s specific to a pest species, then that would have implications for their hibernation and be less polluting than chemical control.”

This research also holds wider relevance in terms of understanding circadian rhythms in humans and the impact of sleep disruption on personal health. About a quarter of the Western population work shifts, disrupting sleeping patterns, and evidence shows that these people are at higher risk of experiencing health problems. “People who work shifts tend to die earlier, have more cardiovascular and metabolic problems, and are also more likely to develop cancer. It’s a major problem, and it costs Western economies billions every year,” explains Professor Kyriacou. A deeper understanding of the circadian clock could help researchers devise methods to prevent chronodisruption, a topic which Professor Kyriacou says is the focus of a lot of attention.

“Some of my colleagues in Europe and the US are making small molecules that can interact with some of the key clock proteins. The aim is to shift the phase of the clock and prevent the social jetlag that shift workers experience,” he outlines.

CINCHRON Comparative INsect CHRONobiology Project Objectives

The CINCHRON project is comprised of four workpackages, with the shared goal of developing a deeper understanding of biological clocks in insects. The four workpackages are centered around circadian chronobiology, seasonal chronobiology, metabolic chronobiology and commercial chronobiology. There are 15 different PhD projects within CINCHRON, in which researchers are investigating different topics around insect chronobiology. The researchers collaborate extensively across the different workpackages, sharing knowledge as they seek to both gain deeper insights into the clock, and also apply them in the practical context.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 765937

Contact Details

Dr Valeria Zonato

Research Centre Manager

Genetics and Genome Biology Department University Road

Leicester

LE17RH

T: + 0116 252 3249

E: vz12@le.ac.uk

W: www.cinchron.org

W: www.neurogeneticsleicester.com

A further aspect of the project’s agenda centres around research into the immune system in insects, which is known to have a circadian cycle. One project in CINCHRON involves examining the circadian clock and the immune system in the silkmoth, a species vulnerable to severe bacterial infections which can wipe out entire colonies. “Our colleagues in Italy are studying when silkmoths are more susceptible to getting infection. They’ve made significant progress in understanding the chrono-cycle of the immune system in silkworms, and how we can adjust the way they are raised to try and prevent them getting these bacterial infections,” says Professor Kyriacou. A similar approach could potentially be applied to boost resistance to infection in all organisms, not just insects, says Professor Kyriacou. “All organisms are resistant to infection in a circadian cycle,” he stresses.

The CINCHRON project itself is nearing the end of its funding term, but there are plans to continue the research and broaden out into further areas, including the possibility of studying insects like the soldier fly. Several companies in Europe and the US are farming soldier flies as animal feed, and while many people today may find the prospect of eating them unpalatable, Professor Kyriacou says the idea is attracting interest as a potential source of nutrition. “With food security becoming an ever more pressing issue, we’ve got to look at alternative sources of food,” he stresses. Knowledge of circadian rhythms could help companies farming these insects to maximise productivity, a topic Professor Kyriacou plans to explore. “A new project would investigate how to optimise the rearing of these insects that are becoming important sources for animal feed, and could feed humans in the future,” he says.

Valeria Zonato is the manager of the CINCHRON network, which offers training and funding to several PhD students working in the field of insect chronobiology. She has a PhD in genetics and genome biology.

Charalambos Kyriacou is a Professor in the Genetics department at the University of Leicester. He has published widely in biological rhythms and evolution and neurogenetics of fly behaviour.

If we can disrupt the seasonal clock so that these insects don’t go into hibernation, then winter will kill them. That’s the idea, but we’ve got to understand hibernation in order to be able to manipulate it.

Prof. Charalambos Kyriacou Dr Valeria Zonato

Getting the whole picture of emergency situations

Research and industry partners in the ResponDrone project are developing an integrated solution designed to give first responders a fuller picture of a disaster situation or emergency like a forest fire or flood, which can then guide operational decisions, as the coordinators of the project, Max Friedrich and Joonas Lieb of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) explain.

A first response team arriving at the scene of a disaster or an emergency needs to understand the nature of the situation they face if they are to respond effectively. The use of drones can provide first responders with a detailed picture of the situation without putting human lives at unnecessary risk, a topic at the heart of the ResponDrone project. “We are developing an integrated system to be used in first response missions during disasters or emergencies, such as large forest fires, floods, or search and rescue missions,” explains Joonas Lieb. Often first responders do not know what to expect when facing a large forest fire or flood, an issue the project aims to address. “The ResponDrone system will rapidly provide an initial overview of the situation,” says Lieb.

ResponDrone project

The system is designed to enable the operation of multiple drones simultaneously, so that large areas can be covered and relevant, real-time information provided to any first responder with access to the

system. The information gathered can then inform decisions on the ground. “The first responders have two possibilities to interact with the system. A desktop interface is meant to be used as an on-site command centre and a mobile application for the first response units in the field. The desktop interface will basically be a map on which you can see where your drones and the in-field first responders are. You can then supervise and manage the mission,” Friedrich outlines. “The first responders out in the field will have the

for flying the drones. “The system itself essentially identifies the trajectory that a drone should take. The operator says that they want to have a drone at a given point, but they don’t have to specify how it gets there,” says Lieb. While drones are already used to some extent in emergency response, they may need to operate closely alongside each other, underlining the importance of this work in de-conflicting flight trajectories. “You definitely don’t want to have a mid-air collision,” stresses Lieb. “I would expect the

mobile app installed on their cell-phone or tablet, and they can have a live video feed from the camera mounted on the drone. They can also direct the drone to a certain point, for example if they want to know what’s on the other side of a house or river.”

A single operator can fly multiple drones under the ResponDrone system, which Lieb views as one of the major benefits. The drones provide their information to a single system which can de-conflict their flight trajectories, so less people are required

use of drones to increase significantly in the future, as they are easier and faster to deploy, and not as expensive as manned helicopters.” The system also enhances communications resilience in what can be extremely challenging environments. In a large wildfire, communication infrastructures may break down for example, an issue the ResponDrone project is working to address. “Our system is able to extend the communication network by providing an on-demand wi-fi coverage to the first responders and potential victims in the

We are developing an integrated system to be used in the response to disasters and emergencies, such as large forest fires, floods, or search and rescue missions.

Mobile application for first response units in the field.

disaster area,” Lieb explains. The system also has a decision support capability, which gives first responders a picture of how a situation is developing, for example a fire. “You can then identify which areas are likely to be affected in the near future, and which buildings may need to be evacuated,” continues Lieb.

The project consortium includes a number of emergency response organisations, operating in different environments, who have provided extensive feedback on the system and helped guide its design and development. “We have first responders from various European countries as well as Israel and Armenia. Several first response organizations in our consortium are in fact looking at bigger and rural areas, which are currently quite difficult to reach with their units,” says Lieb.

Emergency response

The ultimate aim here is to provide a system that is useful for first responders and helps them to respond more effectively to emergency situations. A trial is planned soon, at which Friedrich says the performance of the ResponDrone system will be compared to the systems currently used by first responders. “We will compare what worked well and what didn’t, and we will also check the response times. How quickly did they

find a certain victim?” he outlines. The core question here is how rapidly first responders are able to assess the true reality of the situation they’re facing. “If they get it faster with our ResponDrone system, then we see the benefit of it,” continues Friedrich. “We want to basically figure out how quickly and accurately they get the overall picture of the situation with our platform, and to compare that to the existing equipment.”

This information will then be fed back into the development of the system, and in the future, there is the possibility of bringing it to the commercial market. If the system proves effective, then Friedrich expects there may be interest from first response organisations. “If they see that the system brings benefits, that they are able to get the important information quickly and easily, and are reassured that the drones will not crash, then these organisations may be interested in buying it,” he says. There is a work package in the project dedicated to innovation and commercialisation, and the project partners are now exploring wider opportunities. “We are looking at translating the project into a real product. We need to identify what is missing and what has to be improved,” outlines Friedrich. “We are in the process of finding who would be interested and how this could be arranged.”

ResponDrone

NOVEL INTEGRATED SOLUTION OF OPERATING A FLEET OF DRONES WITH MULTIPLE SYNCHRONIZED MISSIONS FOR DISASTER RESPONSES

Project Objectives

The ResponDrone system will accelerate situation assessment, support decision making and simplify operations management during crisis situations by delivering high quality information (incl. live video feed from airborne unmanned aerial vehicles) to any involved control center as well as in-flied first responders through a web-based system. In addition, it will serve as an on-demand airborne communications network to allow first responders in the disaster area to communicate with the command center in case of a breakdown in communication infrastructure.

Project Funding

€ 8.3 Million from the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme and South Korean Government under Grant Agreement No. 833717.

Project Partners

There are a total of 20 project partners from 13 different countries

• https://respondroneproject.com/partners/

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Max Friedrich M.Sc. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research Group German Aerospace Center Institute of Flight Guidance Lilienthalplatz 7 38108 Braunschweig

T: +49 531 295-3655

E: max.friedrich@dlr.de

W: https://respondroneproject.com

Max Friedrich is a researcher at the Institute of Flight Guidance of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and acts as Coordinator of ResponDrone. In 2018 he spent a semester abroad at NASA Langley Research Center as a visiting researcher. He holds a Master of Science in psychology from the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany.

Joonas Lieb is a scientific associate for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Braunschweig in the UAS group of the Institute of Flight Guidance within the department of Pilot Assistance. Currently he is working in a variety of international projects for DLR, including the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the existing airspace.

Joonas Lieb

Desktop interface for the on-site command centre.

Innovating to make wave energy viable

Developing Innovative Strategies to Extract Ocean Wave Energy, or the LiftWEC project, is exploring the potential of using lift forces generated by ocean waves as a source of power. Principal Researcher, Matt Folley, seeks to finally prove waves can make sense as the next big renewable.

There have been many attempts and trials to convert energy from the natural power of ocean waves. It is an area of enormous potential because waves are relatively predictable and reliable as natural forces. There is a range of technologies established such as heaving buoys, oscillating water columns, overtopping devices, and line absorbers, among many other methods of capturing energy from waves. However, there is an issue with the majority of ocean wave energy converters because, despite their useful functionality, they have not proved to be commercially competitive with offshore wind, or solar power. However functional a device might be, it has to be cost-effective and make economic sense for wide-scale adoption and to attract industry investment.

“Wave energy is probably thirty years behind wind energy,” began Folley. “If you think about where wind energy was thirty

years ago, where there were a few prototypes but limited commercial interest; that’s where wave energy is now. People would treat wind energy back then as a marginal technology but of course, that changed, partly because of the demands from climate change, but also because effort has been spent on developing wind turbines resulting in a significant reduction in cost. This is even more apparent when you see the changes with solar panels. The cost of solar panels has plummeted dramatically in the last ten years, making it more attractive to manufacture and install.”

The power of starting afresh

The LiftWEC project was created to discover new ways to approach the challenge of making wave energy commercially viable and to fulfil its potential as a major renewable, alongside wind and solar.

The engineering design began with ‘a blank

canvas’ and the coming together of experts and specialists in related fields, to understand the hydrodynamics involved. The wider goals stretch beyond making a device that works and the aim is to design and engineer a device that is viable in the renewable industry. This goal means considering the environmental impact, the maintenance requirements, and the costs. For a design to be successful it has to operate in the ‘real world’ with a range of considerations beyond functionality.

“A lot of people are trying to do wave energy today, and it feels to me like there are too many ideas and not enough are filtered out. There can be a tendency for inventors to have one idea and focus on developing it, with a blinkered vision, and this may encourage a bias towards its positives, ignoring its flaws. We wanted to avoid that. Following a structured design process, we initially came up with seventeen different concepts which

Wave-tank facilities at Ecole Central Nantes. © Ecole Central Nantes

we narrowed down to four concepts after analysing the ideas in detail, and finally to a single concept to go forward with for detailed engineering.”

Through a process of analysing different ways to extract wave energy in an economically sound way, the research team, derived from a consortium of 10 European universities and companies, has developed a concept for a cyclorotor-based wave energy converter reliant on lift forces from rotating hydrofoils.

These relatively large devices would be positioned underwater, out of sight, and connected to the Grid.

“The major difference to other wave energy converters is that our device couples with the waves through lift forces rather than diffraction or buoyancy forces, and if you look at the history of wave energy, although there have been hundreds of devices invented, the number of devices that have used lift is probably less than half a dozen,” said Folley. “What we tried to do in this research project, is to look in terms of how it can be done most effectively and to reduce the cost to make it competitive with other sources of renewable energy.”

Technology fit for the sea

With a wave energy converter there are core problems to address. One is the device’s survivability and robustness. The advantage with lift-based devices is they have a similar benefit to wind turbine devices, which is they can decouple and stop generating lift in order to survive extreme events, like fierce storms. This sets it apart from many other types of wave energy converters.

“If you look at buoys, oscillating water columns or overtopping devices there is little

they can do in extreme conditions, they just have to be built to survive it,” explained Folley. Another issue is the ability to perform essential maintenance for these machines in the sea. It is key to place these devices where there are lots of waves but where there are lots of waves, it makes maintenance very challenging. The biggest issue with maintenance at sea, where people are involved,

a game-changing piece of technology development in this field. In the future, with inevitable advances in technology, there is likely to be further progress in providing better solutions to this challenge.

“Our current maintenance policy is to return it to base as that seems most viable. It may be in twenty years’ time that remotely operated vehicles or ROVs, latch

is of course risk to life. LiftWEC’s solution would be to tow the devices back to port to be worked on in safety. Using knowledge gleaned from other projects means it is now possible to disconnect such a device in 15 minutes,

on to these devices and crawl around to fix them. If ROVs were deployed in the future, it could dramatically change the landscape for offshore wave energy making it significantly cheaper and commercially viable.”

LiftWEC has a profound understanding of why wave energy converters have historically failed to develop into large offshore farms. The project is taking a broader view of all the factors that need to be satisfied for adoption by the sector, as well as choosing a novel solution that bucks the trends that have not previously translated to industry.

Results from a 3D CFD model for LiftWEC showing vortex shedding at end of hydrofoils. © Gerrit Olbert, TUHH

LiftWEC Developing Innovative Strategies to Extract Ocean Wave Energy

Project Objectives

The LiftWEC project aims to develop understanding of how best to extract wave energy using wave-induced lift forces and to design a novel wave energy converter based on this understanding leading to the identification of a viable renewable energy technology.

Project Funding

3.4 Million Euros

Project Partners

• Queen’s University Belfast • Technical University of Hamburg • Innosea Ltd • Maynooth University • Aalborg University

• University College Cork • Strathclyde University • Julia F. Chozas Consulting • Wavec/ offshore renewables • Ecole Central Nantes

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Dr Carwyn Frost

Lecturer & MRG Lab Manager

School of Natural and Built Environment

QUB Research Portal Research Gate

T: +44 (0) 28 9097 4012

E: c.frost@qub.ac.uk

W: https://liftwec.com/ : https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CJjVeFMwlDA.

Always seeing the bigger picture

Dr Matt Folley is the principal researcher in the LiftWEC project having worked in the research and development of wave energy converters, from conceptual design to fullscale prototypes, for over 30 years.

Dr Carwyn Frost is an academic in the offshore renewable energy sector, facilitating lab and field scale testing and measurement campaigns for the development of renewable technologies.

Dr Paul Lamont-Kane is a research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast and is working on developing the fundamental hydrodynamic understanding of the LiftWEC concept.

After the initial design phase, numerical modelling was the crucial next step. There were many different models. There were highresolution models that took days to run and produced all the details of the vortex shedding and the lift generation, a model around potential flow solutions and an engineering design model. By validating those numerical models, the team could generate performance data for different wave scenarios and also for different dimensions of the device, to understand more completely how the device works and which configurations were optimal. However, with the wider perspectives of the project focused on commercial viability, there needed to be a holistic approach with every change.

“If for example, they said increasing the length ten metres would increase power capture by fifteen per cent but then the structural people come in and said it will increase the cost by twenty per cent, then that’s when the development is not going in the right direction. Unfortunately, there is not always sufficient focus on how power capture and costs change with dimensions so that novel concepts cannot be truly optimised. What we are trying to do is avoid that pitfall. It makes it more complicated during development but produces a more economically viable result.

There is a delicate balancing act with the developing technology and dimensions of this machine.

The physical modelling involved testing a small-scale model in a two-dimensional configuration and a larger-scale model in a three-dimensional configuration. A special water tank was used for the simulation of ocean waves in a controlled environment. This way performance could be measured and assessed much faster than if the device was in situ in an ocean environment.

LiftWEC has a profound understanding of why wave energy converters have historically failed to develop into large offshore farms. The project is taking a broader view of all the factors that need to be satisfied for adoption by the sector, as well as choosing a novel solution that bucks the trends that have not previously translated to industry.

The resulting wave energy converter appears robust and effective and a promising new direction as an ocean-based renewable. The testing and engineering of this device may well pave the way to large-scale energy harvesting from our seas. There is more to be done. Further optimisation of the concept has to be worked on in line with the wider aims of the project. Every detail, configuration and environmental parameter must be thoroughly investigated. Ongoing marginal changes, paired with the potential of newly developed materials and technologies, could lead to the first major success story for wave energy harvesting.

Dr Matt Folley

Dr Carwyn Frost Dr Paul Lamont-Kane

Testing the LiftWEC prototype at Ecole Central Nantes. © Ecole Central Nantes

A new avenue for microenergy sources in autonomous sensors?

Professor

The autonomous cars, trucks and other vehicles of the future, which are expected to the market after 2025, will require a large number of sensors, for example in speaker systems, parking aids or temperature/pressure sensors. Sensors will also be required for systems in the infrastructure and environment to enable the vehicle to communicate with surrounding objects. All these sensors and systems require energy sources. The different systems inside a car are typically connected by large amounts of wiring, greatly adding to the overall weight and complexity of the vehicle. “There may be more than 2 kilometres of wiring inside a car,” says Giacomo Clementi, a researcher at the FEMTOST Institute in Besancon, France. After completing his PhD as an early stage researcher (ESR) in the ENHANCE project, an initiative bringing together academic and industrial partners from across Europe, Clementi is now working to develop hybrid energy harvesters which will address these issues and help reduce the environmental impact of the automotive sector. “Our idea in the project is to reduce the wiring cost and the complexity of cars. At the same time, reductions in the weight of the car will also lead to reduced CO2 emissions,” he explains.

The ENHANCE project itself is an Innovative Training Network (ITN), which provides training to ESRs across a range of disciplines, including chemistry, physics and electronics. This reflects the complexity of the project’s work in developing a complete energy harvesting

to Professor Ausrine Bartasyte,

and Doctor

about

Lead-free Piezoelectric materials

system. “We are taking a multi-disciplinary approach, starting from the material and finishing with the electronics. We’re not focusing on just one part, we’re looking at the complete system,” says Professor Ausrine Bartasyte, Deputy Director of the FEMTO-ST Institute and the coordinator of the project. The ESRs are also receiving training in ‘soft’ skills, such as how to write presentations or apply for research funding, which will help prepare them for their future careers, whether in academia or industry. “We organised schools, workshops and conferences covering topics from chemistry and physics, to electronics to micro and nano-technology, as well as soft skills,” outlines Professor Bartasyte.

Clementi’s primary focus is on vibrational energy harvesting, so converting mechanical energy from the environment into electrical energy, which can then be stored or used to power small wireless sensors inside a vehicle. Piezoelectric materials, which have an internal electric charge, hold great potential in this respect. “When piezoelectric materials are essentially shocked or deformed by mechanical stress, due to their intrinsic atomic structure, they can convert this deformation into an electrical charge. That charge can then be stored in a battery, or used immediately to power a sensor,” outlines Clementi. Researchers are seeking to replace commonly used lead-based piezoelectric ceramics, prohibited under EU regulations since 2016, with environmentally-friendly piezoelectric materials offering competitive performance, in particular a piezoelectric material called lithium niobate (LiNbO3). “I am studying the microfabrication of this material and its application in vibrational energy harvesting,” says Clementi. “This finds applications not only in transportation, but also in areas like smart buildings, factory automation, internet of things (IoT) and structural health monitoring.”

In the frame of ENHANCE project, it was demonstrated that LiNbO3 implemented in vibrational energy harvesters offers

Modern vehicles connected to the IoT typically require large numbers of sensors, and these sensors need a reliable supply of power. We spoke

Associate

Samuel Margueron

Giacomo Clementi

European ITN ENHANCE project’s work in developing piezoelectric energy harvesters that could reduce the environmental impact of the automotive and information sector.

Micro-energy harvesting team at Institute FEMTOST: Merieme Ouhabaz, Giacomo Clementi, Mario Constanza, Samuel Margueron, Ausrine Bartasyte and Bernard Dulmet (from left to right).

competitive performance in terms of scavenged energy and stability at high operational temperatures with respect to the lead-based ceramics. This opens new avenues to the eco-friendly microenergy sources needed for further development of IoTs and communication systems.

The common theme here is the need for a reliable source of energy to power small sensors, with demand set to grow further in the coming years, as more and more physical objects are connected to the IoT. The main expected area of application at this stage however is the automotive sector, with researchers studying vibrations inside cars. “We’ve looked for instance at acceleration levels and the magnitude of the deformation, and how this relates to different ranges of frequency,” says Clementi. A further step in the project involved developing simulations to look at how a device would function in the practical context. “We implemented a very simple structure in the form of very small beams of a few centimetres –then we studied them with finite element analysis,” continues Clementi. “After that we optimised the structure, then we looked towards fabrication and prototype testing.”

Researchers are using LiNbO3 in the development of the harvesters, seeking to

harness its interesting electro-mechanical properties. In particular, Clementi says that LiNbO3 has some very promising performance characteristics in terms of robustness and flexibility. “We are now able to implement such piezoelectric materials on metal foils, which are more reliable,” he explains. This means it is possible to achieve power levels comparable to other materials,

Self-powered sensor

The material is also chemically inert and can go to high temperatures, in terms of both processing and application, which is highly valuable in terms of facing different conditions. The aim here is to design a module that essentially functions as a selfpowered sensor. “The harvester can be used already as a vibration sensor, it can

without any of the toxic effects associated with lead-containing materials. “We can theoretically convert 49 percent of the mechanical energy into electrical energy. That is comparable to both lead-free and and lead-containing materials, and in some cases even higher,” continues Clementi. “Moreover, we can lower production costs, because this material comes in the form of very high-quality wafers, which are commercially available.”

communicate the acceleration of the car. In other cases you may want to measure temperature or humidity, which can be communicated using Bluetooth,” says Clementi. The early tests on this device in the lab have shown promising results, with the project’s research essentially demonstrating a proof-of-concept, while there is also potential for these harvesters to be applied in areas beyond the automotive sector. “For example they could

Energy available for free in the environment is sufficient to power up data transmission. Autonomous microsources, based on energy harvesting and eco-friendly materials, will bring the 6th sense to the communication technology.

Implementation of vibrational energy harvesting based on piezoelectric materials in next generation cars for self-powered sensors and communication systems.

Pictures of ENHANCE device packaged while sending bluetooth signals.

Energy harvesting IoT node communicating with a smartphone.

be used in structural health monitoring, in bridges. Wherever there are vibrations you can use these kinds of devices, so there is a broad range of potential applications,” outlines Clementi.

This represents an interesting alternative to existing methods of harvesting microenergy, such as photo-voltaics, which is already widely used. While photo-voltaics is highly efficient in the presence of direct light, it is not really ideal for indoor or enclosed applications and requires regular cleaning, whereas researchers in the project have taken a different approach. “Our approach is about converting every coulomb of energy. This will be achieved thanks to the ultra-low power electronics,” says Samuel Margueron, an Associate Professor at the FEMTO-ST Institute who is also closely involved in the project. These sensors do not require any maintenance, and their nontoxic nature means they can be used in the natural world, with only minimal human intervention. “If you are going to distribute these sensors in nature then you cannot use lead-based materials, because they would cause pollution,” explains Professor Bartasyte. “LiNbO3 is chemically inert and will not lead to any pollution, as it doesn’t contain any toxic elements.”

The wider aim here is to develop reliable and efficient energy harvesters that can be adapted to industrial needs. The industrial partners have played an important role in directing research towards the development

of products relevant to commercial needs, and Clementi says a lot of progress has been made in the project. “Now we have a device that is at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4, with prototypes ready to be tested on the field,” he says. The next stage of tests are being prepared, while Clementi has established a start-up company to eventually bring these harvesters to the market. “We are in the maturation stage now, and we are in contact with investors. Our market is vibrational energy harvesting, we are trying to sell our device as an alternative to conventional ceramics,” he continues. “Transportation is the obvious market for us at this stage, as we have worked a lot on that, but ultimately we would like to develop a device that endusers can then implement wherever ambient vibrations are present.”

An effective energy harvester could have a significant impact in this respect, helping reduce the weight and complexity of vehicles, and so mitigating their environmental impact. This technology could reduce the weight of a vehicle by up to 50 kg, while it would also be significantly easier to maintain. “In many cars sensors are connected by a complex system of wires, and if you have any problems then it can be quite complicated to repair. If the sensor is completely autonomous and battery-free, then it’s much easier, as it doesn’t require any maintenance,” points out Professor Bartasyte. “By taking out the wires, you simplify the system.”

ENHANCE

Microenergy sources for autonomous sensors

Project Objectives

The Innovative Training Network (ITN) entitled “Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters for SelfPowered Automotive Sensors: from Advanced Lead-Free Materials to Smart Systems (ENHANCE)” provides thirteen Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) with broad and intensive training within a multidisciplinary research and teaching environment. Key training topics will include development of energy harvesters compatible with MEMS technology and able to power wireless sensor. Applied to automobiles, such technology will allow for 50 kg of weight saving, connection simplification, space reduction, and reduced maintenance costs - all major steps towards creating green vehicles. Other important topics include technology innovation, education and intellectual asset management.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 722496.

Project Partners

https://www.itn-enhance.com/nouvel-accueil

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Professor Ausrine Bartasyte

Deputy Director of FEMTO-ST Institute University of Franche-Comté

26 rue de l’Epitaphe

F-25030 BESANCON Cedex

France

T: +33 3 81 40 28 24

E: ausrine.bartasyte@femto-st.fr

W: https://www.itn-enhance.com/enhance

Professor Ausrine Bartasyte

Ausrine Bartasyte is a full professor at University of Bourgogne FrancheComté and a deputy director of the Institute FEMTO-ST (Besançon, France). Her research focus on advanced architectures of alcaline niobates for the next generation acoustic filters & sensors, energy harvesters, actuators and integrated photonic devices.

Science: A Casualty of War

As Russian tanks rolled into Ukrainian villages, scientists and research funding organisations from around the world withdrew from collaborations and partnerships with Russia on major science projects.

International scientists did not for the first time in 22 years make their annual trip to the Northwest Science Station in Siberia to study ongoing climate change in the Arctic environment. Funding was withdrawn by the Max Planck Institute in Germany to those manning the station to check how quickly climate change was thawing the permafrost and how much methane was being released into the atmosphere. With Russian relations in tatters, access to the Arctic will be more challenging altogether for international teams, as Russia claims more than half of the land and sea of the Arctic coastline. This will mean in turn, a loss of understanding of a key aspect of how climate change is unravelling.

By Richard Forsyth

Reuters also reported a halt to funding for high tech research facilities in Russia such as an ion collider and a neutron reactor as Europe was set to invest some 25 million euros.

Germany in particular, has engaged in a great deal of scientific research in partnership with Russia. For instance, the research organisation, the Helmholtz Association (HGF), hosted 362 Russian guest researchers in 2019 alone. Freezing out Russia in collaboration, funding and exchange will leave a gaping hole in a vast array of research projects.

It was Germany however, that was clear it would sever all links with the Russian scientific community from the beginning of the conflict, whilst not every country wanted to follow suit so quickly. Just after the invasion began, the Belgian Reactor’s Conference appealed that academic cooperation should continue as much as possible during the conflict.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, it was a decision that would alter the world, not just in terms of loss, bloodshed and borders, but also in the dissolving of long-standing collaborations between the Western nations and Russia. For science, the conflict would bring about its own shockwave. Here we examine what has happened to the scientific community and some of the implications.

KYIV, UKRAINE - Feb. 25, 2022: War of Russia against Ukraine. View of a civilian building damaged following a Russian rocket attack the city of Kyiv, Ukraine — Photo by palinchak

KYIV, UKRAINE - Feb. 26, 2022: War of Russia against Ukraine. Fighters of the battalion of territorial defense of the city of Kyiv — Photo by palinchak

Complete breakdown of collaboration

There is a fear that science itself and indeed Russian scientists, not complicit in the war, will suffer from the consequences of this conflict.

For that reason, many collaborators from Europe and Russia who have been working together on projects are less eager to break off relationships with their counterparts over what’s seen as a situation purely driven by the Russian state and beyond their control.

A climate of fear imposed on free speech by Moscow has also meant it’s harder for Russian scientists to protest, despite early efforts. A letter was signed by 2,500 staff and students in the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology stating they ‘could not support this senseless and outrageous war’ but it was deleted quickly when a new law meant that a prison term of 15 years could be handed out to people discrediting the Russian military. As it’s well known now, Russia refuses to call the situation a ‘war’, instead, it labels it a ‘special military operation’ and those who use the term ‘invasion’ or ‘war’ can be jailed, for sentences that would be more suited to serious violent crimes.

It appears that any kind of backlash against the government line is punished. The clampdown on dissent by Russia’s ministry of justice has blocked the website for the Russian science newspaper Troitsky Variant

after a letter was published by the publication with 8,000 signatures from scientists and science journalists opposing the invasion of Ukraine.

In the UK, The Guardian newspaper reported that many Russian scientists are trying to leave Russia, as it is widely perceived there is no future for science in Russia. The paper quoted Moscow physicist Dr Alexander Nozik, who said poignantly, “I believe and most of my colleagues believe that it just isn’t possible to do isolated science. In physics, the science journal system in Russia is mostly dead.”

To exasperate the climate of research in Russia, university salaries have been reported to be slashed in the deepening economic crisis in the country.

At the famous particle physics laboratory, CERN, Russia was suspended from official ‘observer’ status but the organisation did stand by Russian scientists working there. Indeed, it’s the big international projects where science gets the roughest ride from the implications of this conflict. ITER, the French fusion reactor project, to create the sun’s energy on Earth, is another example, as it is part-funded by Russia. ITER has been slow to respond because of this, and there is a lot at stake for the future of the world’s sustainable energy needs. They are trying to work out how to manage the situation without jeopardising so much progress on an energy project that could be essential to Mankind’s future needs.

“Principles, projects and allegiances in science around the world are being tested by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and the ripples of the barbaric act will travel deep into our future.”

Kyiv ,Ukraine: 24th February, 2022 - people hiding in metro station —

Photo by Fotoreserg

KYIV, UKRAINE - Feb. 25, 2022: War of Russia against Ukraine. Rescue service works near a house destroyed by russian rocket in Kyiv — Photo by palinchak

Values mean more than research

It’s worth realising that Ukraine’s scientists are also largely out of action, not because of isolation or lack of funds but because many researchers are either fleeing or fighting. Men of fighting age and many women too, have ditched research and university pursuits to defend their country. It’s been reported that at least one scientist, physicist Vasyl Kladko, has been shot dead by Russian soldiers. The science institutions are not spared the Russian bombardments, for instance, the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology has been badly damaged in attacks. Another example of impossible conditions was when the science team working at Enamine Ltd, a key player in global drug research, had to abandon their work on a project around a pill for Covid treatment, as their lab was near the frontlines. The blunt hammer of war destroys so many futures in so many different ways, both directly and indirectly, and the simple truth is it is impossible to do science under fire and with the constant threat of death.

Principles, projects and allegiances in science around the world are being tested by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, and the ripples of the barbaric act will travel deep into our future. Widely speaking, the West’s mood music is playing the same tune. In a display of solidarity

with Ukraine, the EU Commission suspended all cooperation with Russian research entities, which included stopping new contracts in their tracks and suspending payments on existing contracts. It is a comprehensive, unified stance with a sweeping impact.

Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for a Europe fit for the Digital Age, summed it up succinctly by saying: “EU research cooperation is based on the respect for the freedoms and rights that underpin excellence and innovation. Russia’s heinous military aggression against Ukraine is an attack against those same values. It is, therefore, time to put an end to our research cooperation with Russia”.

No space for aggressors

The conflict is not just affecting Earthly scientific pursuits. Space science has always been one of the greatest endeavours embracing strong collaborations of resources and teams between Russia, the USA and Europe especially. The invasion of Ukraine has dropped all this work into freefall.

The European Space Agency (ESA) stopped its work with Russia on the ExoMars mission which meant postponing the launch of the rover which was supposed to take place in September. On 13 April ESA announced it

Irpin, Bucha, Dmitrivka. Atrocities of the Russian army in the suburbs of Kyiv. Irpin. Houses of civilians destroyed by russian tanks. Russia’s war against Ukraine. KYIV REGION, UKRAINE.

was also cutting ties with Roscosmos on planned lunar missions such as the Luna-25 and Luna-27 lander and the Luna-26 orbiter.

An ESA statement confirmed: “…the Russian aggression against Ukraine and the resulting sanctions put in place represent a fundamental change of circumstances and make it impossible for ESA to implement the planned lunar cooperation.”

The International Space Station is affected, and Russia has announced it will pull out of the ISS in relation to the tensions and more precisely the sanctions imposed on Russia relating to the Ukraine conflict. NASA’s reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for transporting astronauts will come to an end as private space companies like SpaceX will be expected to facilitate this need, and this is an interesting development because, like so many of the big collaborations, it has far-reaching implications for a changed world scape, a new socio-economic shift for the globe. Russia may well become to the West a place akin to North Korea, an untouchable land, isolated, unfriendly and with no ties or cooperative relationships.

Unlike North Korea, Russia is the biggest country on Earth and one Europe and the US are used to dealing with and relying on, despite differences.

Russia has not been completely scientifically isolated by the world and still has links to China, India and South Africa, despite appeals from

these countries to resolve the war but the severed links and support from the West are having and will continue to have a long-term damaging effect for science in Russia and in general, as we draw a new red line between countries and their institutions.

What we are seeing in science is what we are seeing in sectors like energy, with gas and oil to Europe being sourced elsewhere than Russia, in addition to the ratcheting up of reliance on forward-thinking solutions, like increasing renewables. In the same way, there is an urgent need to bolster and increase alliances and shared resources with countries onside or at very least, neutral, to this conflict. We will see an uncomfortable shuffling around of resources, supply chains, scientists and also exciting new partnerships endeavouring to replace Russian based research and Russian relationships.

Inevitably, in a vast array of research, science will stall, but for many of these key projects, there will simply be adaption. The strength of European relationships is noticeably more connected and robust since the war began, and the redoubled relationships around Europe and other countries around the world could potentially, at least, promote a new era of cooperation for these researchers, as we move into a very different, if more challenging, geopolitical age.

“Ukraine’s scientists are also largely out of action, not because of isolation or lack of funds but because many researchers are either fleeing or fighting.”

Optimising and storing energy in Europe’s homes and buildings

Designing better systems for energy use in buildings will be essential for Europe to meet its target of near zero energy in 2050. Technical Project Coordinator, Pavol Bodis of SCORES explains how new combined technologies can collect renewable energy locally, store it and use it in smarter, more optimised ways to improve efficiency.

The building sector accounts for 40% of the total European energy consumption. It’s the big challenge and barrier when forming strategies for the ambitious sustainability goals set by the European Union. The SCORES project sees a solution in renewable energy generated locally and selfconsumed by buildings.

A hybrid storage system of electricity and heat could be the answer, bridging gaps in supply and consumption and all at cost effective rates. The project looks at using renewable energy produced by local solar panels and wind farms combined with advanced heat and electricity storage systems and supported by an Energy Management System. This approach allows stored energy to be used when the renewables can no longer provide it because the sun is not shining, or the wind is not blowing. There are a range of solutions and combinations of different technologies on the table and all could play a key role, depending on the needs of the local market in any given country.

“We want to switch to renewable energy, specifically for urban environments where there are houses and buildings. On a global scale, you want to have as much energy generated locally, such as solar panels on the rooftops. But sometimes the sun does not shine and our plan is to store the energy when you have an abundance of it and use it when the sun doesn’t shine. This is the whole idea. It can be done with our hybrid energy system,” explains Pavol Bodis.

By local, one could mean an individual building or a district consisting of several buildings. The properties are still connected to the Grid and the energy can also sent back to the Grid in some circumstances. The difference is, there is more local, cyclic and

renewable energy being put to use and in a way that it is not wasteful, rather it is stored and used when and where needed.

There are key technologies that entwine together to make this kind of production, storage and optimisation of energy consumption possible.

the market but SCORES has one that has a buffering system which helps households store the energy when they have an excess of it, making it available when there may be a lack of it being collected. Another component part of such a hybrid system is a heat pump. Somewhat more advanced solar-driven technology,

Smarter technologies for energy optimisation

An integral component that adds intelligence into energy usage is the Building Energy Management System (BEMS) which relies on clever algorithms to predict all kinds of things, from when the sun is shining, how much energy is used by a building’s inhabitants and how to best optimise supply to meet demand. There are many kinds of smart systems available on

namely solar thermal technology in the form of PVT tiles on a rooftop can support the functioning of a heat pump in a property.

“The heat pump is a device that converts electricity to heat and provides efficient heating that is driven by green electricity in our case. For optimisation, self-produced electricity comes via these specialised PVT cells put on individual buildings,” said Bodis. “Effectively, this produces electricity and

SCORES is actively pursuing involvement in policy for several countries to understand how their solutions can apply in government set frameworks, to their goals and within budget requirements.

The SCORES concept is based on a hybrid system combining solutions that harvest electricity and heat from the sun, store electricity, convert electricity into heat, store heat, and manage the energy flows in the building.

heat which goes into the heat pump, which in turn converts it into the heat that is used for heating up water. The real big chunks of energy at home are hot water and heating of the house, potentially about 80%.”

Heat pumps are being looked at seriously as technologies of promise for widespread adoption by some European governments.

There are many innovations that can make up a hybrid storage system. One innovation championed by SCORES is the REDOX heat battery, essentially a battery that stores heat rather than electricity.

“There are technologies where we have basically taken a technology from one industry, for example, the chemical process industry, and we transferred it into the energy storage system, the REDOX heat technologies are an example of that. It is currently in a laboratory testing phase and we are testing the performance for

housing, so it’s not technology that is ready for implementation in the commercial world yet.

“We have also adopted a storage technology based on phase change materials. This is material that changes its state from liquid to solid and if you do that you need to put energy in it and when it goes back you release the energy from it. So that means by changing the phase or form of the material you can store energy, we do that as well.”

Another key focus of the project, one crucial for emissions targets and green goals in a worldwide perspective, is materials recycling, specifically with batteries. All batteries run down and eventually become inefficient and unusable. Prolonging battery life or finding alternative uses for older batteries needs to be a priority with such a growing industry, so as not to create a new problem around disposal.

Promoting circular use of materials

“We have second hand reused electrical batteries from buses,” said Bodis. “For mobility application for a bus, these batteries are no longer optimal, they don’t last long or work so well for bus transport, but we can refurbish them and reuse them and give them a second life. We give them a second home in someone’s actual home.

“For our society it’s not just that energy has to be renewable but also the materials we use should be circular, which means to close the circle of materials and not just unearthing new raw materials. We extend the lifetime of the batteries by years. With our application it is not so important to have the highest energy density. For our purposes the battery can be at 60-70% but on a vehicle that is a real problem as you don’t want to have a huge wait to charge it with only 60% capacity, but in a stationary

Demonstration of the integrated hybrid energy system takes place in two real buildings representative of different climate and energy system configurations. One in Northern Europe (Austria) and one in Middle/Southern Europe (France).

SCORES

Self Consumption Of Renewable Energy by hybrid Storage systems

Project Objectives

The main goal of SCORES is to demonstrate in the field the integration, optimization and operation of a building energy system including new compact hybrid storage technologies, that optimizes supply, storage and demand of electricity and heat in residential buildings and that increases selfconsumption of local renewable energy in residential buildings at the lowest cost.

Project Funding

The project leading to this application has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 766464.

Project Partners

You can find information about the project and its partners with the following link: • http://www.scores-project.eu/about.

Contact Details

Dr. ir. Erwin Giling

Coordinator SCORES project

TNO Sustainable Process and Energy Systems

Delft, The Netherlands

T: +31 6 51419618

E: erwin.giling@tno.nl

E: info@scores-project.eu

W: http://www.scores-project.eu/home

W: http://www.tno.nl

application it works fine. When we started this, battery life was limited, but we have seen huge developments in lithium-ion batteries in the meantime, so it is a good idea to use these second-hand lithium-ion batteries that have a far longer lifetime now, compared to when we started SCORES. We will also account for that in the business case analysis, as the world changes. When we started SCORES, PV panels were very expensive and now, four years later, they are only 20% of that original price. Costs are going in a positive direction for economic viability.”

SCORES is looking at several smart ways to use combinations for optimal benefit from the perspective of self-consumption. An important aspect of SCOREs, is that there is more than one way to create a hybrid energy storage system, this is not focusing on one single configuration. The project is looking into several types to work out how to combine technologies and how they can work together in efficient ways. There is also a cost element for each technology which in the real world, is a very important factor for uptake and use.

Making systems feasible

Erwin Giling is the coordinator of the SCORES project, working in close cooperation with technical coordinator Pavol Bodis. For well over a decade Giling is developing and managing projects in the field of CO2 reduction, energy storage, energy conversion and the electrification of the industry.

“Developing these systems for the European market does not mean that you have the same solution for every country, for every climate situation or for the same scale for that matter. We can’t test for every variation and country but we do have two implementations. The choice we made was a relatively largescale implementation in the South of France and we’ve applied our system in two large buildings consisting of 150 apartments, set up for the climate in the Mediterranean. The other one is close to the mountains in Austria, so it is completely different, with a more continental type of climate, where we have a smaller scale system for six houses.”

Beyond testing how the system works, there is the broader question around its practicality and feasibility. The question of,

can this be rolled-out across Europe and the world? Developers, contractors, governments and existing homeowners would need to be invested and willing. Re-fitting existing housing stock alone could run into big numbers, potentially multiple millions of buildings that have to be refitted, many which are old buildings. This presents an extreme challenge, one which Bodis recognises.

“What we do see from the projects around us is the renovation rate lags behind the needs for the transformation of the building stock. Also, in Germany there are not enough companies to rebuild as quickly as excel sheets tell us. So, what to do? Our approach in this respect is testing in various configurations and modelling how to make the biggest steps with the smallest amounts of resources.”

SCORES is actively pursuing involvement in policy for several countries to understand how their solutions can apply in government set frameworks, to their goals and within budget requirements.

“In the SCORES project you have complex systems with so many types of devices, so many functionalities for your home, but you should also see this as the platform for the message, where in certain situations you can apply this or that part of the system. It doesn’t mean you can make optimal solutions for every house in every country but, what we are proving that you can find an optimal, minimalistic approach with limited resources.”

The research findings will be extremely useful for what comes next in the coming decades, where if Europe does not find workable solutions to the challenges SCORES seeks to tackle, the goals around emissions reductions will surely fail. Optimising energy is one of the greatest challenges for reducing climate impacts and SCORES is demonstrating what can be possible in terms of the changes we all desire.

Dr. ir. Erwin Giling

SCORES consortium meeting and workshops in the new hybrid way of working setting, October 2021, Amsterdam & online.

A new integrative approach to the study of modern Confucianism

Confucianism is an important Chinese tradition from which many philosophers have drawn inspiration, right up to the present day. We spoke to Dr Philippe Major and Professor Ralph Weber about their work investigating modern Confucianism, and its importance to understanding contemporary China.

Confucianism has a history of over 2000 years. Over the last two millennia, many thinkers have drawn from this complex tradition, right up to the present day. In the early 20th century the modern Confucian movement developed, pushing for a revival of the tradition, a topic central to Dr Philippe Major’s work in a research project based at the University of Basel. “We are looking at the people who advocated a revival of Confucianism. We focus on figures from the 20th and 21st centuries,” he outlines. Confucianism itself is a very contested tradition, says Dr Major’s colleague Professor Ralph Weber, the leader of the project. “Some think of Confucianism as a philosophy, others

as a religion, others as a family-centered social order,” he acknowledges. “We study a group of philosophers, so we treat Confucianism mainly as a philosophy.”

This philosophical tradition is very diverse, and different thinkers have very different ideas about what Confucianism is. One important dimension of Confucianism is an emphasis on self-cultivation and selfimprovement. “For example, there’s an assumption among modern Confucians that there is such a thing as a moral metaphysics. So there is some metaphysical ground for morality that is expressed through moral praxis,” says Dr Major. It is very difficult for Western philosophers to accept the idea that

there is a moral metaphysics however. “How would you explain that there is a metaphysics that sustains our moral praxis if we come from animals?” asks Dr Major. “One way we can think about the project is that we explore modern Confucianism on the basis of ideas drawn from the sociology of philosophy. Very little work has been done on the sociology of non-Western philosophies.”

Modern Confucianism

The modern Confucians are usually portrayed as contributing to discussions about modernity. They are typically regarded as a conservative group that accepts modernity on some grounds, but also

This image represents the literary connections between modern Confucians He Lin, Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili, Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, and Xu Fuguan between 1919 and 2017.

criticises it on others. “Modern Confucians would agree in some ways with the ideas of Max Weber about the ‘iron cage’,” says Dr Major. The modern Confucians also share a certain patriarchal understanding of the world, another topic that researchers are exploring in the project by looking at texts, pictures and photographs. “No woman has managed to integrate and advance in the modern Confucian movement to the extent that they could be viewed as one of its main representatives,” continues Dr Major. “The modern Confucians don’t usually deal very much with gender issues. One of the questions we want to ask is whether this is representative of a patriarchal understanding of society that is implicit in their philosophy.”

This is one of several different strands of research, with Professor Weber and his colleagues examining the work of several modern Confucians, including those who stayed on the mainland following the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in the Civil War. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, and the ruling Communists had a complicated relationship with Confucianism, making it a difficult environment for those Confucian philosophers who stayed. “One of our projects looks at these philosophers. They had to present their philosophy within a Marxist-Leninist framework. How did they

deal with that?” says Professor Weber. They had a choice between concealing their ideas in a kind of code, renouncing Confucianism in favour of Marxist-Leninist thinking, or adapting Confucianism to the dominant ideology. “Some of these philosophers were quite outspoken about Confucianism before 1949, so for them the Communist victory marked a real break,” continues Professor Weber.

A further part of the project involves looking at the work and life of philosophers who left the Chinese mainland, for example to Taiwan, Hong Kong, or the US, where they had greater freedom to express Confucian ideas. These exiled philosophers often felt a deep sense of resentment towards some of those who had stayed and whom they viewed as complicit in legitimising the Chinese Communist Party. “Some philosophers tried to reconcile Marxism with Confucianism,” explains Dr Major. These philosophers were living in a dramatic period of social and political change, sometimes dealing with the psychological effects of being exiled from their homeland, and Professor Weber believes it’s important to consider the wider context in which they developed their ideas. “When we read these texts for their philosophy, wouldn’t we profit from factoring in the intellectual history of the author, what they went through?” he argues.

Sociology of philosophy

The project uses ideas from the sociology of philosophy to look at the context in which a text was written. Some people argue that philosophy should be read purely on its own terms, while others believe that works should be placed in their historical context. Now Professor Weber is adopting a different perspective. “The sociology of philosophy is really a different level to look at this. We think of it as the meso-level,” he outlines. This is not just about reading a specific text in its historical context, but also about considering the motivations of the author and the sociological background to the work. “The use of approaches from the sociology of philosophy is highly innovative,” continues Professor Weber. “We believe that approaching texts through this institutional meso-level, and considering the sociological dimensions, makes for better philosophy. It can help us to understand the philosophical message of a text better.”

By bringing ideas from other disciplines to the project, the researchers hope to open up new perspectives on modern Confucianism and so gain deeper insights. Modern Confucians were often part of wider groups and formed collaborative networks through universities, research associations and other institutions, a topic that Professor Weber and his team are exploring

We are looking at the people who advocated a revival of Confucianism. We focus on figures from the 20 th and 21st centuries.

Ralph Weber (left) meets with modern Confucian Tu Weiming (right) at the Mencius temple in Zoucheng in 2007.

in a digital humanities project. “We want to highlight those networks more than individuals, we want to see them through a different lens,” he explains. There is a sociological aspect to this research, involving theories about networks and group behaviour, so Professor Weber says it has been essential to collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines. “This research couldn’t be done solely by philosophers,” he stresses. “A lot of our colleagues are either philosophers or historians, but we are now also collaborating with sociologists.”

The aim in this project is to develop a database of modern Confucians and their works over the period between 1911-2011, which will provide a solid basis to demonstrate connections between them. This work involves not just drawing on data but also creating it, which could open up new avenues of investigation. “There are categories in the database that will allow researchers to reconstruct networks of modern Confucians. Who was doing what with whom? On which boards were they sitting together? Which journals did they found?” outlines Professor Weber. This approach could also be used by groups in other areas of research, although the primary focus for Professor Weber is the modern Confucians, and he

hopes the database will help uncover some interesting details. “We might discover some new figures in there that hadn’t previously been thought of as central to this tradition,” he says.

Modern China

This research is designed to shed new light on modern Confucianism, and to develop a deeper understanding of nonWestern philosophy. While there is a purely philosophical side to this work, it also holds wider relevance in terms of understanding modern China and its leaders. “It’s important to try to understand how traditions are being drawn on by political actors in China, how they are instrumentalised,” says Professor Weber. These philosophers often acted as scholar-officials who were concerned with the fate of their country, and in many cases they enjoyed access to powerful people. “This access to power is a really central part of the story,” continues Professor Weber. “These philosophers perform a deeply culturally rooted function of the scholarofficial, of caring about China. This is almost a characteristic of Chinese intellectuals in the 20 th century.”

THE EXTERIOR OF PHILOSOPHY

The Exterior of Philosophy: On the Practice of New Confucianism

Project Objectives

One of the largest research groups specialized in modern Confucianism outside of East Asia, The Exterior of Philosophy adopts Sociology of Philosophy perspectives to study the impact of social factors on modern Confucian philosophical practices. The project explores the possibilities of deploying Sociology of Philosophy perspectives for philosophical aims.

Project Funding

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Project Ph.D Students

Yim Fong Chan and Milan Matthiesen.

Contact Details

Project Contact, Philippe Major, PostDoc Europainstitut | Institute for European Global Studies

Universität Basel | Riehenstrasse 154 | 4058

Basel

T: +41 (0)61 207 48 65

E: philippe.major@unibas.ch

W: www.europa.unibas.ch

W: https://europa.unibas.ch/de/forschung/ european-global-knowledge-production/ the-exterior-of-philosophy/

Ralph Weber is an Associate Professor at the Institute for European Global Studies of the University of Basel. He has published extensively on comparative philosophy, Confucianism, and Chinese politics and philosophy.

Philippe Major is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for European Global Studies of the University of Basel. His work focuses on modern Confucianism, textual authority, and epistemic hegemony.

Dr Philippe Major Professor Ralph Weber

Former residence of modern Confucian Ma Yifu in Hangzhou.

Politics and the art of compromise

Political compromises are essential to any form of government, but they are particularly central in coalitions, where different parties have to balance each others’ priorities. While a willingness to compromise was once seen as a welcome sign of political maturity, many voters now see it as selling out for the sake of power, an issue Dr Mariken van der Velden is exploring in her research.

Many European countries have a long history of being governed by coalitions, which inevitably entails political compromise between the partners, as they seek to balance each other’s legislative priorities within a single government. However, while coalitions are common across Europe, voters are increasingly unwilling to accept the need for compromise, and tend to punish those parties who are seen as having not lived up to their promises while in government. “In the Netherlands for example we never have a single-party government. Yet at the same time people are upset that politicians compromise,” says Dr Mariken van der Velden, Associate Professor of Political Communication at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In her research, Dr van der Velden is investigating whether this hostility to compromise is related to the language politicians use during campaigns. “Campaigning language is affirmative, and that may make people less likely to accept compromise,” she suggests.

Political campaigning

The focus in this research is on voters and politicians in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, countries with different political traditions. While Germany and the Netherlands have a long history of multi-

support of voters. “My work builds upon a group that looks at the number of pledges politicians make. They consider pledges as being quite specific ideas about policy, such as changing the speed limit on the highway,” continues Dr van der Velden.

that propose two different ways of celebrating that anniversary in a mock town-hall debate. The question is whether the way that this mock town-hall debate unfolds is conducive to people accepting compromises or not.

party government, Spain only recently elected its first coalition government this century. “Spain doesn’t have a custom of coalition governments, but it is currently governed by one,” says Dr van der Velden. One aim in the project is to probe the different kinds of promises that politicians make during a campaign as they seek the

“This is a bit problematic in terms of political compromise, as politicians are very aware of when they have to be highly specific with their language and when they can be a bit vaguer. I’m looking at questions like, where do they put their emphasis in terms of rhetoric during the campaign?”

I have two VR agents, acting as politicians,

This may be indicative of their particular priorities, as well as the areas in which they might be willing to compromise should they enter government. In both Spain and the Netherlands, political parties campaign on the basis of their plans for government, rather than who they may be willing to form a coalition with after the election. “In Spain there has traditionally been a left-wing bloc and a right-wing bloc, although we will have to see how this plays out in future. In the Netherlands we never have a single-party government, but up until the last election in 2021, leaders were not willing to engage with the topic of a potential coalition, because they feel that it’s something that people decide after an election,” says Dr van der Velden. The differing levels of coalition experience in these three countries was one of the major reasons Dr van der Velden chose to focus on them in

her research. “I’m working with data from a country with no coalition experience at the national level (Spain) up to this point, as well as two countries with coalition experience (Netherlands and Germany),” she outlines.

As part of her research, Dr van der Velden is using virtual reality (VR) games to investigate the effect of the language politicians use on voters’ attitude towards political compromises. In this game, VR agents debate how to mark the 750th anniversary of Amsterdam’s founding in 2025. “I have two VR agents, acting as politicians, that propose two different ways of celebrating that anniversary in a mock town-hall debate. The question is whether the way that this mock townhall debate unfolds is conducive to people accepting compromises or not,” explains Dr van der Velden. Voters may feel particularly strongly on some issues and may be unwilling

to accept any compromises, another topic Dr van der Velden is exploring in the project. “We did an experiment in Germany just after the election, when coalition talks were ongoing. We asked; should there be a speed limit on the highways? This is a highly symbolic issue in Germany,” she says. “We combined this with research into their attitude towards tax, which is a bit of a generic, left-right divide.”

Researchers have found that voters don’t approve of parties compromising their principles for the sake of being in government, regardless of the issue. This might mean it takes longer to form a government after an election, yet evidence suggests voters still prefer this to messy political compromises. “People want parties to take a clear stand on the issues that matter to them,” says Dr van der Velden. In many European countries there are now a wider range of political parties to

Photograph by Richard Ley

A PROMISE IS A PROMISE!

A Promise is a Promise! A Study of the Electoral Ramifications of Political Compromises

Project Objectives

Nowadays, political compromises seem to be extremely unpopular. This poses a problem for politicians’ ability to form stable coalitions to govern. My project studies the ramifications of compromises for politicians’ communication and voter behaviour utilising virtual reality techniques, experiments and computational textual approaches.

Project Funding

This project is funded by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [VI.Veni.191R.006]

Contact Details

Project Coordinator,

Mariken van der Velden, PhD

Associate Professor of Political Communication

Department of Communication Science

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam

T: +31 639 515307

E: m.a.c.g.vander.velden@vu.nl

W: http://www.marikenvandervelden.com/

W: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/ mariken-van-der-velden

represent these different viewpoints, yet this fragmentation only leads to a greater need for compromise if a stable government is to be formed. “More parties means that parliament is divided into smaller representative groups. That means no single party is likely to gain a majority, and that more parties will be involved in coalitions than before,” points out Dr van der Velden. “In Germany two-party coalitions are not common any more, there may be three parties involved, while here in the Netherlands we sometimes have four parties in a coalition.”

Fragmented politics

Mariken van der Velden, PhD is an Associate Professor of Political Communication in the Department of Communication Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research is motivated by key societal challenges that face democracies today, such as the crisis of representative democracy and increasing political fragmentation. To fund her research, Mariken has received many prestigious grants from national and European funding agents

This will inevitably result in more compromises between partners, which will anger some people who see it as politicians failing to live up to their promises, but involvement in the political process and greater familiarity with it may lead to a change in viewpoint. This is a topic Dr van der Velden is investigating in the project. “Does participating in the political process make people more accepting of the need for compromise?” she asks. Results from the VR games so far suggest that greater awareness of the political process has an impact in these terms. “The people who participated in this game said that they had more of an understanding of the complexity of the political process, and therefore are more aware that not everything can go their way,” explains Dr van der Velden. “So far we’ve done this research with students to test the equipment. Later on we will do this research with a random sample of the population, which we expect will also include some people who are more distrustful of the political process.”

The wider backdrop to this research is an increasingly fragmented political environment in Spain, the Netherlands and Germany, with more and more parties gaining representation in parliament. This makes coalitions more likely, yet at the same time many populists criticise those politicians who are willing to compromise, undermining trust in the system as a whole. “People are less accepting of this need for compromise. That poses many challenges in terms of acceptance of the system,” says Dr van der Velden. Effective communication between governments and citizens is central to rebuilding trust, a topic at the heart of Dr van der Velden’s research. “Citizen-driven participation like town-hall debates give governments the opportunity to establish a rapport with the electorate. The question is how should they communicate? What things should they say? What resonates with the public? What does it mean to effectively or persuasively communicate?” she outlines. “These are the types of questions that I’m looking at.”

The VR games are an integral part of this research, and textual methods are also under development to look at how politicians reach compromises and subsequently justify their actions to the public. The plan is to apply these textual and VR methods over the next year or so, while Dr van der Velden is also considering possible further avenues of investigation in future. “For example, if we know that certain citizen-driven decision making is helpful for political trust, or for the perception of the legitimacy of democracy, then how does this work? What are the mechanisms through which this is accepted?” she continues.

Mariken van der Velden, PhD

Bringing noise into economic models

The topic of individual preferences, or the way in which people rank different options, is of great interest to economists, psychologists, and neuroscientists. Traditional economics models are deterministic, in the sense that they are based on the assumption that if an individual prefers option A to B then they will always choose A, yet this is not backed up the available data, says Carlos Alós-Ferrer, Professor for Decision and Neuroeconomic Theory at the Zurich Centrer for Neuroeconomics (ZNE). “The data suggests that there is a lot of noise, and when confronted with exactly the same options, people do not always make the same choices,” he explains. As the head of a research project based at ZNE, Professor Alós-Ferrer is investigating questions around stochastic choice. “This is the idea that decision processes in the brain are inherently noisy, and hence our choices always have a random component,” he outlines. “This means that the appropriate model of human behaviour is not one which uses deterministic preferences, but rather one which uses randomness.”

Random utility models

This involves incorporating ‘noise’ at the behavioural level, which can be broadly thought of as inaccurate data which makes it

more difficult to identify underlying trends. Researchers are working with random utility models – the standard for estimating preferences in economics – and bringing together insights from several different disciplines. “We are incorporating insights from psychophysics, psychology and neuroscience, so we can work more effectively with these random utility models,” says Professor AlósFerrer. Two particularly important insights have been identified. “The first is that, for any kind of decision, if you are close to being indifferent then you are going to make more mistakes,” continues Professor Alós-Ferrer. “The second is that if you are close to being indifferent, then your decisions are going to take longer. Those two points are regularities which are very strong and have been known about for more than a century in psychology, for example for perceptual decisions where people have to decide which of two objects is larger – we call them psychometric and chronometric effects respectively. What we are finding is that these effects are also very clear for economic decisions, which are typically based on unobservable scales as individual preferences instead of, say, the size of an object.”

Researchers have been investigating how to incorporate these insights in preference

estimation and economic models of stochastic choice, work which involves several different strands of research. Recently, Professor AlósFerrer published a paper that essentially solves a long-standing problem in economics. “The problem is that when we think about recovering preferences, it is apparent that even if someone chooses A over B more than 50 percent of the time, we cannot really conclude that they prefer A over B,” he outlines. The reason is that noise can do strange things – it could have a bias, it could be asymmetric – and is by nature very difficult to observe. Now researchers are using insights from other disciplines to modify economic models. “We take inputs from psychology, which tells us that if you are closer to indifference, your decision is going to take longer. Thanks to computers, response times are easily observable today, so we have a lot of data on this,” says Professor Alós-Ferrer. “In that paper we built the response times into the models.”

This enabled researchers to prove a formal result which identifies the conditions under which a distribution of response times shows that an individual indeed prefers option A over B, for example red wine over white wine, or a certain policy over an alternative. Personal choices are the result of underlying preferences

Stochastic choice can be thought of as the idea that we don’t always make the same decisions even when confronted with exactly the same choices, so the appropriate model of human behaviour is one which incorporates this randomness. Professor Carlos Alós-Ferrer is bringing together insights from several different fields to work more effectively with random utility models.

and behavioural noise, and in a sense Professor Alós-Ferrer has used response times to disentangle noise and preferences. “We can use response times to filter out the behavioral noise,” he explains. In the recent paper, researchers also explored how preferences for unobserved choices can be addressed with data about response times, building on insights from a previous experiment comparing various types of chocolate and snacks to a reference category, say, M&Ms. “People were asked a few questions - do you prefer M&Ms or Mars? M&Ms or Hersheys? M&Ms or some other snack?” outlines Professor Alós-Ferrer. “If somebody says that they prefer Hersheys to M&Ms, and also that they prefer Mars to M&Ms, it is still not clear which option they prefer out of Hersheys and Mars.”

The time that an individual takes to make a decision involving comparisons to M&Ms are however predictive of whether they prefer Hersheys or Mars, or some other option. If they rapidly decide that one option is superior then that means the utilities

are very far apart, while if they take longer then that means the difference in utilities is relatively small, from which researchers can draw wider insights. “We can predict your preference from those observations, without having seen your decisions between Hersheys and Mars,” explains Professor Alós-Ferrer. Researchers have built on the data gathered in this experiment. “We applied our techniques to the first part of the data. We predicted the decisions that we were going to see later in the experiment, using our techniques, and then we compared those predictions to what actually happened,” continues Professor Alós-Ferrer. “Around 80 percent of our predictions were correct, which is pretty positive. We are now working on other applications of that, in areas like stochastic choice.”

Preference reversal phenomenon

A further dimension of Professor AlósFerrer’s research centres on what is called the preference reversal phenomenon, which is related to perceptions of risk. When asked to

choose between gaining a relatively small sum with a high probability and gaining a larger sum with a lower probability, many people tend to choose the safer option. “Not many people take the long shot,” says Professor Alós-Ferrer. The problem is that those who prefer the safer bet to the long shot should logically value it more highly in monetary terms, yet Professor Alós-Ferrer says there is abundant data to show that this is in fact not the case. “People for example may say; ‘I prefer an 80 percent probability of gaining £20 to a 20 percent probability of getting £100’. That is perfectly fine, as it just means that people are typically risk averse. The problem is that when you ask the same people to give a monetary value to those options, many of them will give a larger value to the option they did not prefer. So in effect they are saying that they prefer less money to more,” he outlines. “This is one of the most robust phenomena in economics, there’s 50 years worth of research on this. This represents a significant behavioural anomaly, and it has been studied by researchers in

psychology, economics and neuroscience.”

Researchers have ben able to essentially uncover the roots of this anomaly by using a model of stochastic choice. Analysis of previous data shows that many people miscalculate the value of the long shot, and as money is easier to comprehend than probabilities, they often end up with an incorrect number. There is a clear shift in attention toward outcomes (relative to probabilities) when evaluations are monetary, and this attentional shift drives the reversals. “We have essentially been able to show that this is what is happening, using both choice and eye-tracking data,” explains Professor Alós-Ferrer.

These behavioural anomalies are also an important consideration in terms of evaluating public opinion on spending priorities. “In evaluating what kinds of public works people are interested in, two different methods are often used to get at our preferences. On the one people are asked; ‘do you prefer this or that?’ That’s a direct method, an ordinal one. On the other hand, they’re also asked; ‘how much money is this worth to you?’” continues Professor Alós-Ferrer. This is a cardinal method which focuses you on monetary amounts. “There is an inconsistency there, and so it’s not

has nothing to do with a bias. This is important because it is very typical, whenever you see an apparent anomaly, to try to explain it with a bias in the human brain, but this is the wrong way of analysing the data,” he outlines.

The two methods should be equivalent, yet when we examine reversals, we are looking at evaluations conditional on a choice, say, an observed preference for the long shot. If most people are risk-averse but choice is stochastic, then a lot of those choices are actually mistakes, in the sense that people have made choices that contradict their own preferences. Now suppose you condition on those choices. The evaluations going the other way simply reflects the fact that you were conditioning on a lot of mistakes. “If eight people out of ten say that the long shot is worth less than the safe bet, even though they have chosen the long shot, then you may conclude that there is an anomaly, there must be a bias,” says Professor Alós-Ferrer. The reason that conclusion would be wrong is that when you are conditioning on the alternatives, on people’s choice of the long shot, and most of those are in fact mistakes. “This is just because people are risk-averse,” explains Professor Alós-Ferrer. “If most of those are

THE NEUROECONOMICS OF CONFLICT

The Neuroeconomics of Conflict and Preference Strength in Decision Making

Project Objectives

Homo Oeconomicus does not play dice, but Homo Sapiens might. The human brain makes decisions in a gradual, stochastic way. When people are closer to indifference, they make more mistakes and take longer to decide. These robust effects can be used to understand decision anomalies and to estimate preferences better.

Project Funding

The Neuroeconomics of Conflict and Preference

Strength in Decision Making is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Carlos Alos-Ferrer

Co-Editor in Chief, Journal of Economic Psychology

NOMIS Professor for Decision and Neuroeconomic Theory

Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics (ZNE), University of Zurich

T: +41 79 866 71 60

E: carlos.alos-ferrer@econ.uzh.ch

W: https://alosferrer.github.io/

“Stochastic Choice and Preference Reversals,” Carlos Alós-Ferrer, Johannes Buckenmaier, and Michele Garagnani (2022), Discussion Paper.

“The Gradual Nature of Economic Errors,” Carlos Alós-Ferrer and Michele Garagnani (2022), Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 200, 55-66.

“Strength of Preference and Decisions Under Risk,” Carlos Alós-Ferrer and Michele Garagnani (2022), Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, forthcoming.

“Attention and Salience in Preference Reversals,” Carlos Alós-Ferrer and Alexander Ritschel (2022), Experimental Economics, 25, 1024-1051.

“Time Will Tell: Recovering Preferences when Choices Are Noisy,” Carlos Alós-Ferrer, Nick Netzer, and Ernst Fehr (2021), Journal of Political Economy, 129 (6), 1828-1877.

“Attentional Shifts and Preference Reversals: An Eye-tracking Study,” Carlos Alós-Ferrer, Alexander Jaudas, and Alexander Ritschel (2021), Judgment and Decision Making, 16 (1), 57-93.

clear which method should be used in order to accurately gauge public opinion.”

A further experiment was also conducted in which participants were asked to choose between taking part in lotteries with a high chance of winning a small amount or in others with small chances of winning a large amount. However, instead of being asked to provide monetary values, they were also asked to rank the lotteries in the experiment from least- to most-preferred. Now, both the choices and the rankings are ordinal methods, yet they also produce inconsistent results, and the inconsistency goes in exactly the opposite way to the other experiment on lotteries described earlier. “Amongst the people who chose the long shot, a lot of them valued the long shot lower than the safe bet,” says Professor Alós-Ferrer. While on the surface this result seems very difficult to understand given the similarity of the methods, Professor Alós-Ferrer has discovered that it is in fact exactly what should be expected once the regularities of stochastic choice are taken into account. “It’s perfectly normal, and

mistakes then when you look at evaluations, and take into account that choice is stochastic and the probabilities of mistakes in different methods are independent, most of the time the evaluations you are seeing reflect the actual preferences and are not reversals..”

The wider problem here is that applying incompatible methods to assess public opinion can produce contradictory results, making it difficult to reliably gauge public views on spending priorities or other issues. As a decision scientist, Professor Alós-Ferrer holds a deep interest in uncovering personal rankings, or preferences, a topic which will remain high on his research agenda. “This is fundamental because only by uncovering personal preferences can we make predictions about future behaviour,” he says. “The other fundamental problem in economics is to evaluate welfare. If I implement a policy at aggregate level, what effect is this going to have on individual welfare? I can only evaluate that if I know what you prefer. So we’re always interested in uncovering preferences.”

Carlos Alós-Ferrer graduated in Mathematics and received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Alicante. He became a professor of microeconomics in Konstanz and later in Cologne. In 2018, he joined the University of Zurich as Professor of Decision and Neuroeconomic Theory. He is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Economic Psychology.

Carlos Alós-Ferrer

Stochastic choice is the idea that even when we are confronted with exactly the same decision situation, we don’t always make the same choices. This means that the appropriate model of human behaviour is not one which uses deterministic preferences, but rather one which uses randomness.

Autonomous agents to accelerate extended reality testing

An extended reality (XR) system typically involves a representation of a virtual world, and many users quickly find themselves fully absorbed in that scenario, whether they’re in a flight simulation or playing a computer game. These systems are used in a wide variety of settings, from museums to combat training, but they first need to be tested before they can be applied, which is currently done in quite a labour-intensive way. “Currently a lot of human labour is required to test these XR systems, in the sense that you need users to test them,” says Rui Prada, coordinator of the iv4XR project. These testers are asked to try to perform specific tasks integral to the functioning of the system. “For example, the users might try to navigate from point A to point B in the virtual world, to interact with all the objects within it, or to combine objects,” explains Prada. “They are also asked to explore the system without much guidance. They might perform more open tasks such as to simply see what you can do, to try to finish a certain level in the game, or to find all the hidden objects. So in this case users have a bit more freedom.”

iv4XR project

The aim in the iv4XR project is to automate two kinds of tests, using techniques from artificial intelligence. In one type of test there is a specific task that can be scripted, so it might be expected that it should be relatively simple to automate; however, Prada says this is a technically challenging task. “In these XR applications you need intelligence to adapt as things change. You cannot have a simple script which performs

a user when they perform a task, will they be happy with the result?”

This may depend to a degree on whether a user is using the system for their own personal enjoyment or for training to develop their professional skills, and also whether they feel they are progressing. As part of the project, Prada plans to model the knowledge and skills of users, and to investigate how the structure of a system affects their ability to learn. “If we configure the

well in XR – you need an intelligent agent to adapt,” he explains. The idea in the project is to essentially build models of individual users – autonomous testing agents – which can then test the system. “We are testing the technical specifications of the systems, while we are also looking at the users. Will a person with a specific profile enjoy the game? Will they be able to perform the task, given the skills and knowledge that they have?” outlines Prada. “Will the user be able to perform the tasks that they want to perform on the system? How does it feel for

levels of a game in a certain way, do users progress more quickly?” he asks. A user who fails to master the system as quickly as they may have expected may become discouraged, while another might quickly understand how it works then move on; by using multiple testing agents on a single system, researchers aim to build a fuller picture. “We try different profiles and we see how they use the system. That’s part of user experience testing,” continues Prada. “These autonomous testing

Extended reality systems (XR) are used in a wide range of sectors, yet they need to be tested before they can reach the commercial market. We spoke to Rui Filipe Fernandes Prada about the work of the iv4XR project in developing autonomous testing agents that promise to bring significant benefits to developers.

We are testing the technical specifications of the systems, while we are also looking at the users. Will a person with a specific profile enjoy the game? Will they be able to perform the task, given the skills and knowledge that they have?

Screenshot from the space engineers game (the game is developed by Keen software house).

Screenshot from the space engineers game, Keen software.

agents have emotions, and their emotional state changes depending on how they interact with the system. This is designed to mimic the emotional process of an individual person.”

The amount of information that an individual user is able to absorb is another important consideration in the project, with Prada and his colleagues working to develop a model of cognitive load. If the cognitive load is too high then it will be difficult for users to learn, yet it’s also important that it’s not too low. “If the cognitive load is too low it means that it’s not engaging, it’s not really pushing the users,” points out Prada. The ideal scenario is to strike the right balance between engaging users without overloading them, which will enhance their enjoyment and help users develop their skills. In cases where an XR system is going to be used for training, the use of testing agents will also provide invaluable pointers. “You can explore what kind of actions or tasks the agent will perform more easily. You can then see if the tasks that these agents are performing are aligned with the training goals,” explains Prada.

A testing agent may also use the system in ways that were not necessarily anticipated in development, exploring possibilities that may not have occurred to the average user. In a situation where a testing agent is being used to perform an open task, they may find interesting avenues of investigation. “The goal may be to explore a 3-D environment – an agent may try to go into places in many different ways, they can do things that are not expected. They can also do very repetitive things that people are not willing to do,” says Prada. These agents can be used at all stages of a project, but Prada believes they are particularly useful during development, giving companies an insight into user experience at an earlier point, while the agent is also designed to

adapt to changes in the system. “Our goal is that if you setup the agent and then change things, you can still use the same agent,” he continues. “This is because the agent is able to deal with the changes that have been made in the XR system.”

Commercial benefits

The ability to use these autonomous testing agents could help speed up development, potentially leading to significant commercial benefits for companies keen to improve efficiency. Autonomous agents can generate results quickly without the hassle of setting up a user study, and they are always ready to work unsociable hours. “You can set up the agents to run through the night for example and get the results the next day, instead of waiting for a week,” points out Prada. These agents are not intended as a complete replacement for human testing, but Prada believes there are circumstances in which they can perform better than a human, and he is looking into the wider commercial potential of this research. “We are investigating market opportunities for these autonomous testing agents and trying to assess their potential in different areas, like game development and simulations for protecting critical infrastructures, such as nuclear power plants,” he continues. “We want to show that these technologies can be useful in automating testing.”

A number of partners in the iv4XR consortium are using the testing agents, and the hope is to validate the project’s approach. This would then represent a strong basis to continue the development of the technology once the project reaches the end of its funding term. “We’re looking to gather more concrete data and are planning to publish a report on the benefits that this technology can bring to new markets,” says Prada.

iv4XR Intelligent Verification/Validation for Extended Reality Based Systems

Project Objectives

Extended reality systems are used in a variety of sectors, from cultural heritage to flight training, for both entertainment and education purposes. These systems need to be tested before they can be applied, which currently is done by human testers in quite a labour-intensive way.

The aim in the iv4XR project is to develop autonomous testing agents, essentially models of individual users, to explore virtual worlds. This could help companies develop more engaging systems and also speed up development.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 856716.

Project Partners

https://iv4xr-project.eu/consortium-2/

Contact Details

Project Coordinator,

Rui Filipe Fernandes Prada

INESC-ID | Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

Senior Researcher | Associate Professor Edifício IST-Taguspark - Av. Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva, 2744-016, Porto Salvo, Portugal

T: +351 21 423 3292

E: rui.prada@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

E: rui.prada@gaips.inesc-id.pt

W: https://iv4xr-project.eu

Rui Prada is Researcher at INESC-ID in the AI for People and Society research group. He conducts research on social intelligent agents, affective computing, human-agent interaction, computer games, applied gaming, and game AI.

Rui Prada

Screenshot from the space engineers game, Keen software.

Above: Screenshot from MAEVE, the Thales use case (nuclear power plant simulator)

A new perspective on rationality

Our model of rational human behaviour has been fundamentally shaped by the development of modern decision theory and game theory. “The basics of these theories are thought to be somehow settled for decades – erroneously,” says Wolfgang Spohn, Professor of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science at the University of Konstanz. The point is not that these theories are often conflated with the model of homo economicus, which assumes that we are primarily guided by rational self-interest and prioritise our own economic concerns. Such assumptions about specific individual values do not belong to the basic conception of rationality. Still, there are many examples of human behaviour which seem rational, but are not regarded as such by standard decision and game theory. While most research

tinkers round the edges of existing theory, Professor Spohn aims to re-examine the foundations of rationality in a new Reinhart Koselleck project. “The basic normative questions about rationality are not settled. They are still contentious, and I want to take them in a specific direction,” he says.

Normative theory of rationality

Professor Spohn’s inquiry into the foundations of a normative theory of rationality could fundamentally change the reference point for all empirical research. “Empirical research proceeds from the standard normative picture and then tries to find explanations for how and why we deviate. But if that standard reference point is not the correct one, then the focus of empirical research should shift,” he explains.

In traditional decision theory and game theory, formal structures called trees are used to represent different options of the agent and the various ways in which a situation may develop. “Two kinds of nodes are usually distinguished in a tree, the action nodes and the chance - or nature’s - nodes. I want to add a third kind of node, which I call decision nodes,” outlines Professor Spohn. “These decision nodes represent not the options of the agent, but rather the decision situations themselves that she is in, or may get into. They represent possible mental states in which she takes a decision and chooses an action.” The label ‘reflexive’ in the project’s title precisely refers to the reflection on those mental states.

The decision nodes as described are something that Professor Spohn believes should be additionally represented within

The foundations of decision theory and game theory are commonly thought to be settled, yet there are many examples of human behaviour which is not rational in the way these theories describe. We spoke to Professor Wolfgang Spohn about his work in re-examining basic normative questions about rationality, which could shift the normative reference point for empirical research.

theoretical frameworks, leading to a more general theory of rationality capable of dealing with a wider range of situations. For instance, while standard theories only deal with the ways your decision situation may improve through the addition of more information, the more general theory can also deal with questions such as: How do you rationally behave today, when you expect to have forgotten something important tomorrow? How do you rationally take into account the fact that your preferences may be different tomorrow?

expressions for example. They therefore have an influence, particularly on social environments which are receptive to such influence. Again, the decision relevance of this aspect can only be captured in the reflexive perspective.

This point is best exemplified in applications to game-like social situations. Such situations involve several ‘players’, and the outcome depends on their behaviour. They may be opponents or partners, or be entangled in some other way. The prisoners’ dilemma is a famous example, because it is a very common social situation.

rationally confess. At least this is what all game theorists say,” says Professor Spohn.

The same social structure (reduced to two persons) is exemplified with the decision to get vaccinated in the table below. Both are better off when getting both vaccinated than both getting not vaccinated. But each is still better off when only the other one gets vaccinated. If so, both seem rational in not getting vaccinated.

In the original example, the two prisoners can’t communicate. They don’t see what the other does, so their actions are causally independent. “Standard game theory concludes from this that the two decisions are also probabilistically independent. However, that’s a mistake,” claims Professor Spohn.

Such questions call for a reflexive decision theory, modelling your reflection on your possible decision situations. Economists currently have only restricted models of preference change, an issue Professor Spohn is working to address.

Another important aspect is the fact that decision-relevant mental states not only lead to rational action but are also expressed in other ways, through speech, emotions and facial

In the original scenario, two criminals are arrested, but the police don’t have sufficient evidence to convict them on the more serious of two charges, so need a confession from one or both. If neither of them confesses, they can only be tried for a minor crime. If both confess, they will be imprisoned for a long time. However, if only one confesses, he is set free as the chief witness, while the other, showing no repentance, is even more severely punished. “Thus, both

The prisoners may have collaborated over the years and thus have developed an awareness of each other’s mentality, a kind of causally entangled, joint mental setup. This causal entanglement creates a common cause structure of their actions (confessing or not confessing), thus rendering them probabilistically dependent, even though they are causally independent. Just as fever and cough are correlated, but do not cause each other; rather, both are caused by an infection.

“The standard solution concept of game

The basic normative questions about rationality are not settled. They are still contentious, and I want to take them in a specific direction.

REFLEXIVE DECISION AND GAME THEORY

Reflexive Decision and Game Theory

Project Objectives

The project proceeds from the perspective that game and decision theory are normatively deficient, and attempts to improve the normative ideal of a homo economicus. This would shift the point of attack of empirical criticism.

The project does so by conceptualizing and theorizing `reflexive ascent’ in a formally rigorous way. According to it, a person considers not only her possible actions and their possible consequences, but also her possible (future) decision situations, which entail those actions.

Project Funding

The project is funded by the DFG (German Science Foundation) under the Grant No. SP 279/21-1 (Project No. 420094936).

Project Collaborators

• Dr. Gerard Rothfus

• Dr. Mantas Radzvilas

Project Partners

• Prof. Dr. Bernd Sturmfels, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

• Dr. Irem Portakal

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Professor Wolfgang Spohn

Department of Philosophy, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany

E: wolfgang.spohn@uni-konstanz.de

W: https://www.philosophie.uni-konstanz. de/ag-spohn/

W: https://www.philosophie.uni-konstanz.de/ ag-spohn/personen/prof-dr-wolfgang-spohn/

Spohn, W. (2003), “Dependency Equilibria and the Causal Structure of Decision and Game Situations”, Homo Oeconomicus 20, 195-255 Kusser, A., W. Spohn (1992), “The Utility of Pleasure is a Pain for Decision Theory”, Journal of Philosophy 89, 10-29

Professor Wolfgang Spohn

Wolfgang Spohn is Professor emeritus of Philosophy and Philosophy of Science at the University of Konstanz and Senior Professor at the University of Tübingen. He was winner of the Lakatos Award in 2012. He is devoted to analytic philosophy and widely contributing to epistemology, philosophy of science, and the theory of theoretical and practical philosophy.

theory, the Nash equilibrium, is characterised by the probabilistic independence of the individuals’ actions,” explains Professor Spohn. He challenges this solution. “Despite causal independence, there may still be probabilistic dependence, and this is accounted for by another solution concept, which I call dependency equilibria,” he continues. “These dependency equilibria are more general than Nash equilibria. In particular, the prisoners may rationally cooperate - i.e. not confess - in such a dependency equilibrium.”

response and adjust the split accordingly, which is borne out by the evidence. Researchers often observe a £5-£5 or £6-£4 split, while it’s unusual for a proposer to suggest a £9-£1 split, which game theory tells us to be the rational outcome. “The ultimatum game is taken as a core example for other-regarding preferences. The proposer has a concern for fairness,” says Professor Spohn. However, there are many dependency equilibria, i.e., rational outcomes in the ultimatum game, including an even split of the money. “This puts the existing literature in a different light,” he

decision nodes

Normative reference point

The inclusion of dependency equilibria in game theory could lead to fundamental change by shifting the normative reference point for empirical research. This can be illustrated by the ultimatum game, where one individual (the proposer) receives, say, £10, which he has to split with somebody else (the responder). He may offer £1 (or more) and propose to keep £9 (or less). The responder can accept or reject this. If she accepts, she gets £1, if she rejects, nobody gets anything. Standard game theory claims that the responder will rationally accept the proposal, because £1 is better than nothing. However, this is not what has been observed in experiments. If a proposer offers just £1 and keeps the rest for himself, the responder may well be outraged and reject the offer.

A proposer may then anticipate that kind of

says. “The rich experimental literature about the ultimatum game, and other similar games, would get a different reference point.”

This could eventually lead to changes in economic models. While his own background is in philosophy, Professor Spohn, who is a renowned formal epistemologist, has studied economic literature and regularly communicates with researchers in the field. “My collaborators are well versed in economics, and we aim to influence the economics community,” he adds. As the author of an influential paper on epistemic game theory in 1982, he also has a strong reputation among economists, which he hopes will help his new ideas gain traction. “I aim to heighten awareness of the general reflexive perspective and in particular of the idea of these dependency equilibria not only in philosophy, but also amongst economists,” he says.

Two kinds of nodes are usually distinguished in a tree, the action nodes and the chance - or nature - nodes. I want to add a third kind of node, which I call

European Vision with a Focus on Access

The

TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOPY

The advances in Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), which allow materials to be studied at the atomic level, are invaluable for research and development in physical, chemical, and biological sciences, and the ever-increasing demand for highly specialized materials in practical applications for many industries and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) developing materials for a particular end-use.

ESTEEM3 (Enabling Science and Technology through European Electron Microscopy) is an EU-funded project integrating activity for electron microscopy providing access to the leading European state-of-the-art electron microscopy research infrastructures, facilitating, and extending transnational access services of the most powerful atomicscale characterization techniques in advanced electron microscopy research to a wide range of academic and industrial research communities for the analysis and engineering of novel materials in physical, chemical, and biological sciences.

ESTEEM3 also delivers a programme of education and training to heighten awareness of the European TEM technology and capabilities available to industry, small businesses, and academia.

THE ROLE OF ESTEEM3

“Europe is at the forefront of electron microscopy technology, offering world-class instrumentation and installations equipped to support industry and research,” according to Prof. Dr. Peter A. van Aken, ESTEEM3 Coordinator, “and our vision at ESTEEM3, while continuing to support ongoing research and encourage dissemination of the latest findings, includes a drive to connect those working in materials, whether in industry, small businesses, or academic research, with the network of European centres of excellence offering state-of-the-art high-resolution electron microscopy equipment and services.”

The partner laboratories, distributed throughout Europe (see map), are brought together by the ESTEEM3 initiative to

innovate, collaborate and share the latest knowledge and techniques in this domain.

He continues, “Building on the achievements and the knowledge gleaned from the first incarnation of ESTEEM in 2007, and through ESTEEM2 in 2012, ESTEEM 3 can call on 16 years of experience in serving the needs of the end-users”.

The term of the current project runs four and a half years, from January 2019 until the end of June 2023.

Following the Mid-Term Review by the European Commission in 2020, where the

reviewers declared the results and progress of the ESTEEM3 project to be “excellent”, Prof. Dr. Peter A. van Aken is understandably delighted by the interest the project has attracted, and the successes recorded by the initiative.

He concludes, “So far, ESTEEM3 has provided access to more than 350 projects, which demonstrates the high level of demand for access to TEM infrastructures in Europe and indicates the confidence in ESTEEM3 as a firmly established and trusted network to support the European electron microscopy community.”

ESTEEM3 initiative coordinates an integrated network of the leading European Transmission Electron Microscopy installations, enabling them to pool their resources and know-how. We spoke to the coordinator of the project Prof. Dr Peter A. van Aken of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart.

ESTEEM3 partner laboratories, distributed throughout Europe.

By connecting a network of centres of excellence in state-of-the-art electron microscopy throughout Europe, the findings of the latest research can be disseminated among the laboratories, thus ensuring that the highest standards of service and the most up-to-date advances in electron microscopy are deployed throughout. As cutting-edge services are made accessible to industry, research and SMEs, the scope of applications is expanding rapidly as more end-users become aware of the services available to them.

The 14 ESTEEM3 member laboratories and SMEs such as Attolight, CEOS, DENS solutions, Quantum Detectors and Nanomegas have developed Joint Research Activities, which have resulted in over 250 scientific publications so far.

ESTEEM3 OBJECTIVES

European and international researchers are provided with ultrahigh-resolution electron microscopy instrumentation at the forefront of technology with world-class facilities so that challenging materials problems can be solved at unprecedented spatial and energy resolution, and researchers from various disciplines can interact and develop collaborations.

The procedure to apply for transnational access follows a simple peer review process, based on merit and scientific priorities. The user, whether an individual or a team, presents a description of the work they intend to carry out on the ESTEEM3 website. The application is then assessed by the Transnational Access Proposal Committee (TAPEC), which is composed of world-renowned scientists in microscopy and materials science.

1. Transnational Access (TA),

The overall objective of ESTEEM3 is to be the best in the world and the key European multisite research and user infrastructure platform for advanced characterisation of materials using TEM. ESTEEM3 activities are divided into three main areas of :

2. Joint Research Activities (JRA), and 3. Networking Activities (NA).

1 TRANSNATIONAL ACCESS

As an ongoing European project, ESTEEM3 provides transnational access for the scientific community to the leading European state-

of-the-art electron microscopy research infrastructures.

The ESTEEM3 protocol means that highly sophisticated equipment and the services of highly trained staff are made available, free of charge, to serve industrial developers and small to medium-sized enterprises, all having access to the latest electron microscopy facilities, and the services personnel qualified to assist them with the methodologies and experimental techniques to support their requirements.

Users are supported throughout the process, from assistance with preparing their requests, to the selection of appropriate methodologies and protocols.

2 JOINT RESEARCH ACTIVITIES (JRA)

Joint Research Activities (JRA) focus on the development of the advanced TEM methods required for the solution of key problems in materials and nanoscience. Importantly, these JRA will strengthen TA capabilities within the ESTEEM3 consortium by providing a higher level of overall service to all TA users both from academia and industry. The JRA have

been selected to enable potentially disruptive scientific and technological projects that will enhance overall service provision. In addition, we have structured a JRA to tackle key problems in technologically important materials.

• THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TECHNIQUES IN TEM

The ESTEEM3 project strives to foster the development of new techniques at the leading edge of Electron Microscopy and to maintain Europe’s position as the world leader in the field.

• THE STUDY OF NEW MATERIALS

Facilitating the use of TEM as it becomes an invaluable research tool in an ever-expanding range of applications, such as ICT, energy, health, and transport. (See panel “TEM Applications”)

• AUTOMATION and BIG DATA

The advancement of routines for instrument control data acquisition data processing and machine learning with a reduced level of human intervention will be developed using automated and smart workflows, as well as open software for the design and interpretation of experiments.

3 NETWORKING ACTIVITIES (NA)

In addition to the initiative to facilitate access for industries and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to world-class electron microscopy facilities and services, ESTEEM3 develops and hosts Networking Activities, with regular events being hosted throughout Europe.

• Integration and Sustainability is focused on increasing the quality and integration of the TA service provided by the consortium.

• Education and Training ESTEEM3 strives to disseminate knowledge and expertise through an extensive education and training component. It delivers advanced TEM instruction to schools, and in advanced workshops, webinars and other contemporary, internet-supported means of education, with input from leading experts in the field. There is also an education hub on the official website, with open access to all.

• The Outreach component strives to increase the awareness and promotion of the ESTEEM3 activities in general and of the free-to-use Transnational Access offer in particular, including the dissemination of information to industry and to non-specialist scientific communities and the general public

TEM APPLICATIONS

TEM is an invaluable research tool in the four main categories of:

ICT: with increasing demand for highlyengineered semiconducting and magnetic materials, functional complex oxides, and photonics materials.

Energy: for the assessment and development of materials for electrodes in batteries, nanocomposite solar cells, and steel and superalloys for use in power plants.

Pharmaceutical Industry: for research into materials such as pharmaceutical nanoparticles.

Transport: including the aeronautics, aerospace, and automotive sectors, where there is a need for high-performance materials, such as complex metallic alloys.

In addition, there are applications in an everwidening range of disciplines, including the study of polymers for the Chemical Industry, the analysis of rocks and unlithified materials in Geology, and applications in Archaeology, for instance, the requirement to preserve and protect substrates of cultural heritage materials, such as paintings and textiles.

Materials Development at the Atomic Level

By means of a state-of-the-art synthesis technique “molecular beam epitaxy”, we can create novel materials by layering atoms. This technique gives rise to unprecedented physical properties between any two layers of specific atoms. One of the most exciting examples is the existence of interfacial superconductivity between two non-superconducting dissimilar layers, for example, a metallic layer and an insulating layer. Such intriguing properties are confined to the range of one to two nanometres, and the underlying physics and chemistry can be determined with atomicresolution imaging and spectroscopy using scanning transmission electron microscopy. These techniques can be used not only to image the atoms of the materials but also to reveal the chemical properties of the individual layers, e.g. by elemental mapping of each atomic column.

Mapping Electrical Properties of Nanodevices in situ

A collaboration with the European semiconductor company STMicroelectronics resulted in a technique to study electric fields in commercial nanodevices under working conditions, by means of operando electron holography. A sample preparation protocol was developed to allow nanodevices to be extracted from production lines and thinned to electron transparency while still retaining their electrical connectivity and functionality. This technique enabled the electric potential of the devices to be mapped quantitatively in situ, so that electrical properties, such as capacitance and surface charge density, could be determined. This exciting development opens up further possibilities to study more complex devices.

ESTEEM3

Enabling Science and Technology through European Electron Microscopy

Project Objectives

The European H2020-INFRAIA project ESTEEM3 (Enabling Science Through European Electron Microscopy) is an integrating activity for electron microscopy, providing access to the leading European state-of-the-art electron microscopy research infrastructures, facilitating and extending transnational access services of the most powerful atomic-scale characterization techniques in advanced electron microscopy research to a wide range of academic and industrial research communities for the analysis and engineering of novel materials in physical, chemical and biological sciences.

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 823717 – ESTEEM3.

Project Partners

The ESTEEM3 project has a total of 20 international partners. A full list of details of the project participants can be found here: https://www.esteem3.eu/consortium

Contact Details

Peter van Aken

Head of Scientific Facility

Stuttgart Center for Electron Microscopy

T: +49 711 689-3529

T: +49 711 689-3522

E: p.vanaken@fkf.mpg.de

E: a.garses@euronovia.eu

E: c.benhida@euronovia.eu

E: p.vanaken@fkf.mpg.de

W: https://www.esteem3.eu/

To keep abreast of news and developments and to join our community, subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.esteem3.eu/Newsletters for further details about results, training events, transnational access, etc. The latest information is available on our website or social media (LinkedIn: https:// www.linkedin.com/company/esteem3/ or Twitter: https://twitter.com/Esteem3Project).

Prof. Dr. Peter A. van Aken leads the Stuttgart Center for Electron Microscopy of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research and is Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the European project ESTEEM3 (Enabling Science Through European Electron Microscopy). Prof. van Aken’s research mission is the advancement of the in-depth microscopic understanding of materials with respect to their functionalities and structure–property relationships.

Prof. Dr. Peter A. van Aken

Physical internet points the way to a smarter future

The physical internet is a novel approach designed to help transport and logistics companies utilise more efficient transport modes and use the available container space more efficiently, alongside a variety of other benefits. We spoke to Dr Konstantinos Zavitsas about the work of the PLANET project in helping transport and logistics companies work in a smarter and greener way.

A huge volume of goods and products are transported across the world on a daily basis, and managing these flows is a complex logistical challenge. Cargo may be initially transported by ship before then being loaded on to a train or truck, and it is not easy to ensure that the available space is used effectively and efficiently. “Empty space is a big problem in today’s transport and logistics industry. For example, a truck may be half full or carry a container that is only half full,” acknowledges Dr Konstantinos Zavitsas, head of analytics at VTN, a Green supply chain and logistics company based in Antwerp. One route to addressing this issue is by increasing the container sizes offering/availability and identifying what containers are appropriate for transporting a specific shipment. “Whenever some sort of cargo is being distributed it can be broken down into containers, following the digital internet paradigm,” says Dr Zavitsas. “It’s not just the standard container sizes that need to be considered. One idea is to develop more sizes of containers, so that there is less empty space inside a truck, and use algorithms/ mathematical models to optimally fit cargo into containers and containers into transport vehicles.”

Physical internet

This is an important element of the physical internet, a new logistics system which is designed to promote smart decision making throughout supply chains and so improve transport efficiency. As part of the PLANET project, Dr Zavitsas is investigating trade

patterns at several ‘living labs’, with the longterm goal of developing an ICT system to help foster collaboration among transport and logistics stakeholders and ensure that transport infrastructure is used more efficiently. “We mainly consider the interface between global trade routes and the EU transport network, through sea-ports and rail routes to inland terminals such as the one belt, one road connection (OBOR) from China to Europe. We aim to cover a variety of modes for moving goods in and out of Europe,” he outlines. This research holds wider commercial relevance to the project consortium, which includes shipping companies keen to harness the power of data as a route to improving efficiency. “Let’s imagine that a company has a vessel in the Mediterranean and is looking to unload 1,000 containers at a Spanish port for onward transport to different parts of the Iberian peninsula,” says Dr Zavitsas.

The port of Valencia would be one possible destination, while there are also alternatives such as Barcelona and others further afield. The intention may have initially been for the vessel to follow a specific route calling at several ports to unload cargo, but if circumstances change then it could be beneficial to change the route. “Maybe one of the ports has some sort of delay. A shipping company may not want their vessel to go to five ports and find big delays at all of them before they can enter,” points out Dr Zavitsas. One option could be to unload all the cargo at a single port, and then let hinterland transport such as road and rail take over; Dr Zavitsas

and his colleagues in the project are helping companies assess their options in this kind of scenario. “Would it be beneficial for a shipping company to unload everything at a single port? If a company decides to call at say three ports instead of five, then which ports should they be?” he outlines. “These are the kinds of questions we are addressing, which also helps us form a sort of unified database on the ports.”

This would also provide deeper insights into the functionalities at specific ports, such as the infrastructure and facilities available. One aim in the project is to create data models which provide relevant information on ports to shipping operators, which can then inform their decisions. “It may be that there is a strike at a port, or there are hundreds of ships waiting to unload - we are offering this sort of integrated information. Alongside that, we also offer decision support systems that can make the decision for the operator, while also allowing the integrated management of clusters of ports, that will enable a more robust and efficient functionality,” explains Dr Zavitsas. The project’s agenda includes research into the whole supply chain, not just shipping, but also onward transport right to the final destination. “We are actually looking right down to the last mile, and we are trying to offer collaborative solutions, which includes looking at integrating traditional van deliveries with more efficient and green urban transport modes through parcel reshuffling and an integrated sharing platform,” says Dr Zavitsas.

Last mile parcel reshuffling model for collaborative logistics (VLTN).

A wealth of data is available on last-mile logistics, where goods and products are delivered to customers, but much of it sits in entrepreneurial silos rather than being shared more widely. Researchers have found that they can develop dynamic solutions that track the progress of delivery runs during the day, which could help companies avoid wasted journeys and use their resources more efficiently. “We’ve shown that a solution like that is possible, and it can add value to the supply chain,” says Dr Zavitsas. The aim in the project is to try and solve these kinds of real-world problems using the physical internet, which Dr Zavitsas hopes will encourage enterprises to embrace this technology. “With last-mile logistics the question is whether a company is willing to open up its data to someone else who can help and prevent them from having to make a dedicated trip just to deliver a small number of parcels,” he outlines. “That solution will be beneficial in financial terms, as well as in reducing carbon emissions.”

do we just need to figure out ways to convince people to share data and enable IoT tracking?” he outlines. The aim here is to create a roadmap for the development of the physical internet in Europe; several scenarios of future trading patterns are being considered. “We have tried to develop possible scenarios for 2030 and beyond. These scenarios centre around more trade routes being opened, such as the North Arctic corridor,” continues Dr Zavitsas. “Other scenarios put more emphasis on environmental concerns and prioritise more efficient transport or the regionalisation of production.”

The idea is to run the same strategic modelling on each of these scenarios, and from there assess which possible solutions are the most robust. This is a very important consideration in terms of dealing with strategic decisions, believes Dr Zavitsas. “This is why we are considering various different options for the future, such as investing in specific technologies, developing new infrastructure, or providing more sensing capability,” he explains.

PLANET Progress towards Federated Logistics through the Integration of TEN-T into A Global Trade Network Project Objectives

The PLANET project addresses the challenges of assessing the impact of emerging global trade corridors on the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) network and ensuring effective integration of the European network with the Global Network. This research is focused on two key R&D pillars:

• A Geo-economics approach, modelling and specifying the dynamics of new trade routes and their impacts on logistics infrastructure & operations, with specific reference to TEN-T;

• An EU-Global network enablement through disruptive concepts and technologies (IoT, Blockchain and PI, 5G, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles / automation, hyperloop) which can shape its future and address its shortcomings, aligned to the DTLF concept of a federated network of T&L platforms

Project Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Grant Agreement No. 860274.

Project Partners

• Inlecom (Coordinator) • CERTH • CATS • COS • COSTech • CPSI • Konnecta • DHL Supply Chain Spain DHL • EBOS • EGTC • Erasmus University

Rotterdam EUR • ESC • CityLogin • FV • ZLC •

GS1 China • GS1 Poland • HARDT HYPERLOOP •

IBM Ireland • International Union for Road-Rail

Transport infrastructure

A further aspect of the project’s research involves using models to answer questions about the future of the physical internet. On one side of the project researchers are trying to deal with operational problems through collaboration and data-sharing, while on the other Dr Zavitsas and his colleagues are also looking at the likely impact of these developments and what they will mean for transport infrastructure. “What do we actually need to do? Do we need to invest in building a new railway line or highway? Or

The environmental impact of these solutions is also being taken into account in the project. “For example, a lot of companies are moving towards using greener electric vehicles or bikes in last-mile logistics,” says Dr Zavitsas. “In the first stage, the goal in the project is to monitor what is happening and assess the impact of every decision. We keep track of emissions, and we try – both at an operational level and also with respect to strategic projections – to assess the impact of each strategic level decision in terms of emissions.”

Combined Transport • Instituto Tecnológico de Aragon • ILIM • Jing Dong Logistics • New Generation Sensors • NEWOPERA AISBL • SIRMA AI • PANTEIA • PNO Innovation • Blockchain Fieldlab • Polish National Post • RÖHLIG SUUS LOGISTICS S. A • VLTN • Wuppertal Institute

Contact Details

Kostas Zavitsas, Head of Transport & Logistics Analytics | Vltn bv | Headquarters

T: +44 758353 9654

E: k.zavitsas@vltn.be

W: www.planetproject.eu

: @PlanetH2020

: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ planeth2020

: https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UC5uIbN3KYkK_yx_tcnz8-wg

Kostas Zavitsas

Kostas Zavitsas is Head of Analytics at VLTN, a Green supply chain and logistics company, and Senior Teaching Fellow at Imperial College Business School. He is an expert on machine learning and artificial intelligence, and investigates their applications in improving the efficiency and robustness of supply chains.

We mainly consider the interface between global trade routes and the EU transport network, through sea-ports and rail routes to inland terminals such as the one belt, one road connection (OBOR) from China to Europe.

Dynamic simulation model of multimodal transport network (ITAINNOVA, 2022)

New beamline set to open up new research horizons

Synchrotron radiation helps researchers across a wide variety of disciplines gain fresh insights. The aim of the BEATS project is to design and construct a new beamline for tomography at the SESAME synchrotron facility in Jordan, which will open up new opportunities to researchers across the Middle East, as Dr Axel Kaprolat, Dr Gianluca Iori and Dr Andrea Lausi explain.

SESAME is an important scientific resource for researchers across the Middle East, producing a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that supports investigation in disciplines from materials science to cultural heritage. In a synchrotron facility, electrons circulate in a storage ring at close to the speed of light. “When these electrons move at the speed of light and are made to change direction to follow a quasi-circular path, they emit a very intense and brilliant photon beam. The spectrum of this radiation beam ranges from the infrared to high-energy X-rays,” explains Dr Axel Kaprolat of the European Synchrotron (ESRF). As coordinator of the EU-funded H2020 BEATS project (Beamline for Tomography at SESAME), Dr Kaprolat is working to help design and construct a new beamline for X-ray tomography at SESAME. “For the sustainable operation of a synchrotron facility it is important to have a certain number of operational beamlines that constitute a critical mass. Currently SESAME

is enhancing the number of beamlines to go beyond this threshold, with the BEATS project being a major part of this process,” he outlines.

Cultural heritage and archaeology

BEATS will be a state-of-the-art beamline, or experimental station, for tomography at SESAME. It will primarily cater for researchers in cultural heritage and archaeology. The beamline is designed to have only those optical elements that are absolutely necessary, and will have two operational modes. “One is that we have the beam as it comes from the storage ring, modified only by absorbers allowing us to shape the spectrum according to needs. The other mode involves using a monochromator, selecting a smaller band of energies which enables what we call phase and coherence-dependent experiments,” says Dr Gianluca Iori, a beamline scientist at SESAME. In this second operational mode a double multilayer monochromator will enable researchers to see

subtle or seemingly minor details in a sample that would not be apparent using standard tomography. “Even small contrasts in a sample can be enhanced, which you cannot do with standard methods,” explains Dr Iori.

The beamline is being developed on the basis of existing technology, drawing particular inspiration from the TOMCAT beamline operational at the Swiss Light Source, although the BEATS experts have to adapt to SESAME’s local framework (space considerations, technical standards). One important consideration in development is how many photons are available per second at the beamlines’ sample position. “The more the better, as the more intense the light is, the more experiments you can do more quickly,” says Dr Iori. Further to the challenge of providing the experimental station with an intense beam of energy sufficient to enable researchers to look at highly absorbing samples, the overall design also has to comprise the sample station, where samples

Courtesy of Shiva Shirani.

Aliakbar Kakouie, Ali Vatani, Seyed Amir Hosseini Moghaddam, Shiva Shirani, Claudio Ferrero, and Emmanuel Brun. “Lattice Kinetic Model of 3D Flow Characterization in Core Samples via Synchrotron X-Ray Micro-Tomography.” Computers & Geosciences 156 (November 1, 2021): 104908. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2021.104908.

Finite element simulations can be derived from synchrotron CT datasets and applied to understand failure and hardening processes in stealfoams steel foams and lightweight materials from aerospace engineering. (Kaya, Ali Can, Paul Zaslansky, Mehmet Ipekoglu, and Claudia Fleck. 2018. “Strain Hardening Reduces Energy Absorption Efficiency of Austenitic Stainless Steel Foams While Porosity Does Not.” Materials & Design143 (April): 297–308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2018.02.009.) Courtesy of Prof.Claudia Fleck, TU Berlin, Germany.

under investigation are rotated with respect to the incoming beam. Here, suitable detector assemblies record series of images, which in turn are used to reconstruct 3d tomography results. Also, the computing infrastructure needed to perform the necessary computations is part of the overall design. “Tomography beamlines produce huge amounts of data, in the region of several terabytes per day, so highly sophisticated computing is required,” continues Dr Iori. “One important question is how fast can we do 3-dimensional reconstructions? This is about making the best possible use of all the information available.”

A further dimension of the project involves building up a community to use the beamline over the longer term. By heightening awareness of the beamline and the opportunities that it offers to researchers in cultural heritage and archaeology, the BEATS project aims to help put the facility on a sustainable long-term footing. “We need to let potential users know what the beamline can do,” outlines Dr Andrea Lausi, Science Director of SESAME. The European Commission has a history of supporting the development of SESAME, and the emphasis now is on building local capacity to use and maintain the beamline, so reducing the need for outside support. “The ESRF was proposed as coordinator for this project, as they have a lot of recent experience in upgrading and constructing beamlines, which could benefit other synchrotrons. We learn from each other in this process,” stresses Dr Lausi. “The project is based on three pillars of equal importance: i) design, construction, and commissioning of the beamline, ii) establishing means of sustainable operation and user community building, and iii) knowledge transfer between the partners of the BEATS project.”

This is part of the wider aim of building capacity and opening up new opportunities for researchers, with the project bringing together partners from across the Middle East. While

Courtesy of Prof.

researchers can apply for beamtime at other synchrotrons, Dr Lausi believes the local research community will benefit greatly from the addition of a hard X-ray tomography beamline at SESAME. “The best thing is that you have a beamline close by, then we can provide training on how to use it,” he says. The beamline itself is quite versatile, and while it is intended primarily for cultural heritage and archaeology research, it has a wider range of potential applications, including in the oil and gas industry. “We cover the whole spectrum of problems related to determining the 3-D structure of a sample. That could be a painting, or composite materials,” outlines Dr Lausi. “With X-ray tomography the sample comes back unharmed, which is very important for very rare cultural artefacts.”

New beamline

The project is set to conclude around the middle of 2023, when the new beamline becomes operational, yet this will not mark the end of collaboration between the BEATS project team and SESAME. The staff that have worked to create the beamline will continue to support its operation beyond the end of the project, an

approach that aligns well with the overall mission of the ESRF, which includes fostering research using synchrotron radiation. The construction of a further beamline at SESAME, with a growing community of users, will also help strengthen the facility as a whole and put it on a more stable footing, less vulnerable to shifting priorities.

This will help secure the long-term future of SESAME and widen the opportunities available for researchers across the Middle East, a region with a rich cultural and archaeological heritage. While SESAME itself is based in Jordan, eight member countries contribute to its funding, including several with a history of tense relations, reflecting the founding spirit of the

Courtesy of CCHT-Italian Institute of Technology

For the sustainable operation of a synchrotron facility it is important to have a certain number of operational beamlines that constitute a critical mass. Currently SESAME is enhancing the number of beamlines to go beyond this threshold.

Boaz Pokroy, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel. Bianco‐Stein, Nuphar, IrynaPolishchuk, Gabriel Seiden, Julie Villanova, Alexander Rack, Paul Zaslansky, and Boaz Pokroy. “Helical Microstructures of the Mineralized Coralline Red Algae Determine Their Mechanical Properties.” Advanced Science7, no. 11 (2020): 2000108. https://doi.org/10.1002/ advs.202000108.

Phase-contrast synchrotron X-ray computed tomography allows to visualize the internal microstructure of rare archaeological samples without sectioning or damaging them. Cultural heritage specialists apply XCT to understand the degradation of ancient glass and develop conservation approaches for specific materials and artefacts.

BEATS

BEAmline for Tomography at SESAME

Project Objectives

The BEATS project has the aim to design, procure, construct and commission the first beamline for X-ray tomography in the Middle East. The main objectives include developing the scientific case and building a user community, ensuring the transfer of knowledge to SESAME staff and addressing the issue of sustainability and post-project operation of the beamline.

Project Funding

BEATS project has received funding from the EU’s H2020 framework programme for research and innovation under grant agreement n°822535.

Project Partners

https://beats-sesame.eu/partners/

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Axel KAPROLAT

ESRF Instrumentation Services and Development Division

ISDD-Office / Project Coordinator, Office

CB 437

BP 220

F-38043 Grenoble Cedex

T: +33 (0)4 76 88 24 35

E: axel.kaprolat@esrf.fr

W: www.beats-sesame.eu

facility. “This spirit is about bringing people together to work on similar scientific projects for the benefit of humanity,” says Dr Kaprolat. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) was founded in a similar spirit in the aftermath of the Second World War, and Dr Kaprolat says the two institutions are linked in other ways. “Traditionally the President of the Council of SESAME is always a former DirectorGeneral of CERN. The development of SESAME has been guided by Unesco,” he outlines.

The long-term hope is to build more beamlines at SESAME, further diversifying the reach of scientific research and helping to secure its future as part of a wider network of facilities. Compared with other synchrotron facilities, SESAME currently has a rather low nominal annual budget. “BEATS will be the

fifth beamline to enter operation at SESAME” continues Dr Kaprolat. “The hope is that the addition of more beamlines over the next few years would strengthen the position of SESAME in the global and regional research landscape”

This has been the experience of many European synchrotrons, which started with a relatively small number of beamlines and then gradually grew over time. Staff from wellestablished synchrotrons in other parts of the world have made important contributions to BEATS, sharing their knowledge and expertise. “Coordinating this kind of project is a challenge, as it involves partners from several countries and cultures as well as using various different technologies, but it has been rewarding. The partners have worked very well together in BEATS,” says Dr Kaprolat.

BEATS: Supporting Scientific Excellence

SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) was officially opened in 2017. It is a ‘third-generation’ synchrotron light source and the region’s first major international centre of excellence. Now, five years on, the BEATS project aims to further improve the facility, marking another step forward in its development.

Axel Kaprolat started his career as a solid state matter experimental physicist and worked in several third generation synchrotron sources before joining the ESRF in 2002. He evolved towards the coordination of scientific projects with collaborating researchers. In recent years, he has coordinated several European projects, today focussing on BEATS.

This is very much a team effort, with scientists from different countries and cultural backgrounds working together and sharing ideas, helping to shape a truly world-class facility. The aim is to create a state-of-the-art beamline that can support research in not only cultural heritage and archaeology, but a wide range of other disciplines too, from geology to materials science.

The first two years of the project were devoted to the design of the beamline, but with the construction phase now underway, the vision is closer to becoming a reality. The beamline no longer exists just on paper or computer simulations, but is beginning to take tangible shape as the newest addition to the SESAME facility.

It’s an exciting time for everybody involved in BEATS to see the design, drawings and calculations take form inside the SESAME storage ring and experimental hall. Many support teams work together during the machine shutdowns at SESAME to install equipment such as the source, vacuum chambers, front end, optics and experimental equipment. Several campaigns are planned, until around the Spring of 2023, before the beamline eventually enters operation.

This will mark the formal conclusion of the BEATS project, but also the start of a new era at SESAME, with the addition of a tomography beamline opening up new opportunities for researchers across the Middle East. This will ultimately support scientific excellence in the region and help establish SESAME as an integral part of a wider global network of synchrotron facilities.

Axel Kaprolat

The BEATS installation team on location in the SESAME storage ring tunnel.