RESEARCH
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The EU Research team take a look at current events in the scientific news
European Commission research chief says improvements to Horizon Europe will happen Jean-Eric Paquet confirmed the Commission is working on finetuning the next set of calls for 2023 and 2024. EU research chief Jean-Eric Paquet confirmed the European Commission is preparing to tweak the next set of Horizon Europe work programmes which will outline the calls for 2023 and 2024, as he reacted to criticism from researchers on the first year of the programme. Responding to the complaints about lack of clarity on how to fill out Horizon’s exhaustive application forms, Paquet said the Commission is working to revamp the electronic platform but noted it won’t happen overnight. “We are busy in working on the electronic application forms to be able within that to provide guidance on every single step,” said Paquet. After the first year of Horizon Europe there was widespread criticism from around the research community. While researchers generally support the programme’s objectives, many point to a lack of guidance on how to fill out application forms, the need for more transparency in how the Commission distributes work programmes, and frustration among researchers that many calls are too broad and demanding. Drawing on the lessons from the first year, Paquet promised the Commission will rehash the focus on research policy in calls and increase links between the different parts of the programme, including connecting big collaborative research projects with the work of the industrial partnerships. In a separate statement EU research commissioner Mariya Gabriel said the Commission is also preparing guidance on lump sum funding for applicants ahead of 2022 calls. “The transition to lump sum requires clear guidance, good communication to remove any uncertainties among applicants, and that’s why the necessary guidance to this end is in the pipeline and will be released in time before the first lump sum calls open in 2022,” Gabriel said. The Commission announced plans to extend the lump sum pilot in the Horizon Europe research programme last year, but the announcement was met with scepticism by the research community which called the move ‘premature’. Gabriel assured listeners that lump sum funding would not be applied ‘overnight’ but rather progressively to reduce bureaucracy and make the programme more attractive to newcomers and small companies that struggle with the current paperworkheavy reporting requirements.
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Jean-Eric Paquet © European Union, 2021
Mariya Gabriel © European Union, 2021
Brussels considers scientific sanctions on Russia Discussion under way on Russia’s removal from Horizon Europe following Putin’s decision to recognise breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine as sovereign states. Discussions are underway in Brussels over whether Russia should be cut out of future Horizon Europe projects after president Vladimir Putin recognised two separatist-held parts of Ukraine as sovereign states and requested permission from parliament to send in troops on a mission. Two member state representatives have said that Horizon Europe participation could potentially be used as a sanctions weapon against Russia, although this remains to be fully discussed, and research does not appear to be part of a first wave of measures being debated by the EU today. But these representatives and other research leaders stress that scientific cooperation is still seen as a key bridge between Russia and Europe even when wider relations are at their darkest point for decades. “My first reaction would certainly not be ‘let’s kick out Russia from Horizon Europe’,” said Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities. “Just like for the other countries, let’s not politicise research and research collaboration.” During Horizon 2020, which ran from 2014-2020, Russian researchers took part in over 200 projects, picking up more than €14 million of EU funding. This is a relatively small scale of participation, amounting to around 0.4% of all grants. Still, such research collaboration has been held up as an important diplomatic link between Europe and Russia during increasingly frosty relations. In 2019, MEPs voted to renew a science cooperation agreement with Russia, citing it as one positive area of ties following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Responding to Paquet, European research experts welcomed Horizon Europe but argued more can be done by the EU to churn out innovations faster, and compete with US and China. Jacques Volckmann, vice president for R&D at Sanofi, French healthcare company, gave the programme a seven out of ten, noting that the EU should learn from the US how to scale up innovation. He said that Horizon Europe has all the rights tool but is missing the agility its competitors boast.
Russia is also involved in a range of big European research infrastructure projects, such as the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble. In addition, 2020 saw the start of a
Horizon 2020 EU-funded project to “develop and produce cuttingedge novelty technologies for Russian megascience projects and their European research and innovation partners” – dubbed CREMLIN for short. The announcement follows other policy initiatives in Canada and the US, amongst other countries, aimed at tightening security on research collaborations to prevent sensitive technologies being leaked to China or other countries that pose a high security risk. Canada now requires researchers to include a security risk assessment form in grant applications involving cooperation with foreign companies, after a government intelligence report found that foreign spies are targeting Canadian universities. Australia has also included a similar risk assessment form in grant applications. In the US, the government has found researchers at several prominent universities were illegally hiding ties to Chinese institutions, while the UK government is also offering security advice to universities. The Commission says it decided to put together a guidebook after several member states raised security concerns related to their research and innovation investments. The Commission hopes the guidelines will mean EU member states, universities and research institutes will be better protected against technology espionage, while they continue working with international partners on common projects. Member states looked to the Commission to draw up the guidelines because researchers and innovators are often unable to detect foreign powers interfering with research or stealing their intellectual property. Some organisations, particularly in smaller countries, “Do not have the means, the awareness or the capacity to deal with this issue,” the senior official said.
He looked to the European Commission’s new pandemic preparedness mechanism, the new European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), whose first €1.3 billion work plan for 2022 was revealed today, as an example of Europe moving in the right direction but noted its success will be conditional on understanding the needs in terms of technologies and targets, and funding innovation at scale, which means learning to share the risk with industry. “We need to learn from the US to share the risk at scale,” said Volckmann. Looking to the National Institutes of Health in the US, he noted Europe’s R&I programmes must be more agile. “Clearly, the agility that they have there is missing.” Håkon Haugli, chief executive of the agency Innovation Norway, was more positive about the Commission’s way of pushing green and digital innovation, congratulating the reinforced emphasis of scaling up. “From our side, we think the increased emphasis on impact but also commercialisation and scaling is much wanted and much needed in Europe,” said Haugli, who gave Horizon Europe the highest rating of the group, eight out of ten. He hopes to see the successes of the European response to the COVID-19 pandemic to be translated into other areas in terms of scalability.
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Vitamin D supplements proven to reduce risk of autoimmune disease Study of older adults is ‘first direct evidence’ of protection against rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, other conditions. Vitamin D supplements really do prevent people developing an autoimmune disease, at least for those over 50, in a study providing the first evidence of a causal link between the two. Previous studies on the effect of vitamin D on autoimmune conditions have looked at vitamin D levels in those with an autoimmune disease or in those who go on to develop one. Other studies have hinted at the supplement’s beneficial effects on the immune system. “We know vitamin D does all kinds of wonderful things for the immune system in animal studies,” says Karen Costenbader at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “But we have never proven before that giving vitamin D can prevent autoimmune disease.”
This revealed that a dose of 2000 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day reduced the development of autoimmune disease by 22 per cent, compared with the placebo. This is a larger dose than the standard 400 IU recommended by health organisations such as the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care.
Costenbader and her colleagues randomly split nearly 26,000 people in the US who were 50 or over into two groups, giving them either vitamin D supplements or a placebo. “The great thing about randomised trials is they really answer the question of causation,” says Costenbader. The team tracked the participants for around five years to measure the development of autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune thyroid disease and psoriasis.
Costenbader now advises her patients to take 2000 IU of vitamin D a day, if they are the right age and it is safe for them to do so. However, she doesn’t recommend this for everyone. “You should tell your doctor if you start a supplement,” she says. “There could be reasons you shouldn’t take them.” The researchers are now extending the trial to see how long the benefits last and hope to start a new trial in younger people. “I’m very excited and really quite bowled over by these results,” says Costenbader.
It is unclear how vitamin D prevents autoimmune disease, but we know it is processed in the body to produce an active form that can alter the behaviour of immune cells. “There are tonnes of potential mechanisms,” says Costenbader. “It could be that vitamin D helps the immune system to distinguish between self [normal body tissue] and non-self [such as disease-causing microbes], or that it helps to decrease inflammatory responses to self.”
First ever recording of dying brain suggests life does flash before your eyes
US Woman cured of HIV after stem cell transplant
Photo by National Cancer Institute
The novel treatment using umbilical cord blood could help dozens of people with both HIV and aggressive cancers. Scientists accidentally record the most complex human organ as it shuts down - providing an insight into what might happen in the moments before we die. A study, published in Frontiers In Aging Neuroscience, focused on an 87-year-old man being treated for epilepsy. The man was hooked up to an electroencephalogram, which records brain activity, when he had a sudden heart attack and died. But the electroencephalogram continued recording his brain activity, including during the 15 minutes around his death. Scientists saw that, in the 30 seconds either side of the man’s final heartbeat, there was an increase in a certain type of brain wave. These brain waves - gamma waves - are associated with more sophisticated cognitive functions and are especially active when we are concentrating, dreaming and meditating, as well as retrieving memories and processing information. The recorded brain waves - known as gamma oscillations - suggest that, as we die, we experience the same neural activity as during dreaming, recalling memories, or meditating. It raises the question of whether our lives really do “flash before our eyes” in our final moments. “Through generating oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events
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just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” said the University of Louisville’s Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, the lead author of the study, in a press release. This not only gives insight into an enigmatic and frightening moment that all of us will experience eventually, but could even offer better understanding of the “timing of organ donation,” Zemmar added. “These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends,” the doctor said. Of course, there are some big caveats. For one, the paper only looked at a single case. The patient also had a history of seizures and brain swelling, which could impact the findings. However, past research into the brain activity of dying rats also showed similar gamma activity. That could suggest that this is a natural occurrence across numerous species. Zemmar added that while more research is needed, the insights gathered from the patient can actually offer a bit of hope and closure to families who are dealing with the death of a loved one. “Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives,” Zemmar said.
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A patient in the United States with the disease leukemia has become the first woman to be cured of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The patient received stem cells from a donor. Stem cells are special cells that can become any kind of cell in the body. The donor was naturally resistant to HIV, researchers told reporters Tuesday. The woman has been described as a 64-year-old woman of mixed race. Her case was presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, Colorado. It is the first case involving the use of blood from the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord connects a pregnant mother to her fetus. Use of umbilical blood is a somewhat new method. Doctors are considering making the treatment available to more people. The woman had been receiving the umbilical cord blood to treat her leukemia. Leukemia is a cancer that starts in blood-forming cells in bones. Since receiving the treatment, the woman has been in remission. She has been free of HIV for 14 months. She has not needed HIV treatments known as antiretroviral therapy. The two earlier cases in which patients were cured happened in males who had received adult stem cells. Adult stem cells are often used in bone marrow transplants. “This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV,” said
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Sharon Lewin in a statement. She is soon to be the head of the International AIDS Society. The woman’s case is part of a larger study led by Dr. Yvonne Bryson of the University of California Los Angeles, and Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. It is being financially supported by the U.S. government. The study aims to follow 25 people with HIV who receive a transplant with stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood for the treatment of cancer and other serious conditions. Patients in the study first receive treatment to destroy cancerous cells. Doctors then transplant stem cells from individuals with a genetic mutation which makes them resistant to HIV. Scientists believe the patients receiving the transplant will develop an immune system resistant to HIV. Lewin said bone marrow transplants do not cure most people living with HIV. But she said the report “confirms that a cure for HIV is possible and further strengthens using gene therapy” as an effective way to cure HIV. The study suggests that an important part of the treatment’s success was using HIV-resistant cells. “Taken together, these three cases of a cure post stem cell transplant all help” in discovering the parts of the transplant that were important to a cure, Lewin said.
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Spain moves ahead with bill to improve research careers
Astronomers Discover a Strange new Star
As countries around the world scramble to retain and attract research talent, Spanish ministers vote through reforms that aim to improve research careers and guarantee increased public funding for research. Spain’s government has approved a draft bill that would amend a law on science, technology and innovation, with the aim of strengthening Spanish capacities in these areas. The bill, which will now move through parliament, was approved by ministers on 18 February. According to the science ministry, it seeks to improve science careers, including by providing greater stability and reducing administrative burdens. It also “guarantees” stable and growing public funding for R&D, with the aim that public support reaches 1.25 per cent of Spain’s GDP by 2030. “The regulation introduces reforms to provide more resources, rights and opportunities to research staff and achieve a more stable public professional career,” the ministry said. Science minister Diana Morant said in a press conference that the bill was intended to address demands from researchers for better working conditions. “With this guarantee, we shield by law that our public science and innovation system has sufficient resources to continue growing, modernising its infrastructure and equipment, and creating more and better opportunities for our scientists,” she said. The reforms include a new indefinite contract for research staff, to provide them with better stability. Morant said Spain wants to provide better conditions to attract back researchers who have left the country. “This law reform seeks to improve the lives of people who improve ours through research and innovation,” she said. All this brings Spain closer to EU goals for revamping research, which were set out by the European Commission in 2020 in a plan to revive the European Research Area (ERA). “All in all, I find it is aligned with ERA. It is a serious effort,” said Enric Banda, senior
adviser at the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre, who also chairs an advisory council that informs the government on strategic science, research and innovation issues. Banda noted the reform for the first time recognises health research staff. Health is a regional matter in Spain and has not been acknowledged in national science policy until now. “The fact that they recognise it and say that hospitals have to have their own research personnel is something that people have not given a lot of importance to [until now],” he said. Banda congratulated the commitment but said the private sector’s role should not be forgotten. “When you talk about the system of science, technology and innovation, you want the whole system to work, not only a part of it. This law leaves innovation on its own,” Banda said. The government’s reasoning is that committing to the public sector target will enable the country to reach the combined 3% public and private spending target set out at EU level. But Banda is sceptical whether this can be done without special measures to spur private sector innovation. The issue Banda said, is the policy set out in the country’s very first science law in 1986, which put the focus on research, where it has since stayed. “We have been doing the same thing for the last 40 years, and it didn’t work. “If it doesn’t work, we have to change it,” he said. Despite this, the government pledge to reach the target of public expenditure equivalent to 1.25% of GDP is still a major step forward. “For the first time there is a number and a commitment,” said Banda.
Artist’s impression of a rare kind of stellar merger event between two white dwarf stars. Credit: Nicole Reindl
UN warns wildfires likely to increase by 50% as climate changes
These stars appear to have surfaces covered in carbon and oxygen, implying that they are still burning helium. German astronomers have discovered a new type of star, and exactly how these weird white dwarfs came to be remains a mystery. The stars are covered in a layer of “ash” that’s usually produced by burning helium, indicating they may have formed through collisions between other stars. When stars in a certain mass range run out of fuel and explode, they leave behind a dense core that can no longer undergo fusion. This remnant, called a white dwarf, slowly cools to the background temperature of the universe over the next few trillion years. But now, astronomers have discovered two white dwarfs that don’t quite fit the usual description. White dwarfs have atmospheres dominated by hydrogen or helium, but these new ones have surprisingly high amounts of carbon and oxygen in their atmospheres – rather than the usual trace amounts if anything, the team detected concentrations of both elements that were as high as 20 percent. Intriguingly, carbon and oxygen are the “ashes” produced when stars burn helium, something that white dwarfs are supposed to have long finished doing. Even more puzzling is that these new stars are hotter and wider than most white dwarfs, indicating that they may still be burning helium in their cores. “Normally we expect stars with these surface compositions to have already finished burning helium in their cores, and to be on their way
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to becoming white dwarfs,” said Professor Klaus Werner, lead researcher on the team. “These new stars are a severe challenge to our understanding of stellar evolution.” The researchers do have a hypothesis for how the strange new stars were born. Pairs of white dwarfs in close binary systems can sometimes pull each other in closer together until they collide, forming a new object. If the compositions of each original white dwarf were just right, the end result could be the new stars seen here. “Usually, white dwarf mergers do not lead to the formation of stars enriched in carbon and oxygen,” said Dr. Miller Bertolami, lead author of the study. “But we believe that, for binary systems formed with very specific masses, a carbon- and oxygen-rich white dwarf might be disrupted and end up on top of a helium-rich one, leading to the formation of these stars.” Even so, the model doesn’t explain all the observed features of these new stars. The team says that more work will need to be done to investigate their origin. These aren’t the only perplexing white dwarfs out there. Other recent studies have found white dwarfs with ring systems, white dwarf pulsars, and a particularly bizarre one that’s somehow burning bright in infrared but not visible light. The research was published in two studies, both appearing in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Climate change is citizens key priority according to survey commissioned by the European Parliament and the European Commission. Climate change and land-use changes are projected to make wildfires more frequent and intense, with a global increase of extreme fires of 50 per cent likely by 2100, according to a UN Environment Programme report. The elevated risk threatens the Arctic and other regions previously unaffected by wildfires, it concludes. Wildfires and climate change will become “mutually exacerbating” over coming decades. By the end of the century, “the likelihood of catastrophic wildfire events will increase by a factor of 1.31 to 1.57”, while there is a likely 30 per cent increase by 2050. Even under the lowest carbon emissions scenario, “we will likely see a significant increase in wildfire events”, including those that would normally occur only once in 100 years, it predicts. The report calls for a radical change in spending on wildfires by governments, shifting investments “from reaction and response to prevention and preparedness”. It was undertaken with the environmental group Grid-Arendal and was released in February in advance of representatives of 193 states convening in Nairobi under the UN Environment Assembly next week. “Wildfires are made worse by climate change through increased drought, high air temperatures, low relative humidity,
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lightning and strong winds resulting in hotter, drier and longer fire seasons,” the report concludes. In a new Eurobarometer survey commissioned by the European Parliament and the European Commission forty-four per cent of Europeans believe that climate change should be a priority topic at the Conference on the Future of Europe,. The survey, conducted in September and October 2021, reveals that 44% of European citizens believe that the main topic addressed by the conference should be climate change and the environment, while 40% indicate health, economy, social justice and employment. The UN report underlined the vulnerability of southern Europe. “The Mediterranean climate, with wet winters and dry summers, exacerbates fire hazard by favouring substantial biomass growth followed by its desiccation. These conditions are similar to those that prevailed during extreme wildfire events elsewhere, namely California and south eastern Australia. ” As a consequence, Mediterranean vegetation is among the most fire-prone in the world. It commends Portugal for its changed approach in responding to the threat of wildfires, which had caused devastation and loss of life in recent years.
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