Scienza in rete

My Portrait of Anthony Fauci

Guido Poli — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:21:00 +0100

In recent days, Anthony (“Tony”) Fauci has once again become a prominent figure in the international media, and to some extent in Italy as well. As the physician-scientist who has played one of the leading roles in U.S. public health over the past several decades, he became known throughout the world during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having had the privilege and good fortune to work with him from 1986 to 1993, I would like to offer my personal account of the scientist and the man.

I wish to make clear that I do not intend to weigh in on the still unresolved question of the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, whether it emerged naturally from an animal reservoir that has nonetheless never been identified, or escaped from the laboratory in Wuhan, where bat coronaviruses were being studied after “gain-of-function” mutations had been introduced to investigate the viruses’ potential to spread to humans. This issue lies at the heart of the accusations brought against Fauci by some Republican senators, particularly Rand Paul. They accuse him of having funded, as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), collaborative research between the United States and China on the pandemic potential of bat coronaviruses.

Tony Fauci is one of the world’s best-known physician-scientists. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated by the Jesuits, he had such an outstanding career in medicine and science that, at the age of just forty-three, he was appointed Director of one of the U.S. government’s research institutes in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1984, the youngest person ever to hold such a position. Bethesda, located just outside Washington, D.C., is home to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest publicly funded biomedical research center, employing approximately 18,000 scientists, many of them from overseas.

Fauci went on to serve as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the next thirty-eight years. At the same time, he remained Chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation, where I arrived in 1986 and worked for seven years before returning to Italy. Those were the defining years of the AIDS epidemic, and Fauci transformed NIAID into one of the world’s leading centers for immunology and infectious disease research by increasing its budget from less than $400 million to more than $6 billion by 2023 and expanding its research beyond HIV/AIDS to infectious diseases more broadly.

My career as a researcher began in 1983 in Alberto Mantovani’s laboratory at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan. Together, we published some of Italy’s earliest studies on the role of the immune system in AIDS, work that earned me a position in Fauci’s laboratory. From Fauci, as previously from Mantovani, I learned virtually everything that shaped my professional development: how to write a scientific paper, how to present it at a scientific meeting, and how to communicate science effectively to non-specialists. My respect and gratitude for both of them remain absolute!

Fauci was, and I suspect still is, a workaholic, an incredibly hard worker. He was in his office by seven every morning and rarely left before evening. Quite often, before heading home, he would meet with senior members of the U.S. Congress. More than once, during one of the scientific update meetings held by the research group I led within his laboratory, he would receive a phone call, turn to us and say, “Excuse me, I have to go to the White House.”

Incidentally, my own research group included, for a couple of years, a young Drew Weissman, who had come from Harvard and would later share the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Katalin Karikó for discovering how to modify messenger RNA so that it could be used to develop drugs or vaccines, paving the way for the highly successful COVID-19 vaccines. Drew carried out that Nobel-winning work later, after leaving Fauci’s laboratory for Philadelphia, but our friendship has endured. In 2024, we awarded him an honorary degree in Biotechnology from Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan.

As he recounts in his compelling memoir, On Call, Tony Fauci’s impact on the HIV/AIDS epidemic extended far beyond his already remarkable scientific contributions. Among his most important achievements was pioneering an alliance between physicians and patients, who at the time protested fiercely, calling him “Fauci murderer”, because they had no access to experimental anti-HIV drugs. That dialogue eventually led to what became known as the “parallel track” approach, allowing patients compassionate access to investigational treatments while those therapies continued through the standard FDA approval process. In this regard, it is worth noting that it was not until 1996 that combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) was shown to save lives and restore immune function in people who otherwise faced an almost certain death from AIDS within eight to ten years, as documented in a 1996 JAMA publication.

Another historic contribution Fauci made to the fight against AIDS was PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), introduced by President George W. Bush in 2003. Tony was its principal architect, and its goal was to bring cART to the world’s poorest countries. To date, PEPFAR is estimated to have provided approximately $120 billion worth of medicines and to have saved the lives of more than 20 million people, most of them young.

It is probably less well known that Fauci also played a pivotal role in the United States’ response to bioterrorism by helping to establish Project BioShield in 2004. Following the anthrax letter attacks, in which envelopes containing anthrax spores were mailed to a number of prominent individuals, Fauci himself believed he might have been one of the targets, as he recounts in his memoir. Fortunately, the powder found in the envelope sent to him later proved to be harmless.
Turning to the present day and the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to his crucial role in funding the development of modified mRNA vaccines, Fauci became a reassuring public figure during the darkest moments of the pandemic, both in the United States and around the world.

Did he make mistakes, as he is now accused of doing? Certainly. He himself has acknowledged them on many occasions, for example, regarding the initial recommendation that masks should be reserved for healthcare workers (it should also be remembered that, at the time, there would not have been enough masks available for everyone anyway). But this simply shows that scientific knowledge is never set in stone (unlike ignorance); it constantly adjusts its course by learning from its own mistakes.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I do not wish to comment on the substance of the allegations at the heart of the attacks now directed at Fauci by several Republican senators, particularly Rand Paul, with the support of President Trump (who advocated treating COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug that has never been shown to be effective as an antiviral).

After dozens of public and private hearings, Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and decline to answer further questions was a tactical move made on the advice of his legal team. The amendment protects individuals against self-incrimination, and his lawyers understood that any answer he might give would inevitably be turned against him.

From the bottom of my heart, I hope that Tony, who at the age of eighty-five deserves to enjoy some peace and quiet, will emerge from this dystopian ordeal with his head held high. I also hope that his extraordinary contribution to science and medicine will receive the recognition it deserves worldwide, and that any mistakes he may have made in managing the pandemic will be placed within a balanced assessment of the work of an extraordinary man who, among many other things, helped shape the careers of countless physicians and scientists around the world, including my own.

*Edited by Julia Filingeri, Vice-President, PTS

Italy and Cuba: the right to health is a common founding principle

Maurizio Bonati — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 07:03:00 +0100

Article 32, paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic states that: health is a fundamental and collective right; the Republic guarantees access to care; the right to health cannot be transferred or ceded: it is inalienable and inalienable; it is a universal right, belonging to all, without discrimination; it is a subjective right of the individual; it is irreducible and essential. It took thirty years and the participation and willingness of all political parties to draft such a revolutionary law as Law No. 833 of 1978 implementing Article 32.
Article 72 of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba states that: Public health is a right of all people, and it is the State’s responsibility to guarantee free access and quality care, protection, and rehabilitation services. To implement this right, the State establishes a health system accessible to the population at all levels and develops prevention and education programs, to which society and families contribute.

Similar texts define and recognize the universal right to health.

With similar determination, both Italy and Cuba decided in 1978, along with 132 other states and 67 international agencies, to adopt the landmark Alma-Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care as a framework for achieving “health for all” by the year 2000. This commitment combined health with human rights and social justice to make essential health services universally accessible. This commitment was political, social, and professional, individual and institutional, in the areas of health and healthcare, social and healthcare, and well-being and improved well-being (welfare) in living and working environments. This commitment was demanding and ambitious, like all those aimed at guaranteeing human rights, the rights of a community and not just those of individuals. Both Italy and Cuba had undertaken a similar path long before, because health is also a project, a goal, an objective to be achieved and maintained, especially if it is to be for everyone. Health and healthcare are distinct concepts, but clearly interconnected: you cannot guarantee complete well-being unless you organize an adequate and appropriate system (a Service) to protect it.

Cuba

The development of a profound social revolution and political will led, starting in 1959 with the overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista regime and the proclamation of the Republic, to healthcare being based primarily on a primary care approach oriented towards equity. However, demographic changes and shifts in the population’s morbidity and mortality patterns, the rise of its cultural level, the emergence of medical thought oriented towards a clinical, epidemiological, and social approach, and the need to achieve qualitative improvements in the population’s health, required, for Cuba too, changes to the healthcare system to achieve and guarantee the right to universal healthcare. Thus, the family medicine model was launched, aimed at meeting the needs of the population’s epidemiological profile and level of satisfaction.

120 Family Doctor Plan

On January 4, 1984, this model, also known as the 120 Family Doctor Plan (Plan del Médico de las 120 Familias), Family Doctor, or Community Doctor, was launched at the Lawton Polyclinic in the municipality of 10 de Octubre in Havana, the country’s capital. The program began with ten pairs of doctors and nurses, who formed the first ten primary health teams (ESCs) working in family doctor clinics (MFCs). Each of these teams provided comprehensive medical care to an average of 600–700 people, approximately 120 families, hence the initial name. The program’s primary objective was to improve the population’s health through comprehensive interventions targeting the individual, family, community, and environment, in close collaboration with the community. Today there are 15,000 ESCs, which care for 140-180 families, without exceeding 1,500 patients. They are distributed throughout the country and constitute the backbone of the Cuban healthcare system.

Within these facilities, healthcare workers are responsible for the population’s primary medical care, particularly those most vulnerable, such as children, the elderly, and pregnant women. Special emphasis is placed on preventive medicine, hygiene, nutrition, sports, and the management of risk factors. Prevention is the cornerstone of the Cuban healthcare system. Home care is provided by the ESC in the patient’s home when the patient requires daily assessment, rest, bed rest, or isolation, but does not require hospitalization. The ESC manages its patients’ medical records according to an organized, continuous, and dynamic process that allows for planned and scheduled assessments and interventions with minimum frequency based on the patient’s group (presumably healthy, at-risk, sick, and disabled).

The second level of care is represented by the 436 community outpatient clinics. Each outpatient clinic serves a population of 30,000–60,000 people and collaborates closely with 20–40 ESCs. An average outpatient clinic offers around twenty different services: rehabilitation, radiology, ultrasound, endoscopy, emergency room, traumatology, clinical analysis laboratory, family planning, thrombolysis, medical and dental emergency room, maternal and child care, vaccinations and diabetes care, geriatrics, dermatology, psychiatry, cardiology, general medicine and internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology.

To ensure continuity of care for the population, the Integrated Family Care Program, as its name suggests, involves the evaluation and development of actions between the members of the ESCs and the core working group of the outpatient clinic and the referral hospitals.

To achieve this goal, it was essential to have professionals trained to carry out the new missions of the service delivery system. This led to improved human resources training through the implementation of a new medical school curriculum, based on the identification of population health problems and with a graduate program focused on primary healthcare, and the development of a new specialty, integrated general medicine. The first specialists in this discipline graduated in 1987.

Italy

After 50 years, Law No. 833, which governs the entire and complex National Health Service, requires extensive updating. Once again, interventions are expected that are late, unsupported, partial, and sectoral. The last two are Ministerial Decrees 70/2015 and 77/2022. The former defines the qualitative, structural, technological, and quantitative standards of hospital care. The latter defines the models and standards for the development of community care within the National Health Service and is closely linked to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).

The implementation of both decrees is delayed due to staff shortages, the previous history of regional governance, uncertainties and critical issues in general practice, and the overgrowth and fragmentation of the hospital network. The application of Ministerial Decree 77 must necessarily include the application of Ministerial Decree 70, and therefore either the delays already accumulated are resolved or they will only increase, as is happening.

Community Homes

One of the essential elements of the 2022 reform implementation plan is the Community Home, defined as “the physical and easily identifiable place where citizens can access healthcare, social and health care needs, and the organizational model of local care for the target population.” But exactly what type of Home is needed, for what needs, for which community, with what functions… this is unclear.

The decree has identified organizational standards for a Community Home hub for every 40,000-50,000 inhabitants, with 7-11 nurses, 1 social worker, and 5-8 support staff (social and health, administrative). The services provided in the Community Home are divided into mandatory, optional, and recommended. The main and essential services are primary care services provided by multi-professional teams (general practitioners, pediatricians, outpatient specialists, community nurses, etc).

The number of Community Homes has been set at 1,038, rising from 1,715 following an agreement with the EU. By June 30, 2026, funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) have been used for new facilities or the conversion of existing ones (such as hospitals, outpatient clinics, and local health authorities). Since the end of the NRRP, there has been a frenzy of activity to place plaques and signs at the entrances of existing outpatient clinics, including those in hospital areas, labeled “Community Home.” The prevailing belief is that Community Homes are actually Community Homes, meaning that the standard prevails (the “of” instead of the “of”), and that the primary common good to be pursued is healthcare, not health. Therefore, Community Homes are simply outpatient clinics, Health Homes, and not always efficiently.

Italy and Cuba

The health services of the two countries have much in common. The principles and objectives are identical. Governance is, of course, different, given the resources available and the policies implemented and also endured, particularly the blockade imposed on Cuba by then-US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on February 7, 1962, with “Proclamation 3447.“The tightening of the economic embargo during the first Trump administration, Covid-19, and, since January 2026, the near-total blockade of energy supplies resulting from the Venezuelan crisis have deprived the island of fuel, electricity, and access to international markets for drugs and medical devices. The collapse of a health system is not just a local tragedy: it is a violation of fundamental human rights that requires a response from the global community, regardless of any political considerations regarding the Cuban regime.

The commonality of Article 32 of the Italian Constitution and Article 72 of the Cuban Constitution, the focus and priority on primary care, the identification and designation of the community as the basic space and collective for social and health interventions, the Plan del Médico de las 120 Families and the Community Houses as models of intervention, the Cuban primary health care teams and the Italian multi-professional teams indicate that greater collaboration, sharing, and solidarity between the two countries would be beneficial to both peoples.

Italy also owes Cuba its support during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing work of Cuban doctors in the Calabria Region to ensure the functioning of the local health service.
The organization of health services to ensure the right to healthcare is a powerful indicator of a country’s progress or decline, and the level achieved by Italy and Cuba is similar. The fact that a quality health service like Cuba’s is forced to fail to fulfill its functions should be of concern to anyone who cares about the universal right to healthcare.

Cuba: Now it’s time to go

Maurizio Bonati — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:56:00 +0100

There is an ongoing emergency; has been going on for a long time and therefore the situation is very serious and uncertain and there is always someone who tries to take advantage of it, even in an unfair way. What is happening in Cuba by the increasingly aggressive and arrogant United States of America (“Yes, take Cuba somehow: take it or release it, I think I can do whatever I want with it”). If in Venezuela it was the military operation Absolute Resolve, conducted on January 3, 2026 with the capture, arrest and deportation of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and the agreement with the treasonable vice president Delcy Rodríguez (María Corina Machado, opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was unwilling to Trump) a Friendly takeover is planned for Cuba. What kind of negotiation is planned, direct and friendly (?), it is impossible to foresee with the current US presidency, that it will be (also) a financial operation, for example in the area of tourism, is much more likely.

In 1962, after the resounding failure of the invasion of Cuba from the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro, with Proclamation 3447 the United States of America initiated and imposed a trade embargo on other countries, economic and financial against Cuba, el bloqueo. A sanction that is maintained with wavering increases at several historical moments, such as the current one, and which the UN General Assembly has never managed to refine.

There are 31 nations that are economically sanctioned by the USA with “variable sanctions programs: some are wide-ranging and geographically oriented (e.g., Cuba, Iran), others are ’targeted’ (e.g., anti-terrorism, anti-drug) and focus on specific individuals and entities”, illustrates the US Treasury Department itself.

Economic sanctions are thus varied and include financial restrictions, travel bans, and targeted measures used as a tool of political pressure. While the embargo is a sanction that imposes the total or partial blockade of trade with a country (Cuba) and aims to isolate it economically.

Then there is the tariff policy activated in 2025 by the Trump administration, shortly after taking office, which has hit with greater force on 57 countries defined as worst offenders. According to the logic of reciprocity there is a US trade deficit this is due to the fact that tariff barriers (i.e. tariffs) and non-tariff barriers are applied unfairly. So, although it has no basis in economics and interests of 180 countries, on April 2, 2025, Trump issued the PresidentialAction.

There are 33 countries sanctioned by the European Union (23 coincide with those sanctioned by the United States). Within the framework of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP): “Sanctions are an instrument of a diplomatic or economic nature intended to bring about change in activities or policies, such as violations of international law and security, human rights, the rule of law, or democratic principles. Restrictive measures imposed by the EU may be directed against third country governments, non-state entities and natural or legal persons (such as terrorist groups and individual terrorists). They may include arms embargoes, other specific or general trade restrictions (import and export bans), financial restrictions, entry restrictions (visa or travel bans) or other measures that appear appropriate as appropriate.”, recites in this regard the page of the Farnesina.

The same impacts of a war

The effectiveness of sanctions is debatable because of the low level of accession by individual countries or for interpretation and management that, in any case, must ensure the interests of individual states.

But sanctions have dramatic adverse health effects. They persist long after the measures are lifted, with casualties comparable to wars. International policy priorities should therefore include the need to reconsider sanctions as a foreign-policy tool, underscoring the importance of moderating their use and seriously considering efforts to reform their structure. What should be done against the US embargo on Cuba, in light of the dramatic outcomes that further escalation in recent months has (also) entailed for the health of the Cuban people.

With the Cuban Revolution of 1959, education and health (public, universal and free) are the two fundamental rights guaranteed to the Cuban people. The embargo, both directly and indirectly, is undermining their guarantee, particularly prevention and health care.

In 1962, life expectancy at birth in Cuba was 64.4 years (in Italy 69.2 years), and reached its peak in 2012 with 78.2 years (in Italy 82.3 years) to then decrease to 73.2 years in 2021 (in Italy 82.9 years): a decline of 7% in 5 years.

Infant mortality in the first five years of life in 1962 was 4.5% of live births (in Italy 4.8%) and reaches 0.62% in 2012 (in Italy 0.38%), rising to 0.83% in 2023 (in Italy 0.28%): an increase of 33% with 151 more deaths in the last decade.

The lowest incidence of cases of tuberculosis in Cuba was recorded in 2021 with 5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (in Italy 4 per 100,000 inhabitants), in 2024 the cases had risen to 11 per 100,000 inhabitants (in Italy 5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants): more than doubled.

For some months now, infections with chikungunya, dengue and oropouche viruses have become epidemic, and the combined arbovirus caused by the mosquito Aedes aegypti, which has never been endemic in Cuba, has represented a public emergency that could have affected 2.9 million people and caused up to 8,700 deaths. The lack of energy has forced to stop disinfestation and waste collection, and mosquitoes have multiplied to excess with the resulting excessive transmission of infection.

Know how to do it, but can’t

A scenario characterized by shortages of primary goods resulting in welfare shortages and a high incidence of disease and mortality. Primary goods for subsistence, but also essential goods to produce, particularly in sectors such as drugs, vaccines and biotechnology where Cuban know-how is competitive with international one. Having state-of-the-art equipment, ensuring technical assistance (including spare parts in case of breakage), and chemical reagents are essential to ensure proper research and health care — all aspects that a strict embargo does not allow.

The Cuban experience in the national production of pharmacies and their impact on access to health not only highlights the pursuit of one of the main objectives of the state (improving the population’s health and quality of life), but also the achievement of goals in the field of welfare, industrial technology and intellectual property of national and international importance. An estimated $300 million is needed to import the raw materials needed to produce hundreds of essential medicines. Drug shortages continue to grow, fueling a black market, especially for some expensive and life-saving drugs. Although the essential list of medicaments should be guaranteed to include 651 and comply with World Health Organization guidelines for access (availability and production), many of these (antibiotics, antipyretics, gastrointestinal, respirators), also of low cost and frequent request, are difficult to find both in the hospital and in the territory. 62% of the list (403 products) correspond to drugs that should be produced by the domestic pharmaceutical industry, the remaining 38% is imported. The shortage, which in 2024 was estimated at 70% of demand/needs, could therefore be faced by the recovery of national production.

However, the experience of the past with the US surge in embargo, now more prolonged than ever, and the barriers and deterrents induced by the United States to trade in products: the fear of severe financial penalties and imprisonment of employees of any company involved, the increase in legal fees, the prosecution by the US government for minor and unintentional violations of the Cuban embargo and the subsequent exhortation to the press to spread negative publicity against the pharmaceutical company and its employees, the slowness and complexity of the internal bureaucracy in Cuba… These are all factors that reduce hope, while the reduced participation of international cooperation on the island contain hope.

Dramatic contradictions

One of the areas where the contradictions between scientific capacity and dramatic economic restrictions and sanctions are most apparent is vaccines. Streptococcus pneumoniae represents still one of the leading causes of death in children in the first five years of life globally, with hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, largely preventable through vaccination. However, access to pneumococcal conjugate vaccines remains deeply uneven: in countries with fewer resources, vaccination coverage is often insufficient and millions of children remain exposed to serious infections such as pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis. This is the context of the Cuban experience with the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine Quimivio, developed by the Instituto Finlay de Vacunas as a scientific and health response to difficulties in accessing commercial vaccines, whose cost can reach hundreds of dollars per dose and is unsustainable for many health systems.

The development of Cuban vaccines takes place, as we have seen, in a particularly complex context determined by the US economic blockade, which limits access to technologies, reagents, scientific equipment and financial channels necessary for biotechnological research. Despite these restrictions, over the years Cuba has built a public innovation system capable of producing vaccines and biological drugs independently. Clinical trials with QuimiVio have involved tens of thousands of young children, and the incidence of invasive pneumococcal infections in children between one and four years old has been dramatically reduced to zero since it was introduced into the national vaccination schedule. This finding demonstrates how public biotechnology research can be a key tool for health sovereignty and equitable access to vaccinations, even in contexts of strong economic and political constraints.

Unfortunately, Cuba (and neighboring countries) are being hit not only by human disasters, but also by natural disasters, some of which are recurrent, others that could be at least partly prevented by limiting their enormous effects on the short- and long-term well-being of the affected populations. It happened last October 29 when, after 24 hours of rain and very intense wind, hurricane Melissa category 3 hit the Cuban provinces of Holguin, Granma, Santiago and Guantanamo. These are the regions, especially the last two, still in strong difficulties after the passage of Hurricane Oscar in 2024 and are among the most impoverished, socially and economically, and where apagones (electricity blackouts) last longer and are more frequent. A hurricane that has caused at least 735,000 people to evacuate and that has shaken the Cuban system. A system that also needs renewal, with the adaptation of popular power to the times and the guarantee of denied rights. For now, the name of hurricane Melissa has been withdrawn and replaced with Mollyda by the World Meteorological Organization — an event that occurs whenever the intensity of a cyclone is such that for the damage caused (deaths and costs) reusing the name would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity. Among the most notorious highly destructive hurricanes that led to the withdrawal of their names are Katrina, Sandy and Maria.

The energy strangulation of which the Cuban people are victims “will worsen, if not collapse, if its oil needs are not met”, according to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and the Iranian crisis further reduces the chances of getting some help from supportive countries. The serious situation of the health system requires a series of measures to reorganize and rationalize services, offered today in clinics and hospitals without sufficient energy, forced to reduce non-urgent surgeries and strengthen telemedicine, as stated by the Cuban Minister of Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda.

We can only share what the epidemiologist Benedetto Saraceno wrote: «Once again, the health sector is a powerful indicator of a country’s progress or regress, and the fact that a high-quality health system like Cuba’s is forced to regress should concern anyone who cares about the universal right to health and cure».

University Admissions and Talent in China: What Can Italy Learn?

Michele Ciavarella — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 09:16:00 +0100

Each year, over 12 million Chinese students sit for the Gaokao (高考), one of the most difficult and decisive university entrance exams in the world. This three-day test includes Chinese, Mathematics, English, and one elective subject from either the sciences or humanities. The maximum score varies by province, typically between 750 and 900, with the admission threshold for top universities exceeding 680–700 points. On average, fewer than 2% of students manage to get into elite institutions such as Peking University or Tsinghua University. To prepare for the Gaokao, the entire primary and secondary school journey is notoriously intense—students often study for extremely long hours, sometimes collapsing asleep on their desks from exhaustion.

Historical Roots

The Gaokao is a merit-based exam system that traces its origins to ancient China’s imperial examination system (Keju), which was used to select government officials. The Keju was abolished in 1905, and three years later (1952), the new People’s Republic of China established the Gaokao to create a more equitable and socially mobile educational pathway. However, the exam was suspended during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and reinstated in 1977, symbolizing the rebirth of educational opportunity in China—where selection would now be based on academic ability rather than political background. Although the format has evolved, the Gaokao remains the only pathway to change one’s fate for millions of students.

Today’s Gaokao System

Although China’s education system is theoretically merit-based, regional disparities are stark. Students from coastal cities like Beijing and Shanghai enjoy better educational resources, superior teachers, and more competitive environments, whereas students in inland or rural provinces (like Guizhou or Gansu) face limited access to quality education. According to China’s Ministry of Education, urban students are five times more likely to be admitted into top-tier universities compared to their rural counterparts.
To close this gap and uncover untapped talent, China launched the “Strong Base Plan” (强基计划) in 2020, targeting 36 elite universities (including Tsinghua and Peking University) to admit students in fundamental disciplines like mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and history. Admission combines Gaokao scores, interviews, and comprehensive evaluations. In 2023, about 25,000 students were admitted through this program—a relatively small number, but it is growing yearly.

What Does a High Gaokao Score Mean?

High scorers in the Gaokao are typically rewarded with:

Admission into top universities like Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan, or Zhejiang University;
Full scholarships;
Local or national celebrity status, such as media interviews and huge banners hung outside their high schools;
Pre-admission offers from universities;
Local government rewards, such as bonuses, travel opportunities, or honorary certificates.

High scores often signal a bright future, but the real pressure occurs before the exam. As RaiNews once reported: “On Gaokao day, all of China comes to a standstill: roads near exam centers are closed, construction is halted, police ensure silence and punctuality, parents pray outside the gates, and students take the exam under extreme psychological stress.” The real competition lies in getting into top-tier universities. Many students who don’t meet their desired score retake the Gaokao the following year.

What About Italy?

By contrast, Italy’s university system is mostly open-access: as of 2024, only around 22% of undergraduate programs (such as medicine, veterinary science, architecture, and psychology) require a national entrance exam. Around 120,000 students take these exams annually, making Italy’s scale only 1% that of China.
Currently, Italy lacks a nationwide, structured system for identifying and nurturing talented youth. Most students choose local universities, as Italian families traditionally value staying close to home. As a result, even highly talented individuals often follow standardized, generalized paths, rather than being steered toward excellence. For decades, Italy’s policy focus has been on increasing overall education levels, with little attention paid to nurturing top performers. The consequence is that outstanding students struggle to stand out, and in doctoral admissions, recognition often depends on personal recommendations.

Though Italy does have some elite institutions, such as the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Sant’Anna School, Galileo College in Padua, and the Ferdinando Rossi Institute in Turin, they admit fewer than 2,000 students annually—a minuscule number compared to Italy’s 1.7 million university students. These institutions are inspired by France’s Grandes Écoles, whose graduates make up only 8–9% of all students yet occupy over 50% of national leadership positions. Italy has no equivalent pipeline.

But Are There Side Effects of High-Intensity Exams?

The Gaokao places enormous pressure on students—many study 12 to 14 hours a day for years. The system emphasizes accumulation and outcomes, often ignoring individual differences. For students from low-income backgrounds, the Gaokao is virtually their only chance for upward mobility. Yet, according to the OECD’s 2023 Education Report, while Chinese students rank 6th globally in knowledge application, they perform only moderately in fostering creativity—whereas Italy ranks 4th. This may be due to China’s focus on rote memorization.
Italy’s education system is more inclusive, but also more chaotic: capable students often rely on chance encounters with good mentors or their family’s social background, with little systemic support. Consequently, many talented Italians choose to move abroad. Italy is not lacking in talent, but having a degree does not automatically open doors.

Beyond the Gaokao: China’s “Youth Classes”

China also runs even more elite programs, such as the “Youth Class” at Xi’an Jiaotong University, aimed at 12–15-year-olds with exceptionally high IQs. These students bypass the Gaokao, entering through a highly competitive selection process, and follow an integrated junior high to PhD pathway. Their coursework is extremely advanced (e.g., university-level math and physics). With an acceptance rate of only 0.5%, the pressure may exceed that of the Gaokao. Critics argue such systems may rob children of their childhood, causing mental health issues, but supporters claim they nurture China’s next generation of strategic scientists.

Two Extremes: Jack Ma vs. Liang Wenfeng

The Gaokao does not define success. For example, Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, was poor at math and failed the Gaokao three times, yet became China’s richest man. On the other hand, Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, exemplifies the genius path: born in a poor town, self-studied high school math at age 11, ranked first in the Gaokao at 17, entered China’s top computer science program, and later achieved breakthroughs in quantitative finance and AI.

In 2023, he founded DeepSeek, which built an AI system rivaling OpenAI in just 55 days using only 5% of OpenAI’s budget. His three success factors:

Cost control inspired by Elon Musk;
A mission-driven team of only 139 people, working more for purpose than money;
Advocacy for open-source AI, arguing “closed-source is not a real moat.”

Italy’s Political Elites: An Alarming Picture

Alarmingly, Italy ranks among the lowest in the world for the share of parliamentarians with a university degree—only ahead of India and Tanzania. According to The Economist and a Bocconi University study, only 64% of Italian MPs in 2007 held a degree, compared to 91% in 1946, even though the general adult population’s education level rose from 1% to 14% in that time. Meanwhile, the share of university-educated U.S. lawmakers has steadily increased, nearing universal levels. This highlights Italy’s critical shortcomings in elite selection.

Conclusion: The Future of Talent in China and Italy?

We cannot claim the Gaokao is ideal—nor should Italy copy it. But in China’s highly competitive, merit-driven society, the state has at least built pathways to identify and support top talent. In contrast, Italy’s mass-education achievements have come at the cost of neglecting the best students, who often get lost in the system.

In China, Youth Classes and the Strong Base Plan are widening the paths to excellence. In Italy, even multiple degrees do not guarantee opportunity. Recent university reforms like the Bernini Bill have not emphasized talent identification. Though the Ministry of Education speaks of “merit,” the reality remains dominated by seniority and appearances.
Italy needs a national talent strategy—not isolated efforts by a few universities or teachers, but a systemic reform led by the government and Ministry of Education. The goal should be a coherent plan to identify, nurture, and employ talent.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Professor Stefano Paleari of Bergamo, a great public servant who always generously shares advice (though he may not agree with everything here); to top Chinese scientist Prof. Gao; to visiting doctoral student S. Chen at Politecnico di Bari; to Marco Circella; and to engineer Domenico Claudio Di Vittorio of Marelli, who has extensive experience in China and offered valuable feedback on this article.

Karen Hallberg, on peace and science

Silvia Bencivelli — Tue, 13 May 2025 08:57:00 +0100

Pugwash is the name of a Canadian fishing village and a commitment to peace. In July 1957, at the height of the Cold War, twenty-two scientists gathered here for the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs. The group was led by the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell, who, two years earlier on 9 July 1955, presented the Russell and Einstein Manifesto in London’s Caxton Hall. In this manifesto, the philosopher and physicist (who died in April but had signed it) called on the world to renounce war. The conference was presided over by the Polish-born, naturalised British physicist Josef Rotblat, who was the only scientist to abandon the Manhattan Project for reasons of conscience. In 1995, he received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of himself and the Pugwash Conferences. Since then, the Pugwash movement has grown to include more and more scientists and has established organisations of scientists for peace around the world. After a long Italian General Secretariat under Paolo Cotta Ramusino (from 2002 to 2024), the movement now has an Argentinian General Secretary: physicist Karen Hallberg. She is a principal researcher at the Argentine Council for Science and Technology (CONICET), working at the Bariloche Atomic Centre, as well as a professor of physics at the Balseiro Institute (part of the Argentine Atomic Energy Commission and the University of Cuyo). The following is a conversation with her about world peace and the role of scientists.

Silvia Bencivelli It is a time of serious global crisis. What can Pugwash do to promote peace in today’s war-torn territories, or at least contain the risk of conflict widening? And is it being listened to by governments?
Karen Hallberg You are right by saying we are living through a global crisis. We are facing big political changes and shifts in the world order. There is a growing fragmentation and polarization between regions and countries leading to a multipolar world while weakening multilateralism and international law (particularly international humanitarian law), strengthening authoritarianisms while eroding democratic values and human rights. Conflicts are rising leading to huge increase in military budgets and militarization, including space.
Societies are still recovering from the consequences of the most disruptive world-wide pandemic and are subject to a high degree of confusion caused by misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories. In spite of the hyperconnectivity, we are living inside information bubbles and are losing critical thinking abilities.
Also, our world is facing enormous challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, widespread diseases, pollution, poverty, migration, and the threat of the potential misuse of a variety of emerging technologies like AI, among other serious problems.
However, the most salient threat, due to its potential to wipe all life on earth in a blink of an eye, is the increasing risk posed by nuclear weapons. Nuclear-armed countries are investing hundreds of billions in expanding their arsenals. Arms control is collapsing, high-level diplomacy is lacking, and more nations are considering nuclear development, endangering nonproliferation efforts and raising the risk of war. Wars involving nuclear-armed states (Russia and Israel) increase the risk even further. Today, there is a significant probability that either by accident or by design, weapons that can end humanity will be detonated.
One of most iconic indicators of the current global situation, the Doomsday Clock of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has just set the clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe, since its inception in 1947. This metaphor invites us to reflect on the looming catastrophic risks and raises awareness on the most pressing issues we are facing today.
Given the current situation described above, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs have a salient responsibility. They were created in 1957 following the urgent call of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, issued two years earlier which drew attention to the enormous danger posed by the development of thermonuclear weapons capable of destroying humanity. It also urged governments and people to avoid war to resolve conflicts and to seek peaceful ways to do so and called a conference of scientists to discuss these important issues and take action. It was signed by eleven renowned scientists, most of them Nobel Laureates. The Pugwash Conferences was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 together with one of its founders, the physicist Joseph Rotblat “for their efforts towards diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in international affairs and, in the long run, eliminating such weapons”. Rotblat was the only scientist working for the Manhattan Project who resigned based on ethical considerations.
The Pugwash Conferences aim to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, and biological—and to end war as a means of resolving international conflicts. Guided by the motto “dialogue across divides,” the organization promotes peaceful conflict resolution and risk reduction through open dialogue, mutual understanding, and science-based policy.
Along all its years since its foundation, the Pugwash Conferences has built an extensive network all over the world which includes scientists, academics, policy experts, and public figures who actively engage with high-level government officials, international bodies, NGOs, and the scientific community. Pugwash was a trailblazer in what is now known as Science Diplomacy—leveraging scientific knowledge to support diplomatic efforts.

SB In this context, what role does Pugwash play, and what are your responsibilities as the Secretary General of the organization?
KH As the Secretary General of Pugwash I intend to focus on harnessing Pugwash’s broad network, deep expertise, and scientific approach to address the pressing challenges of global nuclear threats, regional tensions, emerging technologies, chemical and biological weapons, and climate change—especially where science and society intersect. In times of conflict, when dialogue and diplomatic channels break down, it becomes even more crucial to promote trust-building initiatives between opposing sides.
Concrete proposals include discussions on ways to reduce the risks stemming from the Ukraine war and its consequences for deterrence, doctrine, and arms racing. This is achieved by Track Two dialogues between European, Russian, and American experts. Similar actions include dialogues including Chinese, Iranian, Israeli and participants from other countries, in different contexts. I should emphasize that the Pugwash rationale encourages participants to engage in honest and evidence-based dialogues and not as representatives of their original countries or institutions.
We also have working groups to assess the scope of threats, vulnerabilities, inequities and applications for good of emerging technologies.—such as Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Technologies, cyber weapons, genetic technologies and synthetic biology .
For example, we are exploring the dangers posed by the integration of artificial intelligence into the command-and-control systems of nuclear weapons. In that regard we have organized a webinar with the participation of Geoffrey Hinton (2024 Nobel laureate in physics, AI expert) and four other Peace Nobel Prize organizations (Nihon Hidankyo, ICAN, IPPNW and the Pugwash Conferences) and experts with the title: Autonomous Armageddon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmz2DoMHBys).
We also aim at leveraging the scientific aspect of Pugwash, bringing knowledge to decision making, for example, by contributing to the UN mandate to study the effects of nuclear war.
The current global situation requires that we work together with other kindred organisations like International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize organization of survivors of the atomic bombs, Nihon Hidankyo, and the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, among others. We are also working together with our national chapters in several countries and with the young branch, the International Young Student Pugwash (ISYP) who are very active and committed. It is of outmost importance to raise awareness among the young generation.
And the highlight this year will be our 63rd Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, “80 Years After the Atomic Bombing: Time for Peace, Dialogue and Nuclear Disarmament”, during the first week of November in Hiroshima.

SB The climate crisis has taken a back seat. Yet it too can be a factor in political and economic instability. Are we taking a serious step backwards or will the ecological transition go ahead anyway? And what is the role of scientists in this?
KH Regretfully, political leaders are relying less on scientific evidence to make decisions. Climate change is one example. It is urgent that governments, policy-makers, the private sector and citizens in general realize the importance of bringing knowledge to decision making.
Given the overall penetration of technology and information in our everyday life, scientific literacy is as important today as literacy was in the past, for citizens and governments. Development is based fundamentally on science and technology, and it is by understanding and relying on science and technology that we can progress and that governments can take wise decisions. Denying climate change is totally irresponsible and citizens should be aware of that when they cast their vote. We are reaching a point of no return after which it will be impossible to curb the catastrophic consequences of global warming.

SB With the onset of the war in Ukraine, the scientific community has raised the question of scientific collaborations with Russia, and under certain circumstances these collaborations have been cut off. What is Pugwash’s position on this? What about Israel?
KH Pugwash seeks to foster science diplomacy since its inception. For example, fostering science in diplomacy, where science can provide advice to inform and support foreign policy objectives (e.g. technical aspects in verification, safeguards, dismantlement, effects of nuclear weapons) and science for diplomacy, where scientific cooperation can improve international relations (salient examples in physics are the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME), the international Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) among others). Science is a universal culture and, as such, it is important that scientific exchange is not severed, particularly in times of conflict.
However, considering the world fragmentation and polarization, the restrictions to scientific exchange, the proliferation of misinformation and reduction of reliance in science by the public opinion, there are several challenges to science diplomacy. And this is happening while science is most needed, vis a vis global problems, like climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemic risks, and many other existential threats which require concerted, interdisciplinary collective action, new technologies that cross national boundaries which call for global actions and an increasing technology gap between rich and developing nations, which need ways to ensure inclusive, equitable and global development of these technologies to meet the SDGs.

SB The ‘new wars’ are increasingly technological and use more and more advanced systems including artificial intelligence, and the role of scientists in their development is crucial. How can we prevent science from being an instrument of war? What can scientific associations do (apart from launching appeals) to return to the role they played during the cold war, when they pushed governments towards denuclearisation?
KH This is at the core of our work in Pugwash. We need to raise awareness of the role of scientists in societal matters, particularly their involvement in war. As said above, Joseph Rotblat was the only scientist working for the Manhattan Project who resigned based on ethical considerations. In his Nobel acceptance speech in 1995, he appealed to the responsibility of scientists saying: “In these times when science plays such a powerful role in the life of our society, when the fate of all humanity may depend on the results of scientific research, it is incumbent upon all scientists to be fully aware of that role and to conduct themselves accordingly. I appeal to my scientific colleagues to remember their responsibility towards humanity”.
Our current president of Pugwash, Hussain Al-Shahristani, was imprisoned in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for nearly eleven years after refusing to collaborate on an Iraqi nuclear weapon. He is an eminent scientist whose courageous stance against nuclear weapons and his scientific approach to policymaking represent the core values of the Pugwash Conferences.

SB You are the first Pugwash president from a country that was not involved in the world conflicts of the last century. What has happened to the Pugwash in recent years? And who is part of it today?
KH The world has changed significantly since Pugwash was founded in 1957 and this means that, as all other institutions, it has to evolve to adapt to modern times. Er are adapting our governance to modern practices. We have an important and growing network of scientists and policy specialists covering all regions. We are working mainly remotely, however, we prioritize in-person meetings when necessary since this is fundamental for deep discussions and cannot be replaced by on-line meetings. We are also, as said, including young people to our activities because they are committed now and will continue the work in the future.
I am the first woman Secretary general.

Europe’s Freedom of Research: €100 Billion for ReBrain Europe

Sat, 03 May 2025 10:22:00 +0100

In the 1930s, the disastrous Nazi-fascist policies induced an unprecedented exodus of at least 15,000 intellectuals - scientists and artists, Jews and non-Jews - to the United States. See. e.g., the historical accounts in Adorno, Fleming, & Bailyn: The Intellectual Migration. Europe and America, 1930–1960 (Harvard University Press, 1969) and in Claus-Dieter Krohn: Emigration 1933–1945/1950 (Europäische Geschichte Online, 2011). Names like Einstein, Fermi, Segrè, Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and Gödel are well remembered, as are Adorno, Marcuse, and Fromm, among many others, along with nearly a thousand artists who shaped Hollywood as we know it. Without this immigration, the U.S. would hardly have reached the international scientific frontier in physics, chemistry, and medicine, would not have matured in social sciences, and would have faced greater difficulties in military technological advances (beginning with the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb).

Today, the policies of the current U.S. administration offer Europe the opportunity to reverse this flow. The Trump administration has imposed massive cuts – both actual and threatened - and even more gravely, to restrictions on research topics (especially in climate and diversity studies) and, more broadly, to limitations on academic freedom in ways reminiscent of “McCarthyism,” which imposed significant restrictions on freedom of thought and speech in the 1940s and 1950s under the banner of anti-communism and “national security.”

A palpable climate of fear pervades American academia, affecting non-citizen researchers -subject to stricter immigration controls and the constant threat of expulsion - as well as academics at large, who feel their most fundamental professional right - the freedom to research and express themselves - is under threat. An unprecedented battle is underway between the federal administration and Harvard University, extending far beyond the significant funding at stake to challenge academic autonomy itself. The attack on Harvard followed similar actions against Columbia and, as reported by the New York Times, has since targeted Princeton, Brown, Cornell, UPenn, and Northwestern. All signs suggest these attacks are paving the way for an assault on California’s public university system.

A Nature survey revealed that 75% of US scientists polled were considering leaving the country, with the figure rising to 80% among junior researchers. Robert Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk, told Times Higher Education (THE) that U.S. higher education is “experiencing unprecedented levels of threats,” citing “financial threats” and “state interference in admissions, hiring, teaching content, and institutional hierarchies.”

Europe, albeit too timidly, is slowly realising that this setback for international science could be transformed into a tremendous opportunity. In the 1930s, the American art historian William Spencer Cook remarked: “Hitler is my best friend. He shakes the tree, we collect the fruit.” In the face of a tragedy incomparably smaller, Europe may still harvest the fruit from the tree shaken by the American administration.

Recently, twelve European research ministers have signed a letter calling for EU-wide initiatives to coordinate efforts to welcome foreign researchers whose work is threatened by political interference and drastic funding cuts. Signatories include Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

Several European universities have already launched initiatives in this direction. The University of Toulouse has allocated €6 million to host US researchers in biology, health, climate change, and energy. Aix-Marseille Université has announced a plan to raise €15 million to recruit around 15 researchers and has already received over 300 applications, while Université Paris-Saclay aims to fund doctoral contracts and research stays for American academics. Belgium and Norway are also moving forward: Vrije Universiteit Brussel has opened 12 postdoctoral positions with a focus on US researchers, and the Norwegian government is considering measures to facilitate the entry of scientists and students from the US. In Italy, several universities have expressed interest in incentivising the hiring of American talent. On the legislative front, France has proposed a bill to establish the status of “scientific refugee”.

On these matters, however, broader initiatives are needed, both by the European Union and individual states. The important appeal of ReBrain Europe, signed by around 2,000 European scientists, aligns with this vision. The document states:“After the Second World War, Europe succeeded in attracting visionary minds and building shared institutions that are now global benchmarks, such as CERN for physics, ESO for astronomy, ESA for space, EMBL for molecular biology, and many others. Today, we can do the same, at a time when top-tier scientific expertise is seeking a new place to operate freely.”

ReBrain Europe must now become a priority programme for revitalising research in Europe, with adequate funding at both EU and national levels. We propose that the EU launch a €100 billion fund - financed through Eurobonds - to attract scholars from the US and and the rest of the world and to establish new high-calibre research institutions. While the European Commission seeks €800 billion - also financed through Eurobonds - to build a European military-industrial complex, investing €100 billion in research would send a clear signal of a Europe pursuing also a different path: one of scientific knowledge and academic freedom. ReBrain Europe could bring Europe back to the international technological frontier and fuel long-term economic growth while considering societal impact and environmental sustainability.

From an economic standpoint, this would be an excellent deal. Many studies, see e.g. M. Stamegna, C. Bonaiuti, P. Maranzano, and M. Pianta: The Economic Impact of Arms Spending in Germany, Italy, and Spain (Journal of Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, 2024), demonstrate that in Europe, the impact of military spending - which relies on components and systems imported from the US - on income and employment growth is far weaker than investments in healthcare and environmental sectors, where Europe excels. Accelerated research spending would offer widespread benefits and set Europe on a high-skill, high-productivity development path.

In parallel to the european initiative, each country could activate research programmes linked to ReBrain Europe and exempt from the budgetary constraints imposed by the European Stability Pact. For Italy, a four-year plan of €3 billion could be allocated to strengthening the public university system, creating new advanced research centres, encouraging the return of Italian scholars currently in the United States and abroad - 14,000 have emigrated in the past decade - attracting foreign students and researchers.

Which fields of applied research should be central to ReBrain Europe? First, the frontiers of information and communication technologies including generative artificial intelligence, quantum computing, a European public cloud, and cybersecurity. Second, medical and pharmaceutical research - focusing on vaccines, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and anti-cancer treatments. Third, environmental protection - from genuinely “green” hydrogen to technologies for disposing of the countless toxins we release into the environment. But also social sciences and humanities, which remain a European strength and are essential for the quality of our development.

Europe needs to strengthen (where they exist) and build (where they don’t) institutions similar to the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Italy is even further behind. We have already discussed in a previous article for Scienza in Rete the reduction in university funding and its consequences. We will not repeat those arguments here, but refer readers to the Accademia dei Lincei’s proposal for a 20-year programme (2026–2045) for Italy and Europe, which for Italy echoes the “Ambrosio Report” on fundamental research.

A second pillar of ReBrain Europe should focus on safeguarding and strengthening curiosity-driven, publicly funded basic research, which over the past three centuries has almost always been the source of major advancements in both knowledge and technology.

Europe should have the courage to establish institutions like Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, which hosted Einstein, Gödel, and von Neumann, among others—where scientists were not required to produce reports or attend faculty meetings, but only to use their intellect. See the fascinating account by its first director, Abraham Flexner, in Flexner, A. and Dijkgraaf, R.: The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 2017).

This path naturally requires resisting any attempt to privatise an ever-growing share of research or to place the remaining public research under political control. Certainly, US-based researchers will not abandon the American environment only to find themselves in vaguely similar institutional circumstances.

These are not merely theoretical concerns. The increasing emphasis - now spanning several decades - in Europe on so-called “useful research,” legitimized by the close symbiosis between academia and industry, represents a troubling trend. This is not to suggest that such collaborations are unnecessary or unproductive; on the contrary, they are often essential and yield substantial benefits. However, they should be confined to applied research and must not exert influence over basic research.

Concerns about political control over the public academic system are equally far from abstract. Even in a country like Italy, where research independence is constitutionally guaranteed (Article 33), prominent voices within academia itself have called for some degree of political oversight ("if the state provides the funding, the government should have a say in how it is spent") a position that glaringly overlooks the fundamental distinction between the State and the government. Meanwhile, legislative proposals—fortunately rejected thus far—have sought to compel universities to disclose any information requested by intelligence services.

In the face of the conflict between the Trump administration and U.S. universities, and the opportunities opening for Europe, a bold political and cultural operation with substantial investment is crucial. ReBrain Europe is an opportunity we must not miss.

AI Agents as assistants in scientific research

Sergio Cima — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 09:04:00 +0100

The landscape of contemporary scientific research presents several significant challenges. On one hand, the growing specialization requires increasingly vertical expertise, while on the other, the need for interdisciplinary studies demands the ability to navigate through different domains of knowledge. This paradox puts pressure on researchers, who must balance depth and breadth in their investigations.

At the same time, the number of scientific publications continues to grow at a steady pace. It is estimated that millions of new studies are published annually in peer-reviewed journals. This vast amount of information makes it difficult for any individual to keep track of all relevant developments, even within their own specific field.

Figure 1. Number of articles published in scientific journals, source: Openalex.org

Finally, the coding of experiments, data analysis, and report writing require technical skills that often divert researchers from conceptual work. A large portion of time is spent on repetitive tasks that could benefit from automation, such as literature review, programming standard experimental routines, or drafting and formatting documents.

In this context, artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) seem to be excellent candidates as research assistants. “Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas?” is the title of an article that examined the ability of LLMs to generate original research ideas. The study, conducted by a team from Stanford University, involved over 100 researchers in the field of natural language processing (NLP) to evaluate the quality of ideas generated by both humans and LLMs. Each idea was blind-evaluated by expert researchers, following criteria such as novelty, feasibility, and effectiveness: the ideas generated by AI were judged to be more innovative than those from human experts (although more difficult to implement).

AI-based Research Agents: Agent Laboratory

Agent Laboratory was developed by Samuel Schmidgall from Johns Hopkins University, who led a research team at AMD, providing computational resources for the operation of the models. Agent Laboratory functions as a collaborative ecosystem of specialized LLM-based agents emulating different roles within a research laboratory. These include the PhD student, primarily responsible for literature review and result interpretation; the postdoc researcher, contributing to the formulation of experimental plans; the machine learning engineer (ML Engineer), responsible for data preparation and code implementation; and the professor, collaborating in the writing phase to synthesize the research findings.

The research process with Agent Laboratory consists of three key stages. The first is the literature review, during which agents gather and analyze relevant publications via the arXiv API. This phase helps contextualize the work and identify relevant methodologies. The second phase is experimental, which includes planning, data preparation, and executing experiments. Here, mle-solver (machine learning problem solver) comes into play, a specialized component that autonomously generates, tests, and refines machine learning code. This tool uses an iterative method, continuously evaluating results and making adjustments to improve performance. Finally, the third phase involves writing the scientific report, facilitated by paper-solver (scientific article solver), a module that synthesizes results into a standard academic format. The system generates structured documents according to scientific publication conventions, complete with abstract, introduction, methodology, results, and discussion.

Figure 2. How Agent Laboratory Works (AgentLaboratory.github.io)

The system can operate either fully autonomously, where agents sequentially proceed through all stages without human intervention, or in co-pilot mode (collaborative assistance), where researchers can provide feedback and guidance at each checkpoint of the process.

Evaluations conducted on the system by the research team led by Schmidgall have revealed promising results. The experiments involved a group of 10 volunteer PhD students who assessed the scientific articles autonomously produced by Agent Laboratory. These tests systematically compared the performance of different language models as processing engines, generating a total of 15 articles on 5 different research topics. The data shows that articles generated using OpenAI’s “o1-preview” model were perceived as the most useful, with the best quality of documentation. The “o1-mini” model, also from OpenAI, scored highest for experimental quality. These differences highlight how the choice of language model significantly influences the quality of the research produced. The co-pilot mode, which integrates human feedback, showed significant improvements in the overall quality of the articles produced. Scores increased in various evaluation metrics, particularly in technical quality, clarity, and methodological rigor. This suggests that human intervention at strategic points in the process can substantially enhance the final results.

AgentRxiv: Towards Autonomous Collaborative Research

Despite the significant progress of Agent Laboratory, a fundamental limitation of autonomous research systems is that they operate in isolation. Schmidgall and his team have therefore given Agent Laboratory a companion, AgentRxiv, a platform that functions as a preprint server specifically for research produced by AI-based agents.

AgentRxiv, inspired by established digital archives like arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv, facilitates knowledge sharing between autonomous laboratories. Unlike traditional archives that contain human research, AgentRxiv is designed “by agents for agents,” allowing AI systems to cumulatively build on each other’s discoveries.

The platform implements a similarity-based search mechanism that allows agents to retrieve the most relevant past research based on their queries. This targeted access to a growing database of agent-generated works promotes interdisciplinary knowledge transfer and accelerates scientific progress through iterative advancements.

Figure 3. The workflow of Agent Laboratory integrated into AgentRxiv (AgentRxiv.github.io)

Experiments conducted with AgentRxiv have empirically demonstrated the advantages of collaboration between artificial intelligence agents. One particularly significant study focused on the progressive improvement of reasoning techniques on the MATH-500 benchmark, a collection of 500 complex mathematical problems that serves as a standard for evaluating AI’s reasoning capabilities. In these experiments, Agent Laboratory systems were tasked with actually solving the mathematical problems, developing and refining increasingly effective reasoning strategies through the sharing of their approaches on AgentRxiv.

Starting from a baseline accuracy of 70% (the initial result obtained using the “GPT-4o mini” model without advanced reasoning techniques), autonomous laboratories connected to AgentRxiv gradually developed and perfected reasoning algorithms. When the same experiments were conducted without access to AgentRxiv, performance stabilized around 73-74%, demonstrating the importance of cumulative knowledge for further progress.

Another notable aspect is the generalization of the algorithms discovered. The simultaneous divergence averaging (SDA) method, initially developed for MATH-500, showed consistent improvements on other benchmarks such as GPQA (university-level questions), MMLU-Pro (questions requiring deeper and more specialized comprehension across various domains), and MedQA (complex medical questions). The most significant improvements were observed on MedQA and for models with lower initial baseline values, highlighting the robust adaptability of simultaneous divergence averaging. The strength of this technique lies in its ability to approach a problem from multiple angles simultaneously, reducing the likelihood of systematic errors that can occur when using a single reasoning method.

Also interesting are the results obtained with parallel research: a method where multiple artificial research laboratories work simultaneously on similar problems, sharing their findings. In this experiment, three independent Agent Laboratory systems, configured identically but operating simultaneously with asynchronous (non-simultaneous) access to AgentRxiv, achieved a maximum accuracy of 79.8% on MATH-500, surpassing the performance observed in the sequential experimentation, where only one laboratory worked at a time. Moreover, intermediate milestones such as 76.2% accuracy were reached after only seven articles in the parallel setup, compared to 23 articles required in the sequential setup. This demonstrates how collaboration among multiple artificial research systems can significantly accelerate scientific progress.

AI Scientist-v2 and AI Co-Scientist

In addition to Agent Laboratory, other autonomous research systems have recently made significant progress. AI Scientist-v2, developed by Sakana AI, is an autonomous scientific research system capable of generating original ideas, conducting experiments through an “agent tree” (a tree-based exploration method where each node represents a potential experiment, allowing agents to investigate multiple possibilities in parallel and dive deeper into the most promising hypotheses). This system produced the first fully AI-generated paper accepted at a workshop of the International Conference on Learning Representations after peer review.

Meanwhile, Google has introduced AI Co-Scientist, a multi-agent system built on Gemini 2.0 that uses a “generate, debate, evolve” paradigm to formulate scientific hypotheses. Its effectiveness was demonstrated in the biomedical field, where it identified promising drug candidates for acute myeloid leukemia, new targets for liver fibrosis, and summarized discoveries on antimicrobial resistance mechanisms in just two days.

Empirical Benefits of AI Agent Collaboration

Agent Laboratory and AgentRxiv, AI Scientist-v2, and AI Co-Scientist represent a paradigm shift in how we conceive the relationship between artificial intelligence and scientific research. Rather than replacing human researchers, these systems aim to serve as enhanced assistants, automating repetitive tasks and allowing scientists to focus on the creative and conceptual aspects of research.

This symbiosis between human and artificial intelligence could significantly accelerate the pace of scientific discovery. Researchers can delegate the in-depth literature review, implementation of experimental routines, and documentation of results to AI agents, freeing up time for formulating new hypotheses, interpreting data, and engaging in interdisciplinary synthesis.

Furthermore, the demonstration that AI agents can collaborate through platforms like AgentRxiv suggests the possibility of a new form of collective science, where AI systems contribute to the evolution of knowledge in ways that complement human intelligence.

However, important issues also emerge that need to be considered. Ethical concerns regarding the potential generation of misleading scientific content or the propagation of biases in results require further reflection. Robust governance mechanisms must be developed to ensure that these systems produce content aligned with ethical principles and social values.

President Trump reshapes US research landscape

Sergio Cima — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 22:50:00 +0100

20 January 2025 marks a turning point in US science policy, with a series of executive orders drastically redefining the role of federal science and research agencies. A detailed analysis of the documents reveals an approach that fundamentally changes the basis of US climate, energy and biomedical research policy.

This comprehensive list shows the scope and breadth of the first day’s interventions, which touch virtually every aspect of the federal government, from foreign policy to national security, from energy to immigration, from administrative reform to social policy.

Energy and climate: a paradigm shift

The energy agenda outlined on 20 January 2025 is articulated through a series of executive orders aimed at dismantling President Biden’s policies.

The centrepiece of this shift is the “Unleashing American Energy” order, which not only rescinds the previous administration’s key environmental and climate change regulations, but also dissolves the interagency working group responsible for assessing the social cost of greenhouse gases.

Particularly significant are the abandonment of the Paris Agreement (Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements) and the elimination of the ‘social cost of CO2’ as a decision-making tool, which the Trump administration considers an arbitrary obstacle to economic development: previous policies are blamed for creating ‘a dangerously inadequate and intermittent energy supply and an increasingly unreliable grid’ (Unleashing American Energy).

This emergency narrative is used to justify sweeping interventions. As the executive order points out, ‘America is blessed with an abundance of energy and natural resources that have historically fueled our Nation’s economic prosperity’, but this abundance has allegedly been hampered by ‘burdensome and ideologically driven regulations’ that have ’limited reliable and affordable electricity generation, reduced job creation, and imposed high energy costs on our citizens’ (Unleashing American Energy).

The vision also extends to water management, as evidenced by the Putting People Over Fish memorandum, which orders the diversion of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of California, explicitly prioritising human uses over environmental considerations. Similarly, the order Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential aims to unlock Alaska’s resources, presenting them as crucial to ’enhancing our nation’s economic and national security for generations to come’.

A particularly important element is the approach to offshore wind energy projects. His executive order (Temporary Withdrawal from Offshore Wind Leasing) not only suspends new offshore wind leases, but also initiates a comprehensive review of existing permits. The official reason given is environmental and safety concerns, but the measure could have a crippling effect on the renewables industry. Moreover, this measure is part of a wider strategy to favour fossil fuels over clean energy, as evidenced by the withdrawal of the ‘social cost of CO2’ calculation and the deregulation of the mining industry.

These orders outline an approach that explicitly prioritises energy development and economic growth over environmental concerns, a clear reversal of the priorities of the previous government. The emergency narrative is used to justify swift and decisive intervention to remove what is perceived as over-regulation in the energy sector.

Reorganisation of scientific agencies

The reorganisation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to be headed by James Payne, includes a major overhaul of environmental impact assessment criteria, removing the ‘social cost of CO2’ from analyses and removing regulations considered burdensome to energy development. It also significantly streamlines the approval process for energy projects.

As for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the appointment of Jayanta Bhattacharya, Stanford professor of medicine and co-author of the ‘Great Barrington Declaration’, which was highly critical of the lockdown policy during the H1N1 pandemic, seems to reflect Trump’s willingness to radically overhaul federal health policy, particularly in relation to pandemic management.

David Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Florida and a physician, has been nominated by Trump as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Known for his sceptical views on vaccines and for supporting discredited theories about their link to autism, his appointment has alarmed the scientific community. With no experience in health agency management or infectious diseases, Weldon could have a significant impact on US vaccine policy, especially in conjunction with Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has been appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services and is equally critical of vaccines.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under the leadership of Martin Makary, will have to implement what was stated in the executive order “Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost of Living Crisis”: eliminating unnecessary administrative costs and rent-seeking practices that increase health care costs.

With the appointment of Jared Isaacman, the billionaire commander of the Inspiration4 civilian space mission, NASA may be moving more towards the commercialisation of space, with greater reliance on private companies. This could have both positive effects, such as reduced operating costs and accelerated innovation, and negative effects, such as less focus on basic research and climate science. It remains to be seen whether Earth observation programmes, which are crucial for monitoring climate change, will be cut or restructured.

Horizontal measures and impact on research

The executive orders introduce measures that will redefine all agencies across the board. On the personnel front, there is an immediate freeze on federal hiring and the elimination of DEI programmes, accompanied by new performance evaluation criteria. Funding is undergoing a major overhaul, with the suspension of funds tied to President Biden’s Anti-Inflation Bill for green energy projects and a reallocation of resources according to new priorities.

One of the potentially most significant aspects of the new science policy is the review of international collaborations, which could follow the ‘America First’ order. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could limit US participation in global climate research programmes, and new restrictions on scientific collaboration with China could emerge, especially in sensitive areas such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and semiconductors. If accompanied by a reduction in funding for joint projects, these measures could significantly alter the US role in global research.

The Log and the Speck: The True Causes of Wildfires and Floods

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 10:21:00 +0100

Even in the face of the vast Los Angeles wildfires—still ongoing—as in other recent circumstances, the media’s attention is primarily focused on the most immediate and “proximal” causes: the malfunctioning of the power grid, insufficient water reserves, the unpreparedness of newly hired firefighters, and so on. Often these explanations are pretextual (such as the protection of the Delta smelt, an endangered fish species, which allegedly led to insufficient water supply from the Los Angeles Bay) but, above all, they reflect a tendency to ignore and avoid discussing overarching and long-term causes, essentially climate change. It is as if acknowledging that climate change is primarily caused by fossil fuel use and land exploitation is no longer permissible in the era of rampant neoliberalism. Without understanding the causal chain, “extreme” events are inevitably bound to increase in intensity and frequency, and we aim to explain why.

The rise in temperature, which increases year by year, is associated with other atmospheric disturbances that collectively constitute climate change. It is crucial to emphasize that this is not just about rising temperatures but also about changes in the water cycle (and thus both rainfall and drought), shifts in wind patterns, and so forth. These global phenomena are the root cause of individual episodes (Valencia, Los Angeles). Local contributing factors, such as over-urbanization, deforestation, power grid failures, and inadequate containment responses, then exacerbate the effects. Focusing solely on local contributing factors is pretextual: in which parts of the world are there not at least some vulnerabilities that increase susceptibility to climate change? Fires and floods can occur almost anywhere, given the widespread elements of weakness that amplify vulnerability to climate change. In this sense, the local causes invoked “ad hoc” (consider the debates following the Valencia flood) can be compared to the “speck” in the Gospel, where the “log” is climate change (for those unfamiliar, the reference is to the Gospel of Matthew, 7:1-5). However, this distinction does not seem clear to many Italian journalists (unlike the Guardian, which dedicates a daily section to climate change).

To limit future global warming, we must drastically and immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The technologies are already available: we just need to decide to invest in decarbonization projects that reduce emissions by at least 7% per year, year after year, to achieve the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Mitigation actions (i.e., emission reductions) must be accompanied by adaptation measures to make territories more resilient and capable of withstanding the impact of extreme events. The “log” must not distract from the “specks,” which are often significant in themselves. We must also address the contributing factors, which generally include land misuse; however, these interventions will be ineffective if the overarching global problem is not tackled.

The goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be shared by all political forces, as it brings both direct and indirect benefits to everyone. Since Italy is located in an area particularly vulnerable to climate change, it is in the country’s interest to achieve decarbonization as quickly as possible. Estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest that with investments equivalent to approximately 2% of Gross National Product (GNP), the net-zero emissions target could be reached by 2050. This should be a common objective for all, both governing and opposition parties. Postponing decarbonization benefits only a few powerful lobbies that are interested in delaying it to continue using fossil fuels.

The Acceleration of Climate Change

The temperature of the atmosphere continues to rise at an increasingly rapid pace (0.28^oC per decade between 2002–2024, compared to 0.11^oC per decade between 1980–2001), with significant regional differences: the average warming in Europe is about 2.5 times the global average, reaching approximately 3.75^oC instead of 1.5^oC. The years 2024 and 2023 are the hottest since pre-industrial times and likely the hottest in the last 125,000 years. On Friday, January 10, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed that the global average surface temperature in 2024 was 1.6^oC warmer than the pre-industrial period. In 2023, it was 1.48^oC warmer.

Continued warming leads to an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme events, causing ever-greater damage to populations and ecosystems. For each extreme event, World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of researchers from various institutions established in 2014 to investigate causal links between climate and catastrophic events, calculates the impact of climate change on the intensity and frequency of these events. For instance, WWA determined that in Hurricane Helene in the USA, observed rainfall was 70% more likely to occur, and winds were 150% stronger due to climate change. For the Valencia flood in September 2024, WWA concluded that such events are 12% more intense and twice as likely to occur because of climate change. Conversely, for the Emilia Romagna flood in May 2023, WWA concluded that climate change did not significantly increase the frequency or intensity of such events in that region.

The effects of climate change on human health are manifold. Limiting the discussion to immediate impacts, Hurricane Helene caused at least 130 deaths in the United States, the Valencia flood caused at least 205 deaths, and the 2023 heatwave led to 47,000 excess deaths in Europe. These are just a few examples limited to wealthy countries, to which indirect effects, such as increased risks of infectious diseases and damage to agriculture and food production, must be added.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions brings co-benefits beyond limiting future global warming. For example, reducing the use of combustion engines leads to less pollution, positively impacting health. For countries like Italy, reducing fossil fuel use (coal, fuel oil, and methane) would also lead to greater economic independence and lower electricity production costs, as Spain has demonstrated in recent years.

The human, social, and economic costs of these phenomena are very high and, in the medium to long term, will exceed the costs of mitigation—that is, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States alone, the number of disasters costing over $1 billion each rose from six in 2002 to 18 in 2022 and 28 in 2023. The BBC reports that damages from wildfires in the Los Angeles area in early January 2025 are estimated at $135 billion.

Obstacles to Political Decisions

Political decision-making difficulties arise primarily from uncertainty about which solutions are most cost-effective and should be prioritized. Initiatives like those of the Wellcome Trust and ESRC in the UK, which aim to produce systematic reviews of the scientific literature on mitigation solutions, including co-benefits and costs, are highly valuable.

For Italy, it is undeniable that drastic and immediate greenhouse gas emission reductions would bring benefits, as the country is located in a region more exposed to climate change than many others. Achieving the European Union’s ‘Fit-for-55’ target by 2030 and the net-zero target by 2050 offers greater benefits than costs, co-benefits for citizens and ecosystems, reduced energy dependency on fossil fuel-producing countries, and lower energy production costs. For these reasons, it is in the interest of all political forces to quickly promote decarbonization and advocate for the EU’s decarbonization policies while convincing all countries worldwide that achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is in the collective interest. Conversely, delaying emission reductions and perpetuating fossil fuel dependency is short-sighted and harmful to the country.

The need for mitigation underscores the necessity of global interventions. However, it seems that public discussion on mitigation is currently stagnant, and it is difficult to discern a shared strategy. In Italy as well, an analysis of the obstacles and opportunities must be stimulated. We highlight some of the difficulties:

The lack of sufficiently widespread consensus, as evidenced by protests from farmers in various European countries, is an obstacle to political decisions. The absence of consensus arises in some cases from objective economic and productive difficulties and in many cases from sectoral or ideological considerations. Often, too much space is given to powerful lobbies that have a clear interest in delaying decarbonization, even though this goes against the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens;
There is a need for cultural evolution that leads citizens to become globally responsible individuals who address the global changes characterizing the modern era. Only cultural evolution can provide the necessary political pressure and influence government choices;
Dissenters facing objective difficulties (productive sectors penalized by the transition) must be economically supported, and dissenters driven by ideological reasons must be persuaded through social pressure and regulations.

Individual Actions

The essential measures are those outlined by the IEA, the Green Deal, and other similar initiatives mentioned earlier, which require coordinated political action. Individual actions matter only if there is a general climate of commitment and shared objectives, starting with governments. Without investments that enable choices with zero greenhouse gas emissions, individual citizens can do very little.

For example, let us consider transportation. Just as during the early days of the combustion engine automobile era, states invested in infrastructure to make their use possible, today substantial investments are necessary to make electric mobility viable and to shift individuals’ choices toward public transportation. Without investments that make railway transport efficient even on regional lines, it is hard to imagine individuals favoring it over personal cars. And without significant investment in charging systems, it is unlikely that individuals will replace combustion-engine cars with electric ones. Without investments in alternative energy (solar, wind, hydroelectric) that reduce energy costs and enable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions related to electricity production, achieving decarbonization goals is difficult. Despite some progress (an 8% reduction in European emissions in 2023), globally, we are still behind the Paris targets of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Here are some individual behaviors that can significantly contribute to mitigating climate change:

Reducing meat consumption;
Using cars less and favoring public transportation, walking, and cycling when possible, and reducing air travel;
Promoting recycling;
Reducing unnecessary consumption and the production of waste and rubbish;
Respecting and protecting green spaces;
Investing in ecologically-oriented funds (e.g., ESG);
Reducing electricity consumption.

Changes in individual behaviors make sense in the context of active political engagement, which primarily involves the drastic and immediate elimination of fossil fuels and the transition to renewable energies. We expect governments to respect and implement the European Green Deal and achieve the European Union’s ‘Fit-for-55’ target by 2030 as a first step toward net-zero emissions. In a positive political climate, focused on ecological transition and the industrial and agricultural reconversion, we expect that individual behaviors will also be encouraged and promoted. On the contrary, policies that support the use of fossil fuels (for instance, the European Environment Agency (EEA) reports that in 2022, fossil fuel subsidies in Europe amounted to €25 billion) or delay measures to achieve the net-zero emissions target by 2050 only signal to individual citizens that the problem is not so urgent.

No, the wildfires in California are not "ideological"

Jacopo Mengarelli — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 22:16:00 +0100

Federico Rampini continues his battle against the “ideologies” of ecological transition. This time, in an editorial in Corriere della Sera (An “Ideological” Wildfire, January 11, 2025) and in a video for the online edition, Rampini focused on the wildfires in California, which have so far resulted in 11 deaths and over 100,000 evacuations. Let’s examine what is true, false, or ambiguous in what he wrote and said.

To start with, the entire content is framed within the diminishing rhetoric of “ideologues” versus “pragmatists,” where the usual drama unfolds: the former are wrong to impose absurd environmental laws, and the latter, the rational ones, try to bring the debate back to reality.

Rampini states that environmentalist California “has decided that combustion cars will be outlawed from 2035.” In reality, the American state has banned the sale of internal combustion vehicles starting in 2035, but those who already own such cars will still be able to use them legally, as reported by the Guardian. The same measure has also been adopted in Europe – we had already discussed this here.

Rampini also writes that left-wing policies are “erecting a wall of local laws, particularly to combat climate change.” It makes little sense to polarize the debate this way. Without new laws, and therefore new restrictions, ecological transition cannot happen. Environmental laws, however, should be seen for what they are: great opportunities to modernize the labor market.

Ideological Nature

Then comes the highlight. Wildfires are described as “a catastrophe partly natural, partly man-made.” This is another insinuation to downplay the human role in causing these fires. This requires further explanation.

The potential causes of the ignition and spread of a wildfire can be multiple, as explained, among others, by the website of our Civil Protection. While natural causes such as lightning or volcanic eruptions exist, human causes are often predominant, especially in areas with significant human presence. Tragically, Rampini acknowledges this, contradicting his previous statement. Specifically, it has often been noted that some California wildfires were likely ignited by faults in electrical grid infrastructure. This, too, is a human cause, not a natural one.

However, ignition alone does not explain the vast area burned. NBC News reports:

From December to February, California typically experiences its rainy season, but unlike the northern part of the state, which received its share of precipitation, Southern California has been abnormally dry over the past eight months. The last time Los Angeles recorded more than a tenth of an inch of rain was in early May.

Combining a very dry winter with strong winds dramatically increases the risk of a massive wildfire. Santa Ana wind gusts exceeded 160 kilometers per hour, an exceptionally high value even for this already intense wind.

Southern California is about to be blasted by one of its most powerful Santa Ana windstorm in recorded history.

It may not be #1, but the combination of high population, drought conditions, abundant fuel, and mountain wave strength may create world-record high fire danger. pic.twitter.com/iePMforh77

— Edgar McGregor (@edgarrmcgregor) January 6, 2025

Drought can be attributed to the possible impacts of climate change caused by the rise in global average temperature. Notably, 2024 has been confirmed as the hottest year on record, with an average temperature exceeding 1.5°C for the first time since measurements began.

Ideological Climate

The role of climate change in wildfire ignition and spread is well-established for many regions worldwide, where attribution studies have identified a clear link and, in any case, an increased probability of damages. This is particularly evident in fire weather, which refers to weather conditions that favor the spread of wildfires. The guide Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change: A Guide for Journalists by World Weather Attribution, which we at Climate Media Center Italia translated into Italian, explains this well.

Although improved firefighting systems and land use changes have reduced burned areas between 1998 and 2015, “the actual wildfire risk is still increasing in many parts of the world.” This is due to rising temperatures.

The 2019-20 Australian Black Summer wildfires in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) were amplified by climate change – the conditions that led to the fires in NSW were made at least 30% more likely. Along the west coast of North America, from Alaska to California, recent wildfires have become more likely, and their burned areas have increased. Between 1984 and 2015, over 4 million hectares of burned area in the western United States are directly attributable to climate change.

The data is overwhelming for Europe, northern Eurasia, the United States, and Australia, and emerging evidence is beginning to surface for southern China as well.

Therefore, Rampini is wrong when he says in the video for Corriere online: “The automatic reflex, especially in an environmentalist state like California, is to blame climate change,” adding that scientists “urge us to be more precise.” He even claims that blaming the climate serves as an excuse to conceal other causes.

He is correct, however, in stating that “serious scientists urge us to distinguish between extreme [perhaps he meant ‘weather’] events and long-term climate change.” One thing is a single event, another is long-term trends; one thing is weather, another is climate. Long-term statistics reveal what we have already stated: wildfires – like heatwaves, droughts, and other phenomena – are amplified and/or made more likely by the climate crisis. Thus, ultimately, Rampini is wrong again. Furthermore, attribution studies on specific events, which differ from trends, are also starting to confirm this, as we have seen.

Finally, Rampini makes a couple of other errors, such as his odd call for “selective deforestation policies” and his claim that “wildfires are part of the natural cycle of forests.”

Giorgio Vacchiano, president of Climate Media Center Italia and professor of forestry, planning, and forest ecology at the University of Milan, explained that “fire prevention programs do exist and are absolutely necessary.” He added, “California has implemented ‘prescribed burning’ on 300,000 hectares annually to reduce ground fuels. But the area at risk is still vast, and it will take several years to treat even a portion of it.” He also confirmed that “grass and shrubs grow rapidly after rainy years like 2023 and dry out quickly after dry years like 2024.”

So we can forgive Rampini’s clumsy use of the term “deforestation.”
As for “natural” wildfires, Vacchiano points out that this is an inappropriate concept: “First, because every forest has its own natural fire cycle, ranging from one year in savannas to many hundreds of years in tropical or central European forests. Second, because in anthropized areas, human-caused ignitions have almost entirely replaced natural ones. Third, the priority is not ecosystem resilience or fire frequency for its health, but protecting vulnerable interface areas.”

In short, Rampini’s muddled narrative has once again contributed to polarizing society (hopefully a small part, even if it comes from the pages of Corriere), which most needs scientific evidence, not opinions, to build public debate. In fact, we take this opportunity to invite Rampini – along with “pragmatic” and “ideological” colleagues alike – to download the guide translated into Italian. It’s about 30 pages and a quick read.

One last thing: a fundamental rule of journalism – as stated in the new Code of Ethics of the CNOG, effective June 1, 2025 – is to “cite sources” and verify their “reliability and authority.” We haven’t seen much of that here.

Discovered a New Carbon-Carbon Chemical Bond

Chiara D'Errico — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 09:50:00 +0100

After nearly a year of review, on September 25, a study was published in Nature that has sparked a lot of discussion, especially among chemists. A group of researchers from Hokkaido University synthesized a molecule that experimentally demonstrated the existence of a new type of chemical bond, something that does not happen very often.

In a world where we are more or less accustomed to NASA’s bombastic press conferences and the announcement of a new miracle drug almost every week, it remains a rare event to witness equally grand headlines concerning chemistry, particularly basic chemistry. Yet in recent days, announcements have flourished about how this discovery could revolutionize chemistry textbooks and everything we know about chemical bonds. The excitement within the chemistry community is quite palpable over a publication that, in any case, is truly extraordinary, perhaps precisely because it does not happen often. However, it might be equally premature to rush to update general chemistry books just yet.

But before understanding why this study is so important for the comprehension of covalent chemical bonds, let’s start from the beginning and talk about what a covalent bond is. A covalent bond occurs when two atoms share one or more electrons, thereby creating around them a sort of “shared” electronic cloud concentrated in the space between the two atomic nuclei. Without going into details, this sharing of electrons lowers the energy and makes the molecule more stable, thus forming the chemical bond. Its characteristics (length, strength, electron imbalance toward one atom or another, etc.) depend on the properties of the atoms involved in the bond. More or less, this definition of a covalent bond has remained unchanged since it was formulated by Lewis in 1916 and has been experimentally proven many times, to the extent that it is considered one of the foundations of modern chemistry.

In 1931, Linus Pauling theoretically proposed the possibility of a covalent bond where a single electron (rather than two) is shared between two atoms. This theory, which he exemplified with the H₂+ molecule, has never been experimentally verified and is generally used to visualize unstable transition states. The problem with this type of bond, hypothesized by Pauling and called the single-electron sigma bond, is that it is extremely unstable. Therefore, any molecule exhibiting it would immediately undergo some type of electronic rearrangement, as occurs in reactions like the Cope rearrangement, or in very rare cases in chemical reactions involving radicals. In any case, they have never been isolated and have always been studied theoretically.

The researchers of the study published in Nature exploited the characteristics of a class of molecules, hexaarylethane (HPE) derivatives, to synthesize and study this type of bond spectroscopically. Due to the intrinsic properties of HPEs, the carbon-carbon bond at the center of the molecule is much longer, and this unusual length made it possible to obtain a stable single-electron bond by removing one of the two electrons from the bond between the carbon atoms. The researchers were then able to study it using both spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction techniques, effectively “photographing” a new type of chemical bond that, until then, remained in the realm of hypotheses.

The achievement of the Hokkaido group is certainly remarkable, and the almost year-long review process somewhat confirms that we are dealing with a potentially revolutionary article in a discipline like chemistry, which, despite always being at the forefront in many fields of application, does not often offer great thrills in its more theoretical and basic aspects. It is not surprising, then, that the tones used to announce the publication of this paper have often been overly enthusiastic. We are certainly still in a preliminary phase, and this study needs to be replicated and validated before incorporating the single-electron bond into general chemistry textbooks. The potential to revolutionize what we know about chemical bonds is certainly there, but the road ahead is still long.

What seems more concrete, however, is exemplified in the words of the study’s lead author, Takuya Shimajiri: “These results therefore constitute the first experimental evidence of a carbon-carbon single-electron covalent bond, which could pave the way for further developments in the chemistry of this scarcely explored type of bond.”

A deeper understanding of the functioning of chemical bonds, particularly this type involving an odd number of electrons, is very important because it allows the scientific world to further explore the behavior of matter and thus expand the range of applications in materials science and beyond. The presence of an odd number of electrons, as well as the presence of radicals, is often associated with the tendency of materials to conduct electricity. The study of single-electron sigma bonds could open the door to the design of new materials and new applications. In short, a first step, seemingly related only to the often-considered more boring part of general chemistry, which could potentially revolutionize what we know and lead to new and more sophisticated practical applications. Perhaps it was worth waiting a year to see it.

Why have neural networks won the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry?

Chiara Sabelli — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 12:07:00 +0100

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John J. Hopfield, an American physicist and biologist from Princeton University, and to Geoffrey Hinton, a British computer scientist and neuroscientist from the University of Toronto, for utilizing tools from statistical physics in the development of methods underlying today’s powerful machine learning technologies.

Why Hopfield and Hinton’s work on artificial neural networks was recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics can be understood by reading the opening lines of the article Hopfield himself published in 1982. Hopfield, who had recently left Princeton for the California Institute of Technology to focus full-time on neurobiology, asks whether the ability of neural networks to store information arises from a collective behavior that spontaneously emerges in systems where a large number of fundamental entities interact with each other.

Hopfield asks this question because there are systems in physics where something similar happens. A good example is magnetic materials. We can imagine a magnetic material as a lattice with atoms positioned at the vertices. Each atom can have its spin pointing up or down. Spins give atoms magnetic properties that cause them to interact with each other. Therefore, the spin of each atom is determined by the spins of all the other atoms in the lattice. By studying these systems, physicists discovered that stationary states exist—states that minimize the system’s energy—where spins align in groups. This results in the formation of “magnetic domains” in the material, clusters of nearby atoms with aligned spins. If some spins are flipped relative to the other atoms in the domain, the system will eventually return to the stationary state.

In a neural network, the analog of atoms are neurons, and the analog of spin is the activation state of the neuron, either “on” or “off.” The analogy can also be extended to the type of interaction, based on knowledge that was already common during Hopfield’s time—that the connections between neurons, synapses, strengthen the more often connected neurons are simultaneously activated in response to a certain stimulus (just as the energy of a magnetic system decreases when two adjacent spins align).

Thus, it can be expected that stationary states, analogous to magnetic domains, will also emerge in a neural network.

The existence of a set of patterns that our brain can recognize can be compared to the stationary states of a magnetic system. If the system receives a distorted version of a pattern it has seen before, it will be able to associate it with the stored pattern.

Imagine comparing a handwritten letter A with a printed A. There will be differences between the two images: some pixels that are white in the printed letter are black in the handwritten letter, and vice versa. The printed letter plays the role of the system’s stationary states, while the handwritten letter is a perturbation. Letting the system evolve, it will eventually reach an equilibrium state corresponding to the nearest minimum energy configuration (the printed letter).

Learning from data

The networks built by Hopfield were deterministic, meaning they allowed the recognition of a certain number of precise patterns—the stationary states. This approach may work for recognizing handwritten letters, but it is not flexible enough for more complex tasks, such as determining whether a dog is present in an image. There is no precise pattern of what a dog is. Between 1983 and 1985, Hinton, along with computer scientist David Ackley and biophysicist Terrence Sejnowski, developed a more flexible version of Hopfield’s network, which they called the Boltzmann machine. We can imagine the Boltzmann machine as a magnetic system where the spins are agitated by temperature, which Hopfield had fixed at zero. The “noise” introduced by the temperature allows the Boltzmann machine to classify each image statistically based on a set of versions of that pattern that it is shown. This capability is the basis of the concept of training neural networks that we still use today. By showing the network a sufficiently large and representative number of images containing dogs, the network becomes capable of recognizing images containing dogs it has never seen before.

Toward modern neural networks

Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines are called recurrent artificial neural networks, meaning that each neuron can, in principle, be connected to all other neurons in the network. In the second half of the 1980s, Hinton began working on another type of neural network called feed-forward networks. These are the networks that most resemble the ones we use today and that power the most successful applications.

In these networks, neurons are organized into layers arranged sequentially, imagine from left to right, and the activation of neurons in one layer depends only on the inputs coming from the neurons in the previous layer. Hinton, along with psychologist David Rumelhart and computer scientist Ronald Williams, demonstrated how it was possible to use this type of neural network to perform classification tasks, using a particular training strategy called backpropagation. In doing so, the authors realized that the presence of hidden layers of neurons enabled the completion of tasks that had previously been unsolvable.

An important step forward came in 1989, when Hinton, along with Yan LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, understood that to effectively handle images, it was necessary to synthesize the information contained in the sequence of pixels in the image and proposed a way to do this, called a convolutional neural network. This operation reduces the complexity of the neural network (there are fewer neurons and thus fewer connections), while also taking into account the fact that in images with many pixels, there are strong correlations. In other words, the probability that adjacent pixels are the same color is very high because “fill areas” occupy much larger surfaces than “edges,” the areas of the image where neighboring pixels are much more likely to have different colors.

However, most real-world problems required a number of hidden layers that was too large for the computational capabilities of the time. Starting in the 2000s, advancements in computational power, particularly the introduction of GPUs, and the availability of vast amounts of data thanks to the spread of the internet and social media, led to the rise of deep neural networks, with convolutional neural networks being the first to achieve in 2012 a result considered unreachable just a few years earlier in image classification.

Newsletter di attualità e cultura scientifica

Over 22,000 subscribers

Iscrivendoti accetti i Termini di utilizzo di Substack, la nostra Informativa sulla privacy e l’avviso sulla raccolta delle informazioni

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts

From that moment on, the development and applications of deep neural networks accelerated incredibly, especially with the introduction of neural networks called transformers, which are the foundation of large language models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. These models are capable of generating realistic texts in various styles and on a wide range of topics. Chatbots were the first examples of a category of machine learning models called generative AI, which also includes systems for generating images or videos based on textual descriptions, and even so-called deep fakes.

The capabilities of generative AI have sparked a heated public debate, oscillating daily between the existential threat these systems could pose to humanity—for example, through their ability to generate false but believable images, contributing to disinformation—and the promise of finally relieving humanity from the drudgery of the most repetitive and burdensome jobs, even enhancing human intelligence.

This oscillation was further fueled, in a negative sense, by Hinton when he resigned from Google in May of last year, where he had worked for about ten years, to speak more freely about the risks posed by the technology he himself helped develop. Hinton expressed particular concern that these systems might escape our control, a sentiment he reiterated during the Nobel announcement press conference.

Neural networks for science

It is rare for the motivations behind two Nobel Prizes awarded in the same year to cite the same scientific work, but this year it happened.

The work on deep neural networks initiated and carried forward by the two Nobel Prize winners in Physics enabled another record to be broken in 2020—the computational prediction of protein structure from the sequence of amino acids that compose them.

DeepMind, a company specializing in neural networks, acquired by Google in 2014 for what was then a surprising sum of 400 million dollars, won first place that year in the CASP (Critical Assessment of techniques for protein Structure Prediction) competition with the algorithm AlphaFold2.

AlphaFold2 scored 25 points higher than the second-ranked algorithm, RoseTTA fold, developed by a group of researchers led by David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington. This year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in part to two of the authors of AlphaFold2, Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, and John Jumper, DeepMind’s director. The other half of the prize went to David Baker, who adapted his RoseTTA fold algorithm to deduce from the desired shape of a protein its amino acid sequence. This allows for the design of new proteins, which do not exist in nature, capable of performing completely new functions.

Why science cannot prove the existence of God

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 10:17:00 +0100

The demonstration of God’s existence on rational grounds is a subject tackled by intellectual giants, from Anselm of Canterbury to Gödel, including Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant. However, as is well known, these arguments are not conclusive. It is not surprising, then, that this old problem, evidently poorly posed, periodically resurfaces.

Among the latest attempts, the book by Bolloré and Bonnassies [1] seems to have gained particular success. Published in 2021, it was translated into Italian in the spring of 2024, and we continue to read glowing reviews of it in the press and digital media. The subtitle speaks of “the dawn of a new revolution.” But is there anything new to say on this subject? Are there scientific breakthroughs capable of filling the gaps left by previous attempts? While the book has sold well and attracted interest, it does not seem that there are any real novelties compared to Anselm (who died at the beginning of the 12th century). What we find instead is a rhetorical and inappropriate use of some scientific results, along with a logical error common to all arguments supporting so-called “intelligent design.”

Some Coordinates

The authors of the book argue that, based on science, it is now possible to unequivocally prove the existence of a creator deity. At the opposite end of the spectrum, people like Daniel Dennett assert without hesitation that religious faith is a form of mental illness [2]. To avoid confusion and unnecessary controversy, we do not believe that either of these two positions is necessarily correct. Religion, or more broadly spirituality, undoubtedly holds importance for some individuals, but it does not need to have a scientific basis. And it is certainly understandable that those who cherish both faith and science might find it stimulating to justify their belief on scientific grounds. However, the blending of faith and science does not always yield positive results. A remark by psychiatrist Giovanni Jervis seems to illustrate the general point well: “The longing for infinity is respectable, but if it does not turn into high poetry, it immediately becomes something lower and banal, namely sentimentality and rhetoric.” [3]

Bolloré and Bonnassies persist with rhetoric as old as it is inconclusive: because there is a long list of important believing scientists, it is entirely possible to prove the existence of a creator deity on scientific grounds. Needless to say, from a logical perspective, this argument holds no relevance. The personal beliefs of those who made scientific history have nothing to do with rationality. Science is a human activity, born for various reasons and practiced by people who lived immersed in their historical periods. Thus, as we browse through the annals of scientific history, we find that great scientists belong to all possible human categories: atheists (Laplace), religious (Maxwell), bigots (Cauchy), heretics (Newton), warmongers (von Neumann), pacifists (Richardson), conservatives (Gauss), revolutionaries (Landau), and, closer to our time, even racists and sexists (categories excellently represented by Watson, but unfortunately not only by him).

But this is not the only argument of Bolloré and Bonnassies, who develop a line of reasoning they label as “revolutionary.” They acknowledge that for nearly five centuries, scientific discoveries have suggested the possibility of explaining the Universe without the need for a creator God, but they note that recently things seem to be heading in the opposite direction. A particular role is assigned to the discovery of thermodynamics, from which they deduce that the universe is degrading, moving toward thermal death. According to them, this represents a radical change in perspective, from which the existence of a creator deity would follow. Without delving into the history of physics, it is appropriate to frame certain well-known results in their historical context: thermodynamics is not exactly a young science. It emerged in the early 19th century, and its formalization was completed by the end of that century. Similarly, the theme of thermal death, which began with a fundamental work by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1872, was widely discussed by great scientists like Kelvin already in the late 19th century. The hope that thermodynamics might be a game changer in the prospects of proving the existence of a creator deity on scientific grounds thus seems misplaced.

Scientific Proof is Not Suitable for Theology

The issue is not limited to thermodynamics or other areas of scientific research mentioned by Bolloré and Bonnassies. Rather, it lies in the fact that mathematical demonstration and scientific proof, by their nature, are not suitable tools for proving the existence of the God who would have created the object of scientific inquiry itself.

We must first remember that there is no mathematical demonstration or scientific proof that does not begin with some hypothesis assumed to be true. The validity of a scientific conclusion depends on two factors: the correctness of the reasoning and the plausibility of the assumptions. That’s why a fundamental part of scientific work concerns the justification of assumptions.

In mathematical demonstration, definitions and rules of inference are taken for granted. For example, we can conclude with certainty that a number is odd (B) if we know it is not even (A), because we know that all numbers are either even or odd (A or B). But why do we know this? Because we define what it means for a number to be even. For the same reasons, we know that all numbers are either even or odd (assuming we agree on what numbers are). Further questions about what justifies these assumptions are answered by millennia of mathematics and everything successfully built upon it.

Experimental scientific reasoning is more complicated because the truth of the premises always carries a degree of uncertainty, which any scientific proof transmits to its conclusion. Therefore, one of the many things taken for granted in scientific proof is the concept of practical certainty, through which an apparently contradictory move is made: assuming the veracity of the data collected while knowing that they may not be entirely “true.” This makes any experimental reasoning probabilistic.

With these premises, we can ask what form a mathematical demonstration and a scientific proof of the existence of a creator deity would take and what they would assume. Spoiler: they would assume the existence of something very much like the deity (creator).

Mathematical Demonstrations

Regarding the first, the effort is spared by the greatest of modern logicians, Kurt Gödel. In his mathematical reworking of Anselm’s ontological proof, we find a series of very strong assumptions, including one on the necessity of the existence of certain properties that, during the demonstration, lead to the conclusion that properties of the “divine type” necessarily exist. As with all conclusions obtained through mathematical demonstration, Gödel’s is persuasive insofar as the truth of its premises is persuasive. In this regard, we leave the word to another logician, certainly less famous than Gödel but among the most brilliant we have had in Italy, Roberto Magari [2]: “In essence […] Gödel correctly deduces his thesis from certain axioms (although we must first agree on what ‘God’ might mean), but there are no more reasons to believe the axioms than there are to directly accept the thesis itself.”

Scientific Proofs

What would a scientific proof of the existence of a creator deity look like? Let’s sit once again on the shoulders of giants. One of the first examples of a statistical test of a scientific hypothesis, now one of the central tools in the experimental methodology toolbox, was conducted by John Arbuthnot in the early 18th century. By examining London’s baptism records from 1629 to 1710, he noticed that in all 82 years, more boys than girls were registered (and thus likely born). The data appeared to conflict with the hypothesis that boys and girls were equally likely to be born, as if gender were the result of repeatedly flipping a balanced coin. If we assume these hypotheses are correct, a simple calculation shows us that the probability of observing more boys than girls consecutively for 82 years is very, very, very low—1 in 2⁸². Therefore, Arbuthnot correctly concludes that it is reasonable to assume an imbalance at birth that makes it (slightly, as we now know) more likely to have a boy. So far, so good. But Arbuthnot goes further and asks why this imbalance exists. He finds the answer in what he already believes: divine providence. By introducing more males than females into the community, divine providence allows (among other things) the latter to observe the sacrament of marriage despite the significant losses of the former, who often do not return from war.

The Rejection of Chance

Arbuthnot’s reflection, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society—one of the first modern scientific journals—contains a logical error that, four hundred years later, we find essentially unchanged in the type of creationist argument known as “intelligent design,” and which can be found throughout Bolloré and Bonnassies’ book. The pattern is as follows. We start from experimental observations, which we will call DATA. A hypothesis is formulated that captures the idea that there is no creator deity, i.e., that the DATA we observe are due to CHANCE. Then, P(DATA | CHANCE) is calculated, i.e., the probability of observing the DATA if the CHANCE hypothesis is true. Finally, we assume that this probability is very small, meaning it is extremely unlikely that our observations are due to pure chance. So far, so good, just like in Arbuthnot’s case.

The problem arises in the next step, that is, in choosing an alternative hypothesis to CHANCE to explain the DATA. From a logical perspective, the answer is simple: the negation of CHANCE. But from a practical-scientific point of view, it is not at all clear what this means precisely. Let’s return to Arbuthnot. The CHANCE hypothesis is translated as equal probability of M and F. Its negation involves the infinite choice of all pairs of non-negative real numbers different from ½ that sum to 1. Since probability takes values between 0 and 1, the possible choices are as many as the points on a line. In this infinity, we will literally find everything, including a creator deity. This is illustrated by a series of fundamental probabilistic results that address the question of whether disorder can be a source of regularity [5-8]. The idea is that in a binary sequence that satisfies a certain precise definition of “chance,” for every N, all possible sequences of length N of 0s and 1s exist. Therefore, if we were to transcribe the Divine Comedy, War and Peace, and The Odyssey into binary code, at some point, the Divine Comedy would appear followed by War and Peace, then The Odyssey followed by the Divine Comedy, alternating verses from the Divine Comedy and The Odyssey, and so on through the astronomical number of combinations one can imagine. The binary sequence associated with a random number between 0 and 1 almost certainly contains more material than Borges’ Library of Babel, the history of our Universe from the Big Bang to the present day, and everything that will happen until the thermal death of the universe.

Arbuthnot’s error, found in creationist arguments up to the one in Bolloré and Bonnassies’ book, is the following. Rejecting a hypothesis like “life is due to chance” means opening up an infinity of alternative hypotheses, not all of which make scientific sense. Quite the opposite. It is worth remembering that in scientific reasoning, the plausibility of hypotheses descends from the intricate network of facts sometimes referred to as “theory.” When this is insufficient to outline a plausible explanation of the observations, the appropriate scientific attitude is to continue scientific research or suspend judgment. It is worth noting, in closing with Arbuthnot, that to this day, there is no consensus on what explains the established data on the sex ratio at birth. And perhaps there may not be an explanation.

Improbability: Use with Caution

Arguments that leverage the improbability of observations in light of the hypothesis tested with experimental data are foundational to the construction of scientific knowledge. However, they must be applied with extreme methodological caution. Their inappropriate use, a term covering everything from “carelessness” to “fraudulent behavior,” is at the heart of the heated methodological debate on statistical significance [9,10]. A clear heuristic rule emerges. Arguments based on the improbability of the hypothesis one wants to refute become less reliable the further one strays from assertions belonging to quantitative areas of science. This is why, in many legal systems, the presumption of innocence is rightly taken for granted. The burden of proof, that is, falls on the prosecution, not the defense. Unfortunately, there are many examples where this norm of civilization has been violated, leading to convictions based not on reasonable probability of guilt but on the slim probability of innocence [7,8].

References

[1] M-Y Bolloré e O. Bonnassies. Dio. La scienza, le prove. (Ed. Sonda, 2024) [2] D.C. Dennett. Rompere l’incantesimo (Raffaello Cortina, 2007) [3] G. Jervis, intervista su Reset, settembre-ottobre 2007, pag.44 [4] Roberto Magari. Logica e teofilia in Kurt Gödel. In: “La prova matematica dell’esistenza di Dio”. 8Bollati Boringhieri Editore, 20069 [5] P. Diaconis and B. Skyrms. Ten Great Ideas About Chance (Princeton University Press, 2018) [6] C.S. Calude and G. Longo. The deluge of spurious correlations in big data. Foundations of science 22, 595 (2017) [7] A. Vulpiani. Caso, probabilità e complessità (Ediesse, 2014) [8] H. Hosni. Probabilità: Come smettere di preoccuparsi e imparare ad amare l’incertezza (Carocci, 2018) [9] V. Amrhein, S. Greenland, and B. McShane, “Retire statistical significance,” Nature, vol. 567, pp. 305–307, 2019 [10] D. J. Hand, “Trustworthiness of statistical inference,” J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. A Stat. Soc., vol. 185, no. 1, pp. 329–347, 2022

How far has scientific culture come in Italy in the last twenty years?

Luca Carra — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 16:26:00 +0100

Often when the Italian speaker discusses any topic, they express their opinions. The Anglo-Saxon speaker, on the other hand, often starts by presenting data, and then, if really necessary, offers their opinion. The group in Italy that systematically adopts a data- and statistics-based approach to discuss science and society is Observa, composed of Massimiano Bucchi, Giuseppe Pellegrini (both at the University of Trento), Andrea Rubin (University of Ferrara), and Barbara Saracino (University of Bologna), who coordinates the activities of the Observatory on Science, Technology, and Society at Observa. Being a devoted reader of their annual reports, I was particularly pleased to receive the 2024 Yearbook, which analyzes twenty years of data collected on a representative sample of the Italian population.

And what do these data tell us? First of all, that Italian society has significantly increased its basic scientific knowledge: since 2007, Observa has been presenting the following statements to a sample of 1000 people to test the degree of “scientific literacy”:

Electrons are smaller than atoms
Antibiotics kill both viruses and bacteria
The Sun is a planet

And, since 2018:

Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the air;
The bit is the unit of measurement of information quantity

It’s trivial to say which are true and which are false, our readers might say. Actually, not so much. To the first three statements, today more than 60% of the sample responds correctly compared to percentages that varied from 38 to 50% (that of the Sun) in 2007. On the two additional ones (nitrogen and bit) over the 5 years examined, we are also around 50% of the sample.

It is comforting to see that things are improving, but it is also worrying to know that 40% do not know that the Sun is a star and that antibiotics do nothing against viruses. On the other hand, the statistics section that, as in all editions, concludes the Yearbook only confirms our country’s low position in spending on education. And penultimate, just ahead of Romania, in the rate of graduates and PhDs among the 27 EU countries. So, what is there to be surprised about?

However, scientific knowledge is increasingly spreading among the Italian population, thanks also to a significant growth in scientific information, as shown by the data that take into account the most followed media (still far ahead is television, but with a decided increase of social media, particularly Instagram). In the last twenty years, there has been especially the rise of blogs and social accounts managed by science communicators or directly by scientists, whose followers have tripled from 11% of the sample in 2015 to 30% in 2023. Another growing phenomenon are the science festivals, in number and audience (15 percentage points more from 2007 to 2022). But I would say that the fact that struck me the most is the credibility that nearly half of the Italians primarily assign to scientists, whose public lectures lead all other forms of scientific information. Today, they are the most trustworthy figures, much more than politicians, environmentalists, journalists, and other social subjects. The trust also extends to scientific institutions.

The success of science, particularly among the younger and more educated public - those whom Observa defines as the Enthusiasts and the Informed Confidents who make up 42 percent of the sample - entails a good dose of idealization. Indeed, the share of people who see science as the only source from which one can expect “the truth about man and his place in the world” is growing. And this because science is open to all, based on merit and the control exercised by a cohesive and competent community, ready to recognize mistakes and correct them. This image of science - according to our sample - has two enemies to watch out for: politics (in all its ideological breadth) and the economic interests that compromise its ethics based on disinterest. And, as the data collected in the aftermath of the pandemic teach, science should also beware of the media exposure of its representatives and the frequentation of journalists and TV entertainers. Therefore, while it might be a good deal for political parties to nominate a host of scientists for the next elections, it might not be so for the scientists, destined to quickly contaminate their Mertonian heritage in the political arena.

This sizable phalanx of science enthusiasts remains quite disoriented even in the face of opposing opinions embraced by scientists. Perhaps it’s inevitable that the growth experienced by the scientific information offer over the last decade comes with an idealized image of how science works, and that a more critical, realistic, and pluralistic view belongs to a narrow minority, both among the public and probably among researchers themselves.

Then let’s not forget that there’s the other side of the Moon, that 55% of the Italian population made up of 30% Disillusioned and 25% Misinformed. Those who don’t trust science precisely because they know it and have learned to distrust it, or because they don’t know it and thus distrust it regardless. Here lies misinformation and conspiracy theories, of which social media in their two-faced nature are the greatest amplifiers. Here we find the no-vaxxers, as well as the truthfully diminishing phalanxes of no-tech “naturalists” and pro-life religious groups. Or those who do not fear scientific and technological development as such, but because it’s too rapid and destructive of ancient certainties. Or even worse, of their jobs. In this colorful panorama of tribes, we also find the oldest, the poorest, the most marginalized, towards whom it would be proper to direct new efforts in education and scientific information.

The Observa Yearbook touches on other interesting topics, such as the relationship between cinema and TV series with science (including a list of the top 20 films and series of the last decade), and the desired transition from a paternalistic model of dissemination to one based on active audience engagement, as various science festivals try to do. There’s obviously also a part that concerns the pandemic, which on one hand showed the unpreparedness of the media and experts themselves to explain what was happening, and on the other allowed us to see “science in action” live during a period of profound uncertainty. Something that, in my opinion, is more instructive than believed.

The report also emphasizes how science owes much of its popularity to the emerging environmental sensitivity of the younger generations. Movements like Fridays for Future take very seriously what science is telling us. Starting with that Swedish girl who, in the sweltering summer of 2018, began to protest alone in front of the Stockholm parliament with the sign “Skolstrejk för klimatet”.

"We did not do a good job in explaining how flexible biology can be, " interview with Frans de Waal

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 16:33:00 +0100

After reviewing Different. Gender issues seen through the eyes of a primatologist, we wanted to have a chat with the author, the primatologist Frans de Waal, to find out what motivated him to deal with gender issues and to get his opinion on research in this and other fields of ethology. Here is our interview.

In your studies (and in your books), you have tackled various themes, investigating in other animals aspects ranging from emotions to intelligence. How did you come to the topic of gender, and what motivated you to address it?

It seems to me that there is a lot of skepticism in issues concerning gender. Very often, in the media, it is said that gender is a cultural issue, something invented that we can easily change. And I noticed that, whenever I give a lecture and talk about sex-related differences in behavior, people want to know more. I believe this is because, in general, they can’t get answers from psychologists or other human behavior scientists, because many of them are now reluctant – and perhaps skeptical - to talk about sex differences, they get into trouble if they say “men do more of this and women do more of that”. As a primatologist, on the other hand, I can talk about it in a way that’s easier to accept, simply describing what we see in primates.

That’s why I wanted to write a book on these topics. Initially, I wanted to talk only about males and females and how they differ in primates, in humans, and so on. But, to my own surprise, I found myself also addressing the theme of gender diversity, because while writing I noticed that I know many individuals who behave differently from the typical male and female models. Just like in humans, we have typical males and females, but also a huge individual variability in gender-related behaviors. So I started to explore a bit of this aspect as well.

You make it clear, throughout the discussion, that what we can observe in our closest relatives is not a justification for our behaviors or for controversial and discriminatory choices. What then is the value of studying aspects related to sex and gender in other species? In other words, why do you think it is important to try to understand the biological aspects, distinguishing them from the cultural ones?

Of course, there is always a biological component in human behavior; there is no purely cultural behavior. And there isn’t because, after all, what is culture? Not an external force, like the weather: culture is ourselves. We influence each other and call this influence culture. Other primates have a culture too: they learn many things throughout their lives, all the more so as chimpanzees and bonobos become adults around the age of 16, so they have a huge amount of things to learn and time to do it. Culture, in short, always interacts with “nature”, as they say. Humans essentially come in two forms: female and male, and some intermediate forms, and our behavior is shaped by the environment but also by our biology. Environment and biology cannot be easily separated: you think you can do it, to say “this is purely biological and this is purely cultural”, but pure forms don’t exist; it’s always, always an interaction between biology and environment. The same applies to other species.

So we find ourselves making a complex comparison, where we see that some aspects are universal and found in all humans around the world and in all primates. And, if they are universal, then biology is probably involved in some way. Then there are differences that appear between one country and another in humans, or from one species to another in primates. So they are not universal and, in this case, we can say that these are more flexible aspects. I still think it’s important to look at biology: we can’t escape it.

At the same time, biology is often portrayed in a simplistic way - and I must say that we biologists have been partly responsible for this view. For example, in the 70s and 80s, we had books like those of Richard Dawkins, who said that we are slaves to our genes, that we are here to execute their programs. It’s a very deterministic and reductionist way of looking at human or animal behavior: we are not slaves to our genes. We biologists have also simplified the narrative about animals and humans by making statements like: “we have a typical male behavior and a typical female behavior”, while there is, instead, a huge variability. If you look in a forest, you immediately see that even two trees of the same species are different from each other. Individual variability is ubiquitous and drives evolution, which could not occur if individuals were not different in their genetic makeup.

Unfortunately, the excessive simplification we have made has led biology to become the enemy in the gender debate, because it is often perceived as rigid and inflexible and as if the path between genetics and human behavior were one-way. But no: it’s a two-way street. I think that when people are suspicious or disappointed regarding biology in the gender debate, it’s because we did not do a good job in explaining how flexible biology can be in people, and how flexible it is also in other primates. In my book, I described individual primates who are a bit different from the others: some have more homosexual than heterosexual behavior; some do not behave according to the typical gender model of the species. Here too, there’s a lot of individual variability, and I tried to explain that the same variability we see in human society we also see in the societies of other primates.

The only big difference I see between us and other primates is that we are more intolerant of these differences. I have never noticed that other primates have problems or reject different individuals, but human society is very tied to norms and rules, tends to make classifications and place labels on all behaviors. I believe this is the biggest difference.

Globally, where do you think research on the theme of sex and gender in other animals is at? And how much interest does it gather among scientists?

We primatologists (and I think this is also true for many others who study animal behavior) still have a lot of work to do on this theme: so far, we have looked for the most typical models. We do the same in human society, where we talk about “typical men” and “typical women” and much less about those who are atypical. But I would say that, in a group of primates, one in ten, or maybe one in twenty, does not behave exactly as one would expect in terms of role or gender behavior. I think the same is true for human society. We need to accept that variability exists and is very common. Recently I’ve seen some articles, one of which was about the homosexual behavior of chimpanzees in nature; for bonobos, it has been known for a very, very long time - I usually describe them as bisexual, because I don’t think they make a big distinction between having sex with a male or with a female, so for them the term homosexual isn’t even applicable. But in other animals we’ve somewhat neglected the topic and focused on the most common behavior, which we’ve considered to be heterosexual, while there is also a lot of variability there. We need to focus more on these gender-related models and on all the variability that exists, and also on personality - as we do in humans.

You have worked on so many different aspects of animal ethology: can we ask you what you are working on, or intend to work on, now? In which direction do you think to steer your work?

I am now retired and not doing much research: by now, most of my activity is in giving lectures and writing books. However, I am still a bit involved in empathy, a topic that interests me a lot. I am interested in the differences in empathy between chimpanzees and bonobos, between males and females, between young and old. The research on empathy has now extended to many other species: dogs, dolphins, elephants… There are also many studies on rodents, such as mice and rats, which often also consider the neuroscientific aspects of empathy. This is a field that is becoming very important. For about 25 years, studies have focused on cognition and animal intelligence and several articles come out on these topics every week.

But I believe that emotions, consciousness, and awareness, so the inner life of animals, and especially the way they express emotions and how important they are to them, is becoming an emerging topic. All the more so as many studies about it increasingly involve neuroscience. As for primates, neuroscience studies are more difficult, especially if we want to avoid, as I think is right, invasive studies. We indeed need to start conducting neuroscience studies on other primates in the same way we do for our species, where a person is placed in a scanner and we observe how the brain responds to questions or situations that are presented. I believe this will happen in the future for all species: after all, it’s already happening for example with dogs. There are indeed some studies in which dogs are trained to stay still in a scanner and we observe what happens in the brain. This is the direction I think we need to go.

Is 1.5 degrees still a realistic goal?

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 10:56:00 +0100

Keep 1.5 within reach, “keep the 1.5 degrees within reach.” This was the slogan with which COP28 opened, the United Nations conference on climate change that just concluded in Dubai. The feasibility of this goal, however, now seems more uncertain than ever, even though many considered this aim too ambitious from the outset. Already at last year’s COP, doubts arose about the possibility of staying under 1.5 degrees. Over time, an increasing number of scientists argue that exceeding 1.5 degrees is becoming inevitable, as declared in 2022 by the same IPCC.

It’s no longer about staying under a certain temperature, but about managing to reverse some of the warming: the concept of climate overshoot comes into play, the difference between the peak temperatures we will reach and the lowest point to which we can return. Johan Rockström, president of The Earth League and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, explained this during a press conference held at COP28. “In the best case scenario, in three or four decades we will have a warming of 1.8 degrees before returning to 1.5 at the end of this century,” he said. “And to get back to 1.5 at the end of the century, everything has to be done right. Phasing out fossil fuels, transforming the global food system, maintaining all carbon wells and deposits, on land and in oceans, and implementing carbon dioxide removal.”

In the scenarios envisaged to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5 degrees, a sharp reduction in the use of fossil fuels is foreseen. By 2050 coal consumption should be reduced by 95%, oil by 60%, and gas by 45%, but these targets conflict with the policies actually implemented. As the latest Global Carbon Budget shows, the global energy system is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and renewables, despite progress, still do not have a sufficient role.

Time is tight. The fact that there’s no time to waste has often been reminded by Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General. In April, he described the climate as “a time bomb ready to explode” and was echoed at the same time by Extinction Rebellion activists who, in Trieste’s Piazza Unità d’Italia, drew a countdown on the ground. In less than seven years, they said, global temperatures will have risen by more than 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. From that moment, it will no longer be possible to turn back. Numbers like these are essential to mark the pace of the climate crisis, to give us timelines on what awaits us, and to provide the necessary sense of urgency. They also set targets for governments to pursue. In the negotiations, the goal remained at the center of the debate, so much so that COP28 President Al Jaber called it “the guiding star” that had to guide states and companies in the agreements. So far, however, these ambitions have not been accompanied by the necessary emission reduction, which in the current state of commitments would lead to an increase of 2.5 degrees.

In reality, the time to stay below a 1.5 degree increase compared to pre-industrial temperatures has always been tight. This goal first appeared in 2009 in diplomatic agreements, and according to Mike Hulme, a human geographer at the University of Cambridge and one of the leading experts on social studies of the IPCC, 1.5 degrees were proposed for political reasons: “It was not a scientific discovery. No one discovered that 1.5 degrees was the threshold to stay under. It was the result of the mobilization of a variety of interests and political arguments.”

During the preparation of COP15 in 2009, the 2-degree target was already being considered, as described by researchers Béatrice Cointe and Hélène Guillemot in a study published in January 2023 for WIREs Climate Change. But during the conference in Copenhagen, the Least Developed Countries and the intergovernmental organization AOSIS, the Alliance of Small Island States - created specifically to give voice to the interests of countries vulnerable to climate change - raised their voices. They argued that reaching 2 degrees was too risky. Countries like the island nations face more severe risks with greater temperature increases.

A summary document, released in June 2015 after two years of dialogues between experts, invited parties to act precautionarily, as science was not yet clear on the real differences between the two goals. At the same time, however, the document noted that emission reduction was not proceeding according to plan: countries were behind and needed to act quickly. 2015 was also the year of COP21 and the Paris Agreements, which - after intense negotiations - adopted the 1.5 degree target. “1.5 or 2 degrees are precise metrics, but the idea of the Paris Agreements is to stay ‘as close as possible’: they were also chosen for their symbolic value. So, it’s important to keep them as a goal and be aware that the climate crisis is not an on-off switch, success-failure,” environmental journalist Ferdinando Cotugno told us in October.

Immediately after Paris, the target was met with surprise and skepticism by part of the scientific community, who considered the target unrealistic, especially because it did not correspond to a commensurate commitment on emission reduction. The politicians who pushed for the target, however, saw it as a success because it allowed the countries most vulnerable to climate change to breathe a sigh of relief.

The hesitation and controversy did not cease when the same COP21 called for a report to investigate the difference in impacts and paths between 1.5 and 2 degrees. The scientific community feared that this represented a political encroachment on science and an instrumental use of the IPCC to support political objectives. These tensions show how the goal, Hulme suggests, is an example of “policy-based evidence”, which is the opposite of the more well-known “evidence-based policy”. “Scientific evidence and political norms shape each other and there are no pure scientific proofs, just as perhaps there is no pure political norm.”

Finally, in 2018, the evidence arrived: the IPCC’s special report on the impacts of 1.5 degrees was released. It had an unprecedented media echo, with unprecedented coverage for the group’s work. It also changed scientists’ perceptions. Scientists began to consider research on 1.5-degree scenarios as legitimate and scientifically authoritative, report Cointe and Guillemot. Today it is well known that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would reduce risks for the agri-food sector, for coral reefs, for sea level rise, and for the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice.

After the release of the 2018 report, 1.5 degrees became cemented in the imagination as the ceiling not to be breached, the precipice not to lean over. The slogan became “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe” (now, according to the Carbon clock, it has been reduced to 7 years to exceed). Scientists have often warned against a narrow interpretation of the target, which is sometimes considered as an expiration date after which climate risks become unsustainable. Jim Skea, then co-chair of the special report, explained it well in 2019, when he said that the report ‘‘did not establish that we have another twelve years to save the world. The warmer the climate gets, the worse it is, but there is no tipping point”.

Scientists and politicians have never stopped saying that, if we really want to avoid exceeding this threshold, what we are doing is not enough and requires a radical transformation of the global energy system.

A recent article published in Nature Communications analyzed the scenarios assessed by the IPCC compatible with 1.5 degrees of temperature or a slight and temporary overshoot of the threshold. Between 2020 and 2050, the supply of coal, oil, and gas should decrease on average by 95%, 62%, and 42%. According to the Paris Agreements, in the second half of this century, for every molecule of CO2 emitted, one will need to be removed from the air. And, since it is not possible to completely give up greenhouse gas emissions, technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere are assumed to be used. However, many scenarios assume an amount of carbon capture and storage and removal technologies greater than what might be feasible. These technologies in recent years have been at the center of a heated debate in the scientific community. One of the most widespread criticisms is that they postpone the rapid and immediate mitigation needed, in the name of a future promise, and thus give room to the widespread consumption of fossil fuels. Even in the best scenario, however, “carbon capture and storage and the removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide will be necessary to mitigate and offset remaining emissions,” reports the International Energy Agency. “Projects capable of capturing about 1.2 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2030 need to be realized, against the approximately 0.3 gigatonnes of CO2 currently projected for 2030”.

The technologies exist, work, and are under development. But the feasibility on a large scale and the acceptability of their widespread use is not certain: it would be a problem to depend on them if they then turn out to be insufficient or ineffective. Without carbon removal, instead, the supply of fossil fuels between 2020 and 2050 emissions should decrease in a even more drastic way: 99% for coal, 70% for oil, and 84% for gas.

What is happening is that the use of fossil fuels continues to increase, rather than decrease in line with the pathways studied by the IPCC, and more and more scientists question the possibility of staying under 1.5 degrees. Yet in the negotiations, they still remain protagonists of the discussions and the agreements signed. “There is a tacit agreement to keep talking about these targets,” suggests Hulme. “But in reality, we know we will exceed them.

Since man began measuring Earth’s temperatures, June, July, and August have never been as hot as in 2023, as seen in recent records. In these three months, temperatures have exceeded the global average by 1.2 degrees. For a third of this year’s days, the planet’s temperature exceeded pre-industrial averages by over 1.5 degrees. And new records await us in the future. Everything suggests that temperatures will continue to rise and take us further away from the climate we know. Perhaps, in the next five or ten years there will be at least one year in which the global average temperature exceeds pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees. If this happens, “we must not despair and fall into a state of shock,” said Jim Skea last July to Der Spiegel. It will be a more dangerous world, but it won’t be the end, and it’s necessary to continue on the paths that lead us to confront the climate crisis.

To break the Paris Agreements, it is not enough for the temperature threshold to be exceeded for a day or a week: we must look at measurements over the long term. However, there is still no agreement on which metric would be better to use to understand when we have exceeded 1.5 degrees, since the natural variability of the climate makes it difficult to precisely understand when the threshold is crossed. “Exceeding the limit once does not mean that the change is definitive. It is possible to get back below, the IPCC says it clearly,” says Ferdinando Cotugno. For now, in light of current political decisions and recorded emission rates, staying below 1.5 seems possible but not probable.

Despite the growing loss of credibility of the target, even at COP28, the 1.5 degrees were at the center of the just-concluded negotiations. In particular, attention is on the First Global Stocktake, considered a historic document. For the first time, it is declared that to limit global warming, it’s necessary to abandon (transitioning away) fossil fuels. In parallel, to stay below 1.5 degrees, other efforts are needed: tripling renewables by 2030 and using removal technologies for sectors that are hardest to decarbonize. In the coming months, it will be important to understand how these commitments will concretely translate into national plans.

One thing is certain: the gap between political ambitions and their feasibility will become increasingly difficult for governments to manage, as time is getting tighter. As journalist Emma Marris suggests, there is a possibility that 1.5 degrees: “will soon cease to be a target and become a historical fact.”

If this were to happen, as a part of the scientific community expects, what would happen to the negotiations? What consequences would abandoning such a deeply ingrained goal have? What matters, regardless of the global temperature fluctuations that await us, is that governments do not lose sight of the real goal: working for a world that is as habitable as possible. Ferdinando Cotugno said: “In a decade we might have this conversation again and know that we failed to stay below 1.5. But then we will say that we can still save 2 degrees. If we reach 1.5, then we must ensure we don’t reach an increase of 2, 3, 4 degrees.” For now, we wait to see if the just-concluded COP really marks the moment when we start to leave fossil fuels behind.

COP28: It's Up to the Oil Tycoon to Say Goodbye to Fossils

Luca Carra — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 10:35:00 +0100

It had to be an oil tycoon to say goodbye to fossils, like the smoker extinguishing his last cigarette and the alcoholic giving up the Negroni. And so it was: for the first time at a United Nations climate change Conference of the Parties, we declare in black and white our desire to abandon coal, gas, and oil. COP28 was held in Dubai, one of the countries most dependent on fossil fuels, and was coordinated by the extremely capable Sultan al-Jaber, president of the largest oil company, ADNOC. It seems like a joke, but perhaps it can also be read as an acknowledgment that the climate transition away from fossil fuels is indeed inevitable for everyone. It was a long and troubled farewell, which will cause us pain before we can finally put an end to coal, gas, and oil. But turning back now seems impossible. In Dubai, right in the Dubai of the astonishing Burj Khalifa and Palm Islands, a piece of sustainability history was made.

The Commitments

The industrial revolution to achieve timely climate neutrality by mid-century must therefore continue by finally recognizing that increasing renewables is not enough. We must necessarily give up fossil fuels. The Global Stocktake says it like this:

Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.

Abandoning fossil fuels in energy systems in a fair, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this decade to reach climate neutrality by 2050, in line with the science.

The document continues by inviting to triple renewables by 2030 and double energy efficiency. It continues with good intentions also on the necessary adaptation measures, which primarily concern the most vulnerable countries, as well as addressing compensation for the damages and losses (loss and damage) suffered by the countries most affected by the effects of climate disorder. The document recalls the stellar amount of financial resources needed to make these promises concrete, and observes with “significant concern” that, given the commitments made by different countries, the world would be set to stabilize at 2.5-2.8°C of warming rather than well below 2 degrees, i.e., 1.5°C of the Paris Agreement. Moreover, the document notes that the carbon budget still available to stay below the 1.5°C threshold (with a 50% probability) is really limited: less than 500 billion tons of CO2, which is 1/5 of the calculated budget.

Let’s leave with a transition away, not a phase out

The final draft of the document arrived at dawn on December 13 after a night of negotiations that dragged on until 4 in the morning. It was also possible - under the watchful eye of the president - to avoid mentioning the phase-out of fossil fuels, replaced by the brilliant alternative “transition away”, which is less definitive than phase out but more demanding than phase down, a mere reduction of fuels that appeared in the first draft of the text. OPEC, which brings together the main oil-producing countries, had to intervene with a threatening letter to dictate the line of resistance towards more ambitious formulations. However, towards the end of the Conference, ambitions began to make their way back, crystallizing in a final document that for the first time mentions a roadmap out of fossil fuels, albeit with many convolutions and some omissions. For example, it is significant that coal is only mentioned in terms of a gradual “reduction” and not of phasing it out before the others.

Lunar Goals

The Global Stocktake also recognizes that to stay within the 1.5°C safety threshold, according to the IPCC we should reach the peak of climate-altering gas emissions by 2025. But above all, achieve a 43% reduction in these emissions by 2030 compared to 2019 levels, and 60% by 2035. Lunar goals, which would imply a kind of rebirth that contrasts with the twists and caution of the document. The latter also recognizes that it is time to remove subsidies (but only the “inefficient” ones) from fossil fuels, and that we should also focus on nuclear energy (but without particular emphasis), hydrogen, and the capture and sequestration of CO2, and endorse transitional fuels in anticipation of complete decarbonization. These last concessions are to those who will seek in every way to dilute as much as possible the definitive exit from the fossil fuel era.

Approved the law for the restoration of European nature, but it's a half victory

Laura Scillitani — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 11:26:00 +0100

On November 9, the European Council, the body defining the EU’s policy directions, approved the Nature Restoration Law, one of the four main pillars of the European biodiversity strategy for 2030. A great achievement, yet leaving a bit of bitterness, considering the approved regulation was significantly weakened compared to the original. The approval came after a very troubled process. The first draft, presented in June 2022, received over two thousand amendments, proposed by the European People’s Party (EPP), supported by other conservative parties like Identity and Democracy (ID), and European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR). On July 12, after two tied votes, the European Parliament narrowly approved the draft law: 336 votes in favor, against 300 opposed and 13 abstentions. November 9 marked the end of negotiations between member states, with the approval at the European Council touted as a “revolutionary victory” by some MEPs, but upon closer inspection, it’s a meager victory. Indeed, negotiations significantly diluted the original draft’s provisions to the extent that the European right considers itself satisfied with the results achieved.

The Nature Restoration Law was initiated with the goal of mandating environmental restoration, starting from the bitter fact that 81% of European habitats are compromised or degraded. This is despite Europe having a virtuous environmental strategy: in 1992, the Natura 2000 Network was established, an ecological network spread across the Union’s territory, aimed at protecting habitats and species of community interest and creating an ecological corridor linking natural spaces. Natura 2000 Network was established and operates through the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive. The network consists of a set of protected areas under the two Directives, which today number 27,000. However, focusing solely on protected areas is insufficient to safeguard biodiversity and ensure the functioning and resilience of habitats. The ambitious goal of the Nature Restoration Law is the gradual restoration of degraded habitats, the recovery of river connectivity, increasing carbon stocks, and, above all, a shift in agricultural area management. This was precisely the sore point of strong political opposition, which politicized the Nature Restoration Law, portraying the proposals for more sustainable and biodiversity-friendly agriculture as a severe threat to food production that would skyrocket prices and disrupt established supply chains. Indeed, the original draft aimed to increase biodiversity through a change in agricultural land management, aiming for landscape diversification (i.e., reducing monocultures and increasing hedges, woods, water ponds) in at least 10% of cultivated areas. The law approved by the European Council eliminates this threshold, thereby significantly weakening the measure’s effectiveness. Many measures proposed as mandatory have also become optional, such as the restoration of wetlands, and numerous exemptions have been introduced, including the possibility to bypass environmental objectives if food productivity is threatened. It remains to be seen what criteria governments will adopt to establish these threats. Finally, the approved law removes the indication for Member States to use part of the CAP funds to support measures for more sustainable agriculture.

Looking ahead, the next steps are the formal adoption of the new regulation by the European Parliament and the Council. Once this is done, the regulation will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal. At this point, the ball will pass to the member states, which will have to develop national restoration plans. These plans must be developed through participatory processes involving local communities and civil society, in synergy with strategies for climate change mitigation, adaptation to climate change, and disaster prevention, as well as with agriculture and forestry. These national restoration plans must be submitted by the States within two years of the regulation coming into force and must contain a timetable for their implementation. The law indeed maintains the original goal of restoring at least 20% of terrestrial and marine habitats by 2030. However, the flexibility in the obligations to be respected by member states obtained in the various negotiations leaves strong doubts about the practical effectiveness of these good intentions, considering that the right-wing parties are gaining power and have a vision contrary to environmental policies.

Amidst all this, misinformation on the subject is rampant, with very scant media coverage of the “revolutionary result,” and political instrumentalization continues to transform the protection of biodiversity, ecosystems, and the fight against climate change into a threat to the economy. A dangerous defense of the status quo. The business as usual approach is only reducing environmental resilience and undermining the ecosystem services necessary for our survival. Consider that 80% of crops depend on the presence of pollinators to be productive, and precisely because of the business as usual production defended by the EPP, a third of species are in decline and one in ten is critically endangered. The approval of the Nature Restoration Law is certainly welcome, but it’s a half-victory, likely beautiful on paper but lacking in practicality.

There’s much work to be done for a cultural change that puts the health of the planet first, guaranteeing a future for new generations. Continuing as we have always done won’t take us far; investing to prevent disasters by ensuring ecosystem functionality might be inconvenient, but it is far-sighted and prevents significant expenses for repairing damages, which we are already experiencing in Italy with the changing climate.

The Indi Gregory case: some questions for reflection

Giovanni Boniolo — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 15:12:00 +0100

There has been, and continues to be, much talk about the “Indi Gregory Case.” Indi was an eight-month-old baby suffering from a severe, and so far fatal, rare disease. More specifically, Indi was affected by D,L-2-hydroxyglutaric aciduria: a genetic disease with autosomal recessive inheritance caused by defects in the SLC25A1 gene. This means that Indi had inherited two copies of the mutated gene from her parents, both of whom were healthy carriers. There was a 25% chance of being in this situation, a 50% chance of being a healthy carrier, and a 25% chance of not having any copy of the mutated gene and therefore being completely healthy.

The pain and sorrow of the parents must be incredible, as all parents who have had a child with a serious pathology know. Perhaps this should entail some respect from politicians, particularly Italian ones, or from ordinary men and women who, in the name of their vision of life and death, propose solutions based on incomplete medical information or on untrue news, or judge based on their own beliefs, as if these were the beliefs of all or as if everyone should adopt them.

For this reason, it is not my intention to say what should have been done or how the actions of Indi’s parents or other actors in this story should be judged. Instead, I would like to bring reflection to the different levels at play and pose questions that, individually and collectively, could be considered, starting from the idea that one cannot arrogantly take sides for an ethical-existential choice that may not be for everyone unless one wants to fall into forms of moral paternalism, i.e., thinking that one’s moral vision about living and dying is better than others and therefore it is right that it be imposed.

There is the medical level. On this, everyone should agree, regardless of those who hold anti-scientific positions: Indi’s disease had no chance of being cured with the medical knowledge currently available. Medicine could only take care of the baby with all available means, such as palliative care and end-of-life care (which are two different things), avoiding any form of therapeutic obstinacy, which no doctor at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, where the baby was, advocated.

There is the ethical-existential level. On one hand, there were the doctors at the Nottingham hospital who believed that it was morally commendable, at a certain point in the pathological course, to decide to stop mechanical support and let Indi leave us, avoiding, with end-of-life care, her suffering. This, of course, is not euthanasia! And only those who want to muddy the waters, for ends other than the political or ideological speculation of pain, think or shout this. On the other hand, there were the parents who believed it was morally commendable to continue to keep Indi alive with mechanical supports also based on their assertion that they were thus defending Indi’s rights.

There is the local legal level connected to the decision of the English court to support the medical decision and to stop mechanical support.

There is the level of the medical decision, strongly consequent to a particular vision of life and death, of the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital which declared itself ready to welcome Indi.

There is the transnational legal-political level on which the Meloni government operated, supporting the request of the Italian hospital and, to facilitate the possible transfer of Indi, on the one hand, granted her Italian citizenship and, on the other, sent a formal appeal, later rejected, to the English Minister of Justice and Lord Chancellor to intervene in favor of this possibility.

All these levels have, however, often been confused in the media debate, when each of them, despite their evident interconnection, deserves to be analyzed. Let’s try to do so only by posing questions whose answers, perhaps, will allow us to reflect on similar cases that may occur in the future.

Being D,L-2-hydroxyglutaric aciduria a genetic disease with autosomal recessive inheritance, did Indi’s parents know or not that they were healthy carriers of the mutated gene and therefore that they had a 25% chance of having children with this pathology? This is a very important question when dealing with recessive diseases because knowledge of the result of genetic tests could lead to different and more informed reproductive choices, as has already happened in Italy.

At the level of ethical-existential choices, did Indi’s parents really think they were fighting for her rights or were they rather fighting for their own ethical-existential vision of life and death that they were applying to their daughter? Were they fully aware of the ethical values and beliefs they carried? Were their choices not disputable or could they be reconsidered in the light of help given by experts in ethical consulting in the clinical field?

What could the doctors of the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital do that the doctors of Queen’s Medical Centre could not do? Was their expertise in treating D,L-2-hydroxyglutaric aciduria really so advanced compared to the standards of the Nottingham hospital? Were the doctors of Queen’s Medical Centre really so “barbaric” as to “pull the plug” and nothing else, without initiating end-of-life care? Are there more specialized centers in the world for experimental gene therapies that could be implemented? Why at the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital and not at Boston Childrens’ Hospital? Perhaps because the doctors of the former had an ethical-existential vision of life and death that was different from that of the doctors of Queen’s Medical Centre and closer to that of the parents? But do you look for a hospital to be treated (and if necessary cured) because in it you recognize there to be the best medical knowledge in that sector or because you think that those who work there share the same ethical-existential vision on living and dying?

Why did Italian politics intervene? Is it the role of politics to intervene in individual ethical-existential decisions only on the basis of the belief in how to live and die of those who govern at the time? Is it morally commendable to offer parents from another country, whose level of medical-health competence is certainly not inferior to the Italian one, but who are devastated by pain and psychologically fragile, the possibility of proceeding as they would like, even implying that in our country there are better treatments or that one can die better?

And what about our politicians who are concerned about incurable rare genetic diseases for reasons not always clear and who do not do enough for genetic diseases that are curable? For example, the Extended Neonatal Screening (SNE) would allow the recognition at birth of serious diseases that can be treated or better controlled. Why are the same politicians who dealt with the Indi case not so active, for example, for spinal muscular atrophy, which is treatable today, but with only 8 regions having included it in the SNE. Is it morally commendable or reprehensible this concern for D,L-2-hydroxyglutaric aciduria which is incurable and rare (affecting about 1 newborn in 1,000,000) and not for spinal muscular atrophy which is treatable and less rare (affecting about 1 newborn in 10,000)?

Does a court, like the English one, always have the right to remove from parents the ability to decide what is best for their daughter in terms of life and death? Do parents always have the right to decide what is best for their daughter in terms of life and death, recalling the case of Francesco and the case of Eleonora? Do parents have the right to choose the hospital, whether in their country or a foreign one, where they think their daughter can receive better treatments?

We should not take sides, like fans, for one ethical-existential choice against another. We should not apply a supposed moral common sense in such complex cases without an in-depth knowledge of the medical point of view and the broader biography of the parents, and without considering whether entering the fray without the correct ethical competencies might increase the confusion and emotional and decisional stress of the main decision-makers (in this case, the parents and the doctors who have followed Indi).

Are there lessons we could take from the Indi Case? I don’t know. Perhaps only that of accepting that there are different ethical-existential views on living and dying and that none are wrong as none are right, but that speculating by siding with one or the other for political purposes, for matters of personal visibility, or for the sheer pleasure of being able to say “I too want to have my say, after all, we are in a democracy” is wrong. And it is wrong precisely from an ethical-existential point of view.

Responsibility for the damages caused by climate change and attribution science

Stefano Nespor — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:48:00 +0100

In an article from ten years ago, addressing the issue of climate litigations, the legal disputes concerning climate change, the author noted that most of them were brought against governments to introduce limits or controls on greenhouse gas emitting activities or against companies involved in their production (especially oil multinationals) to comply with existing regulations. Only in recent years, the article continued, have disputes emerged that address the issue of liability for the damages caused by climate change. These, however, did not provide specific evidence against the alleged responsible parties and did not refer to specific weather events (the two most notable disputes of the time were brought in 2006 by some Northeastern US states against companies that produced electricity using coal and by California against car manufacturers).

Since then, climate disputes have progressively increased - a “now global phenomenon”, as described in a 2019 review - due to many concurrent factors: the worsening damage caused by climate change, the Paris Agreement coming into force, the fundamental decisions issued by Dutch courts in the famous Urgenda case, and the spread of protest movements. In recent years, legal actions seeking compensation for damages caused by specific atmospheric events against those deemed responsible for the events or their exacerbation have also increased.

This is the result of advancements in climate science and the development of a specialized discipline known as attribution science.

The path to recognizing the damage

In reality, the issue of liability for climate damages appeared in international negotiations over thirty years ago. In 1991, during the negotiations preceding the approval of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, AOSIS, a newly formed association representing small island states most exposed to the consequences of climate change, raised the issue. They proposed not compensation hypotheses but the establishment of an international insurance fund financed by developed countries to compensate victims of rising sea levels. The proposal was not even considered due to the opposition of all industrialized countries, even though it was easy to predict that the issue would resurface strongly in the following years as climate change would cause significant and sometimes irreversible damage to the most vulnerable states.

However, it took more than twenty years for, in the face of the increasingly evident failure of mitigation policies and the difficulties of implementing adaptation strategies, especially in the non-industrialized countries of the so-called Global South¹, during the Framework Convention’s Conference of Parties (COP-19) held in Warsaw in 2013, the issue of climate change damages became the subject of a specific discipline: the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damages (WIM). The term loss and damages refers to the impacts of climate change that are not or cannot be controlled through adaptation strategies and cause permanent harm.

Finally, in 2015, with the Paris Agreement, the damage caused by climate change was added to mitigation and adaptation and recognized as the third pillar of the ccc containment policy. However, the provisions introduced were influenced by the compromise necessary due to the opposition of industrialized countries, especially the United States, who feared that the acknowledgment would lay the groundwork for damage compensation requests from countries most affected by climate change effects against those historically considered responsible. Thus, Article 8.1 states that “Parties recognize the importance of avoiding and minimizing loss and damage associated with the negative effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow-onset events, and of addressing them and also recognize the importance of sustainable development’s role in reducing the risk of loss and damage”, while Article 8.3 refers to cooperation to exclude any liability profile.

For added security, developed countries insisted on the inclusion of a clarification in the Decision (the text that forms the Paris Outcome with the Agreement): paragraph 51 states that Article 8 does not constitute “a basis for liability or compensation claims"².

The attribution science

Actions seeking compensation for damages caused by climate change would not be possible without the contributions of climate sciences and the development of a scientific discipline known as attribution science. Until a few years ago, while subsequent IPCC reports provided increasingly alarming scenarios on the effects of global warming, the impossibility of attributing specific atmospheric events to anthropogenic causes was considered a certainty. However, the situation changed rapidly. With the development of attribution science, it became possible to statistically demonstrate the anthropogenic influence on individual atmospheric events, not only quantifying the probability of their occurrence but also the magnitude of the effects.

The first major research in this area was conducted in 2004 by a group of scientists from the University of Oxford, who demonstrated that the heatwave that hit Europe in 2003, causing over 70,000 deaths, was twice as likely due to human influence on the climate. Since then, the number of studies and the precision of the methodologies have grown rapidly.

Today, attribution science is a fundamental element in climate change disputes: it allows identifying the role of anthropogenic activities in specific atmospheric events and provides the necessary evidence in legal actions.

In addition, this new discipline contributes to the awareness of the impact of human activities on the climate, reinforcing the need for prompt and effective action.

The contribution of attribution science in the field of climate change disputes can be considered twofold: on the one hand, it allows identifying the liability of specific subjects, on the other hand, it provides the necessary evidence to support legal actions. Furthermore, the results of this discipline, by highlighting the impact of human activities on the climate, contribute to raising awareness and mobilizing public opinion, and consequently, also the political world.

The embarrassing Covid

Stefania Salmaso — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:22:00 +0100

“An embarrassing Covid-19”: It could be the title of a short story by Calvino or a rhyme by Rodari, but it’s what we’re witnessing these days. The increasing frequency of SARS-CoV-2 infections in various areas of the world, including Italy, has forced mainstream media to address it again. However, it’s often discussed with a sort of embarrassment and only for the sake of reporting. When discussing possible countermeasures, the discomfort becomes even more apparent.

Why? One of the worst aspects of communication during the pandemic has been the reliance on “pundits”, among whom many are well-qualified in the clinical field of patient care, but not necessarily equipped with public health experience and tools. Opinions can easily be exploited, and polarization has often been associated with political rather than scientific ideologies. There’s rarely been an explanation of the decision-making process and the criteria guiding it, or the reasons for choosing among different alternatives. To many, it seemed that one opinion was as valid as another.

Now that we are facing the increasing frequency of Covid-19 cases again, many feel that taking a stand for or against one or more recommendations (use of masks? isolation of the infected? vaccination?) can also have ideological connotations, in the absence of stated rational elements. This is where the discomfort arises. When it’s unclear on what basis decisions are made, it’s evident that space for “opinions” becomes predominant, and the discussion moves away from a rational approach.

Indeed, in our country, there doesn’t seem to be (or at least it’s not known) a consolidated and transparent process that allows understanding how health authorities formulate recommendations. Even the presence of scientific data isn’t always decisive in public health decisions, and moving from evidence to recommendations isn’t automatic: it depends on the strength of the evidence, the context in which it was obtained, the feasibility of the recommendations, and their acceptability. Evaluating the quality of available evidence and defining the strength of the resulting recommendations has been the method used abroad for years to draft guidelines.

Last September 12, 2023, the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) met (broadcasted live on the web) to evaluate scientific evidence regarding the Covid vaccination to be proposed in the US and to examine how to move from evidence to public health recommendations. All the slides presented are available online, and the amount of data displayed covered many aspects, from current epidemiology, long-Covid, circulating variants, the economic evaluation of the disease, to available vaccines. A lengthy presentation assessed the strength of the evidence presented and considered various aspects to move from evidence to recommendations: public health, benefits, risks, perception by the target population, acceptability of vaccination, feasibility and practical aspects of the offer, required resources, and finally, vaccination equity.

Among the public health aspects, for example, the offer of further Covid vaccination for young people up to 18 years of age is compared in terms of deaths with other already recommended vaccinations (against meningitis, chickenpox, rotavirus, etc), highlighting that, albeit over different time spans, the number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 is far greater than that of other diseases for which vaccination is already recommended. For adults, the comparison with the flu results in even more evident favor for the Covid vaccination. Particular emphasis is placed on equity aspects, which are discussed for each of the aspects covered (benefits, risks, acceptability, feasibility, etc.), and it’s evident that there are significant differences between different ethnicities, age groups, and geographical areas regarding risk factors for severe Covid-19 complications.

Without concluding that the ACIP example is the only or the best one, the underlying issue is to set rules, make them known, and apply them transparently for everyone.

Another point worth considering is data availability. If there were a consolidated evaluation method, we would know what data we need to decide and which studies and surveillance we need to equip ourselves with to actually evaluate objective elements. Adherence to public health recommendations would certainly be more convinced if they were also based on timely and accessible results from solid studies conducted in our country. The Italian Association of Epidemiology has called for transparency in decision-making processes, and it would indeed be appropriate to continue to demand established and known rules without always relying on the more or less justified wave of popular sentiment or other conveniences, and bring the discussion back to a less embarrassing ground.

Neanderthal genes made Covid more severe

Margherita Fronte — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 15:30:00 +0100

A small group of genes that we inherited from the Neanderthal man - and from his romantic relationships with our sapiens ancestors - exposes us today to the risk of developing severe Covid. This is the unique conclusion of the Origin study by the Mario Negri Institute, presented yesterday in Milan and published in the journal iScience. Conducted with a sophisticated DNA analysis technique, the study identified a haplotype containing three Neanderthal genes, closely related, “certainly linked to the severity of the disease, and whose presence in the genome explains why the virus can severely affect even young subjects without other risk factors,” explains Giuseppe Remuzzi, director of Mario Negri.

The genes responsible for 15% of deaths in the province of Bergamo

According to calculations by Matteo Breno, the lead author of the study, 15% of the deaths that occurred in the province of Bergamo can be attributed to these variants. Origin involved the communities of Bergamo most heavily affected by the virus in early 2020. Almost 10,000 people responded to an initial questionnaire. Of these, 1,200 were selected for the subsequent DNA test and divided into three groups of 400, homogeneous in terms of age, gender, and other characteristics. The first group consisted of patients who had severe Covid, the second of those who had a mild or asymptomatic disease, and the third of subjects who had not contracted the virus. The DNA microarray technique finally allowed for the analysis of nearly 9 million genetic variants for each participant, searching for those that could explain the variety of symptoms. The regions linked to the most severe forms are about twenty in total. “But among these, one is particularly significant: it is located on chromosome 3 and contains three genes that Homo sapiens inherited from the Neanderthal man,” explains Remuzzi. Those who carry it have more than double the risk of developing severe Covid, almost three times the risk of going into intensive care, and an even greater chance of needing mechanical ventilation.

Confirmed the relationship between Covid severity and Neanderthal genes

The study confirms what was hypothesized by Svante Pääbo, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who decoded the DNA of the Neanderthals, and who in 2020 had already found a relationship between the severity of Covid and Neanderthal genes. The Mario Negri study specifies that two of the three identified genes (named CCR9 and CXCR6) are related to inflammatory processes, while the third (LZTFL1) affects the development of cells lining the respiratory tract walls, which would be less effective in expelling harmful agents from the outside.

We cannot archive Covid-19 yet

Stefania Salmaso — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 11:40:00 +0100

Several attempts have been made to archive Covid-19, trying to leave behind an experience worthy of the worst dystopian novel (about 770 million officially registered cases worldwide and an estimated 18 million deaths), but it seems that the anticipated “coexistence” with the family of viruses has not yet stabilized, and it will take several years to get there. The goal will be that of endemic persistence with viral circulation that manifests in predictable trends, such as annual or seasonal cycles, as with the flu virus. The big unknown at the moment is still the variability demonstrated by the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which, while not greater than other already known viruses, still has too many unclear points.

At the beginning of the pandemic, for about the first eight months, the presence of identified variants was still very limited, and the forecast of low viral variability turned out to be completely wrong due to limited circulation and the number of observations. The health relevance of each variant depends on its transmissibility, virulence, and ability to evade our immune response. It is estimated that, until the end of 2021, the spread of Alpha and Delta was mainly due to their high transmissibility associated with a modest ability for immune evasion, while the success of the Omicron variant, which replaced the Delta variant, seems to be associated with a greater ability to escape our immune response.

Most Sars-CoV-2 infections cause an acute illness that our immune system resolves within 10-15 days. After infection, viral particles reproduce exponentially in the respiratory tract, reaching a maximum concentration 2-5 days after exposure to the contagion, a time that corresponds to the onset of symptoms. This is more or less similar for all variants, but for Omicron, the peak of maximum viral concentration is about three days, a time during which the infection can be effectively transmitted.

In recent weeks, the number of reported Covid-19 cases in Italy is on the rise. The daily average of infections, which was less than 500 in mid-July, surpassed 3,000 at the beginning of September, with a peak of 5,547 on September 5th. Hospitalizations have more than doubled in a month (at the beginning of August only 812 Covid-positive patients were hospitalized, while on September 6th, the hospitalized were 1,872). The reported cases are more frequent among the elderly, and the figures are certainly underestimated due to frequent self-administered swabs and the lack of reporting for younger individuals.

Predicting the short-term epidemiology of Covid-19 is challenging, but it is conceivable that the waning of our immune defenses, already evidenced by the occurrence of further infections in people who have already been ill once (the latest ISS bulletin reports that 38% of the new reported cases had already been infected previously), and the emergence of viral strains with new antigenic characteristics will lead to periodic epidemic waves. To limit the impact of infections, one can act on reducing the share of people who have become partially susceptible and on the other hand on limiting the likelihood of the emergence of new variants. However, it is necessary to bear in mind that the two approaches are not alternatives, as the evidence of vaccination efficacy is solid for severe clinical cases but not as much for infections.

To reduce the share of cases that require healthcare due to decreased immunity, further vaccination is proposed. Last June, the EMA and ECDC signed a joint document advising vaccine manufacturers to formulate new monovalent vaccines targeting the Omicron XBB.1.5 variant, as the descendants of the XBB1 strain are predominant globally.

The demonstration of the efficacy of these products is complicated by the pre-existing widespread partial immunity, and what is expected is an incremental benefit, impossible to prove for simple infections but assessable, with adequate epidemiological studies, for more severe clinical cases. The evidence required at the time of marketing authorization is essentially laboratory-based, based on the titration of antibodies induced by vaccination, even in animal models, capable of neutralizing various Sars-CoV-2 variants. As for the seasonal flu vaccination, the choice of formulation of the new vaccines is the one considered most “reasonable” before the winter season. Compared to the flu, however, we have the disadvantage of the lack of clear seasonality, making it impossible to benefit from knowing which viruses circulate alternately in the two hemispheres of the world and are therefore predictive of individual seasons in each hemisphere. Monitoring the effectiveness of the vaccine in the field will be vital, also to understand if the path taken will also be valid for the coming seasons.

The new vaccines should be available soon, and a circular from the Ministry of Health has already given indications about the official recommendations, very similar to those for the flu vaccination. The protection provided by vaccinations is individual, highly recommended for subjects at risk of severe clinical cases, and the idea of achieving herd immunity has now been completely abandoned. But it is not desirable to think of letting infections run their course, due to the risk of the emergence of new variants.

The more people get infected, the higher the number of viral replications and the higher the probability that even more efficient viruses will emerge in spreading and causing disease. In short, it’s a vicious circle, which requires maintaining a certain level of attention and precautions to limit the spread and also reduce the circulation of “imported” variants to be promptly identified.

Dismantling or reducing epidemiological and viral surveillance and zeroing the general population’s attention to viral spread does not seem like an adequate strategy. It is instead necessary to strengthen the ability to early identify epidemic outbreaks and high-risk variants (“variants of concern” as defined by WHO). During the early stages of the pandemic, in the absence of much data, extensive use was made of mathematical models to estimate diffusion parameters and build scenarios and make public health decisions based on these. Now those same models could be even more precise and useful if fed with real data generated by good epidemiological surveillance, from studying epidemic outbreaks, intra-family transmissions to estimate secondary attack rates, from studying the transmissibility, virulence, and ability for immune evasion of the various circulating variants, also using wastewater surveillance to identify and characterize variants whose circulation is not identified by investigated clinical cases.

During the early stages of the pandemic, we had to accept the uncertainty of incomplete data for ongoing studies and the rapid times for which we were unprepared. Now, we have an opportunity to learn and be more prepared. It will be necessary to coordinate the health surveillance structures, organize prospective studies with suitable methodologies, with the involvement of competent bodies and trained personnel. We must also disseminate clear and correct information so that everyone is kept updated on the epidemic’s development and the actions and measures to be adopted, avoiding the creation of fears, false alarms, and especially the widespread misinformation that has sometimes fueled the resistance and skepticism towards the precautions and vaccinations adopted.

Europe votes on the new air quality directive

Luca Carra — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 08:57:00 +0100

The new European Directive on air quality, currently under discussion in the European Parliament, updates the concentration limits of major air pollutants, bringing them closer to those set by the new guidelines of the World Health Organization (2021). The outcome of the vote, scheduled for September 13, is uncertain. The new law proposed by the European Commission in October 2022 outlines various air quality standards to be achieved by 2030, aiming for the “zero pollution” goal by 2050, leaning towards a more realistic intermediate scenario. However, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee (Envi) voted in late June 2023 to adopt the WHO thresholds by 2030 (see here). In turn, the center and right-wing political forces in Parliament have proposed several amendments that dilute pollutant limits and, in some cases, extend the timeframe to achieve them: from 2030 to 2040, “adjusting” the legal provision that allows the most polluted European regions (including the Po Valley) to postpone compliance by 5 years.

In short, science has spoken, now politics decides. On the 13th with a vote from the Parliament, and subsequently from the Council of the European Union. Regardless of the outcome, we will bid farewell to the “old” Air Quality Directive from 2008 and adopt one that at least aims to virtually reduce to zero the number of premature deaths and illnesses from air pollution.¹

Stricter limits to reduce health and environmental damage

Reducing the main air pollutants - especially fine particulate matter (PM₁₀ and PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and ozone (O₃) - goes hand in hand with the net zero emissions process of the European Green Deal. Like this, the European strategy for reducing air pollution should be divided into two main stages: more than halving (-55%) premature deaths attributable to pollution in Europe by 2030, and reducing pollutants to negligible concentrations from a health perspective by 2050. Currently, premature deaths attributable to air pollution in Europe are about 300,000 (in Italy about 50,000), and many more people suffer from respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, and lung cancer; heart conditions, such as heart failure or heart attack, but also diabetes, reproductive outcomes such as low birth weight, and neurological conditions such as cognitive difficulties and dementia.

With health damages in mind, as well as the environmental consequences of pollution on ecosystems (for example, nitrogen eutrophication and crop damage from ozone), the new air quality directive raises the bar by setting, among other things, concentration limits for 12 different pollutants, which will become operational in 2030.²

The new limits

Let’s see what the new directive proposes, considering at least the two main pollutants, PM_2.5 and NO₂: the European document relies on a thorough impact assessment that outlines 19 options for 2030, which can be simplified into three scenarios: the most ambitious reflects the WHO guideline values of 5µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic meter) for PM_2.5 and 10 µ/m³ for NO₂; the intermediate scenario sets 10 µg/m3 for PM_2.5 and 20 µg/m³ for NO2, which in the third scenario rise to 15 µ/m³ and 30µg/m³, respectively.

All three actions are improvements over the current directive’s limits, which are 25 µg/m³ for PM_2.5 and 40µg/m³ for NO₂. Of course, there are many more substances, and the limit framework is more complex, as can be seen in the table below.

Air quality standards for different pollutants, respectively, of the current European directive (2008), the WHO guidelines (2021), and the three main options considered in the European Commission’s impact study for the choice of the new directive’s limits by 2030 (that of the current directive proposal corresponds to the penultimate column, intermediate between the most ambitious option as it is identical to the WHO guidelines (on the left) and the less stringent one (last on the right). Source: European Commission.

In addition to setting new limits and other parameters,³ the directive under discussion indicates improvements to the monitoring network, proposes tighter controls and timelines for countries that do not meet these limits, and for the first time allows pollution victims to request compensation.

Who opposes the new directive’s more ambitious political options?

Resistance to the new objectives mainly comes from the industrial world and established economic interests in certain regions. Consider, for example, the coal and other fossil industries, but also intensive farming, responsible for almost all ammonia (NH₃) emissions, which come from animal waste and combine with nitrogen oxides to form secondary particulate matter. But there are also some regional administrations such as Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna, which already struggle to meet current limits and fear they will not be able to meet the new ones even more.

However, reading the extensive scientific documentation prepared for the new directive (downloadable from this link), the challenge of bringing even the most critical areas like the Po Valley to a more acceptable health and environmental situation is not impossible at all. And it would also be economically advantageous, given the reduced mortality and morbidity, and the reduced impacts on ecosystems, which add up to quantifiable benefits of about 30-40 billion euros compared to costs of about 4-7 billion euros for 2030.

Mission impossible? It doesn’t seem so

But is all this technically feasible? According to the Commission, yes. The first thing to note is that the pollutant thresholds of the current directive are already met by the vast majority of Member States, a sign that the 2008 directive has worked, and that today the European population is exposed to much lower concentrations than ten years ago. As the impact assessment prepared for the new directive states: “In 2020, concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) exceeded the EU’s annual limit value in at least one sampling point in three Member States. These concentrations above the limit value were recorded in 2% of all monitoring stations and mainly occurred in urban or suburban areas. As for nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), seven EU Member States recorded concentrations above the annual limit value, with exceedances in 2% of all monitoring stations.”

The data shows that, despite GDP growth in Europe, exposure to pollutants has decreased. Moreover, a reduction in pollutant concentrations is also observed globally, at least since 2011.⁴

However, despite these advances, the current directive’s values do not guarantee not getting sick and dying from pollution, and therefore need to be progressively adjusted to values 3 to 5 times lower, as provided by the WHO guidelines.

The case of the Po Valley

The Po Valley, along with some areas of Eastern Europe, represents a critical area, both due to the persistence of strong emissions and the atmospheric stagnation conditions that characterize it.

Concentration of PM_2.5 in 2020 in Europe. Source: European Commission.

For this reason, the European Commission’s impact assessment report dedicated a series of pollutant concentration simulations to it based on different intervention scenarios. Even in the Po basin, there has been a reduction in pollutants for years in conjunction with the local air quality plans required by the current directive, which seem to make it possible to respect the new limits in less than a decade. In addition to the measures provided for by the various decarbonization plans of the Green Deal, Fit for 55, and Repower EU, structural interventions are needed, in particular:

decisive actions to combat traffic, especially old diesel vehicles (responsible for most NO₂ emissions),
measures to progressively reduce biomass combustion to zero, which still accounts for 20% of heating in the Po basin area and affects the production of particulate matter and non-metallic volatile organic compounds (NVOC).
actions to reduce ammonia emissions from agricultural and livestock activities that heavily contribute to the formation of secondary fine particulate matter.

Time series of PM₁₀ and NO_x emission factors and the number of heavy and diesel vehicles in the Po basin. PM10c is from exhaust gas, PM10w is from brake wear, tires, etc. Source: Alessandro Marongiu et al. Atmospheric Emission Sources in the Po-Basin from the LIFE-IP PREPAIR Project. Scientific Reports.

As is evident even from the figures below, the European Commission’s expert simulations also show a trend towards a cleaner and healthier Europe for the Po Valley, as increasingly demanded by European citizens and stakeholders in various demographic surveys.

From left to right and from top to bottom, annual average concentrations of PM_2.5 in the Po Valley, in 2020 (first box at the top), followed by scenarios for 2030, progressively stricter. Source: European Commission.

As the European Respiratory Society argues in a recently published position statement, “The WHO’s air quality guidelines for 2021 have had the courage to set extraordinarily low recommendations for the annual concentrations of PM_2.5 and NO₂, respectively five and four times lower than the current European Union limit values. Therefore, aligning the new EU air quality standards with the WHO guidelines represents a historic opportunity to implement a key health prevention strategy. This would avoid substantial health damage linked to slowing global warming, but above all, it would result in immediate health gains in terms of reducing health impacts due to poor air quality.”

Therefore, there are no serious scientific, let alone political, reasons to oppose or try to dilute the more ambitious limits proposed by the new European directive, which by mid-century at the latest must erase the heavy toll of deaths and illnesses from pollution.

Notes

Air quality directives are part of a global policy framework for clean air based on three main pillars. The first consists of air quality directives, which set quality standards regarding the concentration levels of 12 atmospheric pollutants. The second is the Directive on the reduction of national emissions of certain atmospheric pollutants (NEC Directive), which defines each Member State’s commitments to reduce emissions of the main atmospheric pollutants and their precursors, acting within the EU to achieve a joint reduction in transboundary pollution. The third consists of policies that set emission standards for the main sources of atmospheric pollution, such as road transport vehicles, domestic heating plants, or industrial plants.
These are: particulate matter (PM_2.5 and PM₁₀), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂, including NO_x), ozone (O₃), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), benzene (C₆H₆), benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni).
The directive prioritizes limits beyond which recovery plans and possibly sanctions are triggered. But it also provides for other parameters, such as attention and alarm thresholds, long-term objectives, and, of particular importance, the objectives of reducing the average exposure of the population to the various pollutants.
According to a study just published in Nature Communications, satellite and ground data worldwide show that “population-weighted global exposure to PM2.5, correlated with both pollution levels and population size, increased from 1998 (28.3 μg/m3) to a peak in 2011 (38.9 μg/m3) and subsequently decreased steadily (34.7 μg/m3 in 2019).” Chi Li et al. Reversal of trends in global fine particulate matter air pollution. Nat Commun 14, 5349 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41086-z

Healthy Lungs for Life: lung health starts with clean air

Natalia Milazzo — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 08:37:00 +0100

According to the World Health Organization, air pollution is the fourth leading cause of disease and premature death worldwide (after hypertension, smoking, and malnutrition). It is estimated that due to pollution, the European population loses an average of almost one year of life. The Healthy Lungs for Life campaign, promoted by the European Lung Foundation (ELF) in collaboration with the European Respiratory Society (ERS), was launched today in Milan with a press conference attended by the Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, the President of the Lombardy Region Attilio Fontana, and Senator Roberta Toffanin, representing the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security.

A global campaign on long-term health

Healthy Lungs for Life is a global awareness campaign on long-term health that aims to address not only those already affected by lung diseases, to improve their quality of life, but also those who might be affected in the future. It is one of the largest lung health awareness campaigns, targeting all stakeholders in the respiratory landscape: healthcare professionals, scientists, general practitioners, policymakers, and the public. The goal is to focus on prevention and public education, to try to reduce the burden of lung diseases on society. The campaign was created and is led by ERS and ELF and is a partnership between organizations worldwide.

For the Healthy Lungs for Life 2023 edition in Milan, the focus is on the importance of breathing clean air for lung health. An alarming situation, that of air pollution, but still silent, according to the event organizers, which requires awareness from institutions that need to make non-deferrable choices and adopt stricter measures in terms of pollution reduction and promotion of healthier lifestyles.

“Pollution, climate change, and sustainable development should be priority points on everyone’s agenda. We chose to highlight these topics at this year’s ERS congress to increase interest in environmental issues in Italy and Europe, not only for the scientific community but also for citizens,” said Marisa Bonsignore, from the University of Palermo, president of the ERS congress held concurrently in Milan these days.

By raising public awareness, involving decision-makers, and presenting research, studies, and data, ELF and ERS aim to gather support for policies that promote clean air, with particular attention to the EU directive on air quality that will be voted on in the European Parliament on September 13, and fully support the WHO guidelines on clean air limit values, a proposal adopted by the European Parliamentary Committee for the Environment in June 2020.

“We should all be concerned about the air we breathe and work together to change our habits, but also support our politicians who promote strategies to protect lung health,” said Barbara Hoffman, ERS Advocacy Chair, from the University of Dusseldorf. “The cost of inaction is immense: every year Europe faces losses of billions of euros due to healthcare costs and absences from work due to diseases related to air pollution. The WHO guidelines on air quality should be the standard we all work towards.” It is estimated that if the air pollution limit levels in European cities conformed to the WHO guidelines on air quality, the benefit in terms of quality of life would be measurable, in some cases, as almost two additional years of life.

“Milan is located in one of the most polluted areas of Europe, the Po Valley. The air quality in the region has significantly improved over the last two decades, but we are far from the values recommended by the WHO. In recent years, little progress has been made, and it is time to act more radically,” said Sergio Harari, from the State University of Milan, president of the ERS Congress. “Awareness and commitment to improvement are now essential, both from a public and political perspective. As president, together with Professor Bonsignore, of the largest international congress in the world, hosted here in Milan, we believe that the Healthy Lungs for Life campaign is a fantastic opportunity to connect with the people of the city and the region, to help them better understand the importance of health and the role that air pollution can play in the development of lung diseases.” It’s also a matter of vision, Harari further emphasizes: it’s important to move beyond the shortsighted attitude where only the costs related to measures to combat air pollution are seen, without realizing that the results of these measures are also advantageous from an economic point of view, in terms of lower future expenses for the national health service, as well as fewer lost workdays. And not only that. As Harari points out: “Economic data also emerges showing how the development of green policies and the conversion of industrial processes result in a positive return even in strictly economic terms. Of course, we need a policy that looks a little further than tomorrow.”

The orographic situation of the Po Valley, both Fontana and Sala emphasized, favors the stagnation of pollutants, making the situation more difficult and the compliance with European regulations harder.

Fontana specified that sustainability is essential and must be present in all choices, but without blocking development: in particular, the new European directive, he argues, would require very drastic reductions in production activities, livestock farming, car circulation, and heating.

For Sala, “today’s great challenge for Milan is to improve the air quality in the city, to improve the health and life of its citizens: a recent survey commissioned by C40 shows that this is a concern for Milanese. The studies and the awareness campaign carried out by ERS and ELF aim to explain the social, health, but also economic impact of the damage caused by bad air and how these can be prevented. Milan has adopted an Air Regulation and has initiated a series of policies aimed at reducing harmful emissions, aware of its geographical location not favorable to air exchange. For this reason, we have worked with other European cities so that areas disadvantaged from an orographic and meteorological point of view, such as the Po Valley, can obtain funding for interventions that have better air quality as their main purpose.”

The ERS congress held concurrently in Milan

The Healthy Lungs for Life campaign is held concurrently with the ERS congress, from September 9 to 13, 2023, at the MiCo in Milan, which will see the participation of thousands of doctors, healthcare professionals, and patients (estimated over 15,000 participants), to address issues related to lung health.

“ERS is committed to ensuring that doctors are the biggest supporters of clean air, as they treat patients daily who could be seriously affected by the negative impact of air pollution,” said Carlos Robalo Cordeiro, ERS president.

During the congress, numerous studies will be presented, for example, on the impact of pollution on pregnant women, but also interesting data on how the presence of greenery in cities not only can counteract pollution but also reduce the onset of respiratory diseases in children during their growth phase.

In this regard, it is worth noting that ERS and ELF have partnered with Forestami – the urban afforestation project that is increasing the natural capital of the Metropolitan City of Milan with the goal of planting 3 million trees by 2030 – to leave a tangible mark of their presence in the city, thanks also to a donation made by the European society to the project.

Oppenheimer, a film that equally addresses science and ethics

Fabio Terragni — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 21:21:00 +0100

It’s true: Robert Oppenheimer didn’t “invent” the atomic bomb. The most tragic achievement of 20th-century science and technology was the result of the first example of Big Science: the Manhattan Project, an unprecedented effort by the American government to outpace Nazi Germany, which cost over two billion dollars and involved tens of thousands of top-tier physicists, engineers, and technicians.

But Oppenheimer had a unique fate: after creating and leading the Los Alamos laboratory town for three years, where the bomb was physically constructed, he dared to question the American arms race strategy during the Cold War, especially regarding the hydrogen bomb. That was enough for his moral qualms, his political stances, and his open support for nuclear weapons proliferation control negotiations in McCarthyist America to bring him down from hero to suspect of colluding with the Soviet Union. From a national hero, he was excluded from accessing the most secret and sensitive information. He would be rehabilitated years later, only after a Senate committee clarified the instrumental nature of the charges against him. But in the meantime, he was humiliated: the American Prometheus, the one who stole atomic energy from the Gods to give it to mankind, underwent his torment.

The personal journey of Oppenheimer is well known and has been recounted in several biographies; it’s a controversial story, full of light and shadow and, like the entire Manhattan Project, still a subject of discussion among historians of physics. I refrain from expressing an opinion on this matter. As an avid science viewer, however, I want to express an opinion on the film that English director Christopher Nolan recently adapted from Kay Bird and Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 book. Simply put: go see it! I believe it’s destined to remain in film history, especially since it dares to tackle a historically relevant topic like the production and use of atomic devices, making it both archetypal and deeply human. The underlying themes echo thoughts from the “discovery” of fire: the ambition and frenzy of knowledge, harnessing natural power, using the resulting superpower, the struggle for control, and the anxieties of responsibility. Themes that resonate in Oppenheimer’s contradictory personality, masterfully portrayed by the director and the actor who plays him, Cillian Murphy.

The film is divided into three parts, which – as always happens in Nolan’s cinematography – don’t unfold sequentially but in parallel. The three periods of the American physicist’s life (from academic training in Europe, the introduction of quantum mechanics in the United States, building an advanced physics school in the USA, to the bomb; the indictment in ‘54; the rehabilitation by a Senate committee in ‘58) intertwine, and like in a thriller, slowly reveal the truth. Three hours of tension, of passion, in which we meet the physicist’s life companions, his intellectual aspirations, his weaknesses, but also many key figures in the science of the past century, physicists who made it great, like Einstein, Born, Bohr, Heisenberg, Szilard, Fermi. In an unlikely twist, Nolan manages to immerse the general audience in the adventure of science and the resulting concerns, specifically those that led 20th-century physicists first to promote research on the military use of nuclear energy, to prevent the risk of Nazi technological dominance, and then to ask not to use that first bomb against Japan, or even to seek its absolute prohibition.

I must admit my admiration. Nolan, as a director and writer, manages to treat science’s questions, even the most complex and hard-to-understand (like black holes or space-time paradoxes), making them accessible and engaging for all, in some cases even poetic, as in Interstellar. The most renowned actors are eager to star in his films, giving unforgettable performances, like in my opinion Robert Downey Jr.’s in Oppenheimer. And in this latest film, he manages to dignify the supposed naïveté of the ethics of responsibility, which confronts and challenges the scientific and technological hybris and the ruthless logic of the power struggle in a difficult, contradictory, non-linear dialectic with an uncertain outcome. The seventh art, cinematography, with Nolan, treats science and ethics on equal terms.

If we could find the same awareness in the protagonists of contemporary history, governments, and major tech companies, the dialogue on current issues - such as climate change and artificial intelligence - might be less trivial and more decisive.

Nature Restoration Law: We Approve the Law for the Future of European Nature

Laura Scillitani — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 12:31:00 +0100

Making the protection of nature and the restoration of habitats a legal obligation: this is the purpose of the new European regulation proposal, the Nature Restoration Law. An ambitious proposal, but crucial for making the European Green Deal something concrete. The *Nature Restoration Law * aims to use legislative tools for the restoration of degraded ecosystems, to stop the loss of biodiversity, and to ensure future generations benefit from the ecosystem services it provides.

The proposal follows the logic of the European 2030 Biodiversity Strategy. It aims by 2030 to implement restoration measures in at least 20% of European terrestrial and marine zones, ideally requalifying all degraded ecosystems by 2050. Particularly, the law explicitly refers to riverine, forest, urban, and agricultural ecosystems: aiming to reduce barriers limiting river connectivity, increase carbon stocks through more careful forest management, make fishing more sustainable, and decrease pesticide use in agricultural environments. The goal is to increase urban greenery and diversify cultivated areas, thus favoring butterflies, pollinators, and birds (important bio-indicators of environmental quality), as well as the mineralization of soils now made less productive by indiscriminate use of fertilizers and intensive monocultures.

The *Nature Restoration Law *emerged from a lengthy consultative phase between the European environmental commission and various stakeholders, following the 2021 publication of the European Strategy for Biodiversity 2030. The previous strategy achieved modest results: 81% of European habitats are declining, and only 27% of animal and plant species have a satisfactory conservation status. European nature currently relies on the legislative support of two fundamental instruments: the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive, protecting over 460 species of wild birds, 1,389 animal and plant species, and 233 types of habitats considered of community importance. For the listed species and habitats, States must ensure a satisfactory conservation status, meaning conditions exist today and in the future for the species or habitat to be healthy, with stable or expanding populations.

The Nature Restoration Law operates within the framework of these two directives, but adds the obligation to restore what is compromised. On July 12, the verdict will be out: the European Parliament will vote on the approval of the regulation proposal, but the outcome is anything but certain. The draft was published by the EU Environment Directorate on June 22, 2022, but was immediately strongly contested by the right-wing members of the European People’s Party (EPP), who see it as a dangerous threat to the development of the community’s agricultural economy, forcing, in their view, farmers to abandon productive lands, leading to increased costs and difficulties in distribution chains, ultimately threatening food security. The EPP has presented over 2,000 amendments to the law and is supported by other conservative parties like Identity and Democracy (ID), European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR). The Parliament’s Fisheries and Agriculture Committees have also expressed opposition to the Nature Restoration Law. In favor of adopting the new regulation are environmental NGOs, the European left, universities and research centers dealing with nature, but also numerous companies. On June 15, the vote at the European Parliament’s Environment Committee ended in a tie, with 44 votes in favor and 44 against. The same outcome occurred in the votes on June 27. A tie that on one hand prevented the law’s rejection as desired by the right, but still leaves suspense for approval.

In Italy, the Manifesto for the Nature Restoration Law has been published, an initiative that has so far received the support of over 150 associations, 4,000 scientists, dozens of large companies, and over one million signatures from individual citizens (here is the registration form). “The Nature Restoration Law is an opportunity that really cannot be missed. For all this, we turn to the European Parliament and all institutional and political actors in the field asking them to firmly support the approval of the Nature Restoration Law as an extraordinary opportunity for the rebirth of nature and European communities,” reads the Manifesto. “The Nature Restoration Law is the greatest opportunity to regenerate Europe’s nature and ensure sustainability, future, and well-being for its citizens.[…] In addition to the benefits for biodiversity, many others are added, of no lesser importance: the contribution to the climate crisis in terms of adaptation and mitigation, a healthier territory and thus less subject to floods, droughts, and other disasters, better conservation of natural capital and the ecosystem services it produces, a great contribution to the quality of life and the psychophysical health of citizens.”

If the regulation is approved, member states will have a maximum of two years to present their national restoration plans to the Commission, which will include habitat requalification strategies and monitoring plans to verify progress. The European Environment Agency will work on data collection and structuring guidelines to support the regulation’s implementation.

Voting in favor of a law for environmental requalification means sending a strong signal of wanting to move from fine words to deeds. The meager outcomes of the global biodiversity strategy and the European plan show that it is not enough to write declarations of intent on paper to achieve goals. While we talk or write about the need to stop biodiversity loss and combat climate change, time passes and the situation degrades. Ecosystem functioning guarantees us the services on which our very existence depends. If we continue to be driven by greed and the everything now mentality, we will continue to procrastinate the necessary changes to ensure future generations a sustainable life, as well as to run after emergencies, to be indignant in the face of the umpteenth environmental disaster more than announced by scientists, to try to plug the holes of a colander. It’s time for courageous choices, which might lead to an apparent decrease in short-term profits, but will guarantee a future for us and the other living beings that share this planet with us.

Save the Children but also the Transgender Adolescents: Their health and the risk of instrumentalization

Emilie Sartorelli — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 15:36:00 +0100

On the 15^th of September, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (Wpath) updated the Gold Standard of care for transgender and gender diverse (tgd) people. The Wpath guidelines essentially constitute a set of clinical guidelines, based on the best available scientific studies and professional expertise, with the purpose of educating and guiding health care professionals and programs, internationally. As such, they provide recommendations on both the most effective treatments and the most appropriate behaviors, as well as health care best practices (including linguistic and cultural aspects), to promote dignity and safety in approaching the health of tgd people.

Just one month after the publication of the new guidelines (SOC8), the chapter on adolescence has left behind (especially in the English-language media) a dust-up of alarmist invective, conspiracy theory and biased reporting. In some cases, even in professional and field publications such as the British Medical Journal. The most critical aspect is certainly the removal of precise minimum age recommendations in case it is indicated to provide medical and surgical gender affirmation treatments required by adolescents. It follows the recommendation to involve close relatives, “unless their involvement is determined to be harmful to the adolescent,” thus contemplating the possibility of their exclusion from the evaluation and treatment framework. However, in hindsight, little or nothing has been reported about the rationale underlying these new recommendations. Still, SOC8 mark a significant step change in the approach to adolescent tgd health. Yet, to gain a better understanding of this shift, it is useful to set aside (for a moment) the context of public and political debate, and try to get a sense of Wpath’s approach and thus its work in light of the state of research.

Who are tgd people and how many are there?

Gender identity is a concept that has relatively recently entered common usage. It comes from psychology and denotes “a person’s deeply felt, internal, intrinsic sense of their own gender,” where ‘deeply’, ‘internal’ and ‘intrinsic’ are not poeticizing adjectives, but rather define a constitutive element of any person’s psyche. Gender incongruence or gender diversity occurs when a person develops a gender identity that differs from the gender assigned to that person, typically at birth based on observation of the external genitalia (to approximate, the ‘biological sex’).

It is still very difficult to estimate how often this phenomenon occurs worldwide. However, the data available are growing. While Western health providers report an average of 0.02 to 0.1 percent of the population, larger surveys range from 0.3 to 4.5 percent among adults to 2.5 to 8.4 percent among younger people. The growth in the data, as well as the leap between the percentages of adults and young people, should come as no surprise. In fact, it is only recently that large-scale systematic surveys have begun to be done, while at the same time both information as well as media visibility of tgd people and protective policies toward them have increased, fostering a phenomenon of emergence.

What are we talking about when we talk about their health?

Nowadays, gender incongruence is defined as a condition in the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (WHO, ICD-11). It is, therefore, not considered an inherently pathological phenomenon, which means that in itself it does not cause any harm to individuals. Yet, at the same time, gender incongruence is still stigmatized in many societies around the world-and sometimes denied in its scientific underpinnings, branded as “ideology” or “gender theory.” This stigma can contribute to cases of abuse and violence. More than that, it often leads to the development of minority stress, in essence elevated levels of stress and psychological distress or even gender dysphoria - the latter is defined as a peculiar mental health condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR), and in this sense it is functional to the activation logics of most national health services. This set of socially induced symptoms typically have chronic valence and are statistically associated with significantly higher rates of depression, suicidal tendency, and self-harm than the average cisgender population (i.e., anyone who is not tgd). In all accounts, unable to ‘treat’ the phenomenon of stigma in human societies, health care for tgd people focuses on curative and preventive treatment of induced and related symptomatology through so-called “gender affirming” therapies. These mainly intervene on body aspects that heavily affect the psychosocial perception typically associated with stigma (consider genitalia, but also other socioculturally impactful aspects such as voice). Therefore, they may include hormone therapies and surgery. However, in some cases other much less invasive types of interventions are also sufficient.

Gender affirming therapies are called as such, as they support the gender identity developed by the tgd person. In this sense, they are diametrically opposed to “aversion” therapies, also known as “conversion therapies.” Historically, the latter have long been tried-and in some contexts are still practiced-following the (unfounded) assumption of correcting or healing gender identity. In fact, from the earliest scientific studies in the second half of the 1800s until recent times, gender incongruence has been regarded as a mental illness or disorder in itself (often confusing it, by the way, with homosexual orientation, which was considered equally pathological). As a result, various therapeutic approaches have been developed for decades in the attempt to align gender identity incongruence with biological sex (sometimes even resorting to practices such as electroshock). Conversion approaches, however, have not only been found to be inconsistent in their scientific and diagnostic assumptions, but, when applied, have caused a significant increase in psychological problems in tgd people, correlated in turn by an increase in suicide cases. Therefore, both Wpath and leading international health agencies now condemn their use.

Wpath’s new approach

The SOC8 come out ten years after the last update (SOC7), following an extensively documented elaboration and synthesis work to ensure transparency. The new guidelines are basically the result of a cross-comparison between analysis of new data and review of available scientific literature, as well as clinical experiences and circumstances. The author of this work was an international, multidisciplinary committee of about 120 members who are experts in various relevant fields, from health care to research, including a number of stakeholders. Finally, the Delphi methodwas used to draft the guidelines so that the committee’s professional consensus was reached on each and every wording in the text.

The presence of stakeholders (about 13% of the committee) with experience in health advocacy in the so-called transgender community from different parts of the world is one of the methodological innovations. This was introduced to broaden the perspective on nonclinical factors influencing health decisions, both in appeal to the health principle of including patients’ views on their own health issues and to ensure greater adaptability of the guidelines to different contexts globally. The latter aspect is particularly relevant. Indeed, the medical and scientific community has now recognized that the " expression of gender characteristics, including identities, that are not stereotypically associated with one’s sex assigned at birth is a common and a culturally diverse human phenomenon." However, most of the expertise, studies and scientific evidence regarding tgd people actually comes from the Western world. This has forced the committee to calibrate, as much as possible, the data and results of the studies. Also, to formulate the new guidelines in such a way as to reduce their possible friction with the variety of health policy realities worldwide. Consistent with this approach, one of the cardinal principles stated by SOC8 is the “flexibility” of the guidelines themselves. Hence, the explicit invitation to healthcare professionals and programs to modify them as necessary (by virtue of particular individual situations, lack of resources, need for specific harm reduction strategies, etc.) and in open communication, in order to promote healthcare best practice of informed decision-making.

So, what about the chapter on adolescence?

The creation of a chapter dedicated exclusively to adolescence responds mainly to three reasons 1) the exponential increase in the reference rates 2) the increase in studies on the subject of this population group 3) the peculiar issues regarding individual development in this age group. Scanning the specifics regarding these three aspects, one realizes both their actual relevance and the margins of uncertainty that still surround them, not the least of which is the fact that it is still unclear how gender identity develops psycho-physiologically. With good reason, Wpath itself strongly encourages further promotion of research on the subject.

Turning to the most controversial news, the previous guidelines diversified some minimum criteria according to the types of treatment: reversible, partially reversible, and irreversible. Grossly simplifying, for affirmative hormone treatments (estrogen or testosterone) parental consent was not required, but it was assumed that the adolescent had reached the legal age for health decisions, with reference to the 16 years of age valid in many countries (especially Western ones). For (almost) all surgical treatments, however, it was necessary to have reached the age of majority in one’s own country. In the preliminary draft of the SOCs8 released in December 2021, another predefined time grid had initially been proposed, which already reduced the minimum age for different surgeries: at least 14 years for affirmative hormone treatment, 15 years for chest masculinization, 16 for facial surgery, etc. Exceptions were allowed in case of significant reasons in the treatment setting. The final text of SOC8, instead, eliminated the chronological grid altogether. The only two explicit time indications in the new “Statements of Recommendations” are that “the experience of gender diversity/incongruence is marked and sustained over time.” And in the case of surgery, that “the adolescent had at least 12 months of gender-affirming hormone therapy or longer, if required, to achieve the desired surgical result.”

Though, the new text is much more prodigal in its exposition of specifics. The peculiarities of the adolescent period play a considerable role here. Indeed, it is not just the common perception that it is an age of great identity exploration, forward spurts and abrupt backward turns. Accordingly, the first specification states, “it is important to establish the young person has experienced several years of persistent gender diversity/incongruence prior to initiating less reversible treatments such as gender-affirming hormones or surgeries.” On the other hand, scientific studies attest that body development often proceeds in a manner that is staggered compared to cognitive, emotional and psycho-social development. In addition, individual paths differ widely: some people mature earlier and some mature later in the skills needed to confront such health decisions, regardless of their age at registry. Consistent with this, it is recommended that a case-specific, ongoing and gradual “comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment” be carried out, calibrating the progression in the provision of more or less reversible interventions from time to time, depending on the available evidence. The approach to adolescent tgd health changes, therefore, center of mass. The tool of a predefined time frame, poorly tailored to the reality of individuals, is greatly reduced, leaving more room (as well as responsibility) for case-by-case assessment by the relevant health professionals.

Regarding the, albeit legitimate, question of whether it would still not have been appropriate for the guidelines to at least set arbitrary age limits as a matter of prudence-as is done with, for example, driver’s licensing or sexual consent-three considerations, namely of a bioethical, medical-clinical, and health-political nature, should be noted. The first is that “allowing irreversible puberty to progress in adolescents who experience gender incongruence is not a neutral act given that it may have immediate and lifelong harmful effects.” In this regard, recall what has already been said about the chronic valence of gender dysphoria associated with depression, suicidality and self-harm. The second consideration concerns finding the best approach to adapt the clinical framework. “For youth who have experienced a shorter duration of gender incongruence, social transition-related and other medical supports […] may also provide some relief as well as furnishing additional information to the clinical team regarding a young person’s broad gender care needs.” Although still few in statistical terms, the best available studies report extremely low rates of “detransition” (1.9-3.5 percent), i.e., disruption and reversal gender treatment. In addition, recent studies indicate that there are adolescents who choose the detransition, but still do not regret starting the treatment, as they experienced it as part of their understanding process. Finally, the last consideration concerns the global role of Wpath and the cardinal principle of flexibility mentioned earlier. The definition of age of majority, age of consent, or the age conditions regulating access to different health services can vary greatly from country to country. For example, within the United Kingdom the age of majority is 18 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, however, it is 16 in Scotland; in other nations it is 21, as in Madagascar, and in others it even varies according to gender as in Iran: 9 years for women, 15 for men. Therefore, in the supranational perspective adopted by Wpath, establishing a predefined time grid a priori is not fruitful.

By the same token, it may also be easy to see the sense of contemplating parental exclusion from the treatment framework in case it may be detrimental to the adolescent. Based on studies, SOC8 recognize that “parent and family support of TGD youth is a primary predictor of youth well-being and is protective of the mental health of TGD youth.” Accordingly, their involvement in the assessment and treatment framework setting process is strongly encouraged, maintaining open and informed communication throughout the process. At the same time, by virtue of the social origin of health problems in tgd persons, in the case that the parental context is overly “rejecting,” the possibility is contemplated that “youth may require the engagement of larger systems of advocacy and support to move forward with the necessary support and care.” So, it is not recommended that health care professionals have the legal power to extinguish parental custody, so much as the possibility that, by the adolescent’s request, the pertinent institutions can take charge of the adolescent’s well-being.

In conclusion, in light of the new approach to health care centered on comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment on a case-by-case basis, it is worth noting that SOC8 provides 7 minimum requirements of different kinds (diagnostic, psycho-emotional assessment, informed consent, etc.) for the beginning of any treatment, even minimal, of gender affirmation to be recommended. In addition, there are 15 recommendations referring to the health care professionals themselves, especially regarding the kind of training and specialization needed, as well as procedures and health care best practices for proper evaluative and therapeutic approaches. Above all, this is what the Gold Standard of care for adolescent and tgd health consists of.

What’s next?

All in all, no national health service is obliged to accept the new Wpath guidelines (several did not even do so with the previous ones, or only partially). Certainly, best practice in the medical-scientific field would suggest that a process of comparison, evaluation and updating be initiated at the international level by the WHO, at the level of national institutions, as well as competent health professionals-as indeed explicitly suggested by SOC8. The risk is that the chaotic and instrumental rehashing of the current public and political debate on tgd persons will end up radically contaminating this pathway. In the end, it would be (once again) the health of tgd people to pay the price. Right from adolescence.

Pollution and Covid. Two vague clues don't make an evidence

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 12:36:00 +0100

In these days, newspapers and television programs (and the web, of course) are giving space to a statement by the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine (SIMA) announcing important discoveries on the link between airborne particulate matter and Coronavirus, even describing them as important for the decisions to be taken in the coming weeks.

We are sorry to have to point out that, this time too, the “discoveries” described in the press releases are vague clues, completely preliminary, not yet subject to peer-review by experts in the field¹; and the conclusions are a mix of confusion and wishful thinking.

The first vague clue: an “evident correlation” that doesn not exist

The SIMA position paper, published on SIMA’s website in mid March², proposed the existence of a direct relationship between “the number of cases of COVID-19 and the PM10 pollution levels of the territories”, claiming therefore that a high concentration of PM10 in the atmosphere could be an “amplifier” of the diffusion of the Coronavirus (and not of its effects, for example higher mortality). The evidence would be a “strong correlation” that the authors found between the number of exceedances of the daily limit of PM10 concentrations and the number of infected cases³. The position paper even goes so far as to hypothesize that while in the southern regions of Italy (less polluted) the prevalent pattern of viral transmission occurs by contact between people, in the regions of northern Italy most polluted, the infection goes mainly through contact with “infected particulate matter”. In a way, exhuming the ancient theory of miasmas, used to explain the plague in pre-scientific times.

Beyond the phenomenological robustness of the theory proposed to explain the mechanism of transport of the Coronavirus by particulate matter, the theory has no data support, contrary to what has been stated. And some choices made by the authors in choosing the data used for the “correlation” are at least very questionable, as illustrated in the Appendix.

The hypothesis that atmospheric particulate matter could act as a carrier substrate for the transport of the virus, thus increasing the rate of contagion, has been also contested by 70 experts of the Italian Aerosol Society (IAS)⁴, who expressed many concerns and recalled that the apparent correlation between conditions of poor atmospheric circulation, secondary aerosol formation, PM accumulation near the ground and virus spread, should not be mistaken for a cause-effect relationship⁵. Of similar opinion, the Position paper of the Italian Environment and Health Network that collects institutions of the National Health Service and the National System of Environmental Protection⁶.

In conclusion: the position paper did not contain any evidence, but advanced a theory supporting that with very questionable calculations.

The vague clue is popular in the media

A preliminary study not yet published in scientific journals, and not subject to any peer review, usually has a limited circulation limited to the authors and small circles. In such a delicate moment of the epidemic, this rule should be respected even more. Instead, the authors have proposed their study in dozens of interviews with newspapers, radio and television stations. In these interviews they often said that these were preliminary results, but in fact, as was easy to expect, the message passed very often that - even if there is not all the evidence - the particulate matter carries the virus. The authors justified themselves by saying that they “took care to explain to journalists that it was a preliminary study”⁷, so that the blame would be on the journalists; however, if all journalists misrepresent, it means that the way the news was communicated was inadequate.

Contrary to what happens with IPCC reports, in which the hypotheses of relevance for decision-makers are carefully anchored to a judgement on their uncertainty, with specific guidelines to distinguish between “probable”, “very probable” and “extremely probable”, the authors wrote generically “It should be noted that the specificity of the rate of increase in cases of contagion that has affected some areas of Northern Italy in particular could be linked to the conditions of air particulate pollution that exerted a carrier and boost action”. The use of the term “could” is too general. There are many, too many things that “could be”. The work of scientists, particularly during an epidemic, should be to distinguish accurately speculative hypotheses, not yet proven, from facts: otherwise, you end up contributing to the confusion of communication, which inevitably exists in complex matters.

The second vague clue and the virus that is and is not there

The second clue was presented in a Press Release of April 24^th “Presence of Coronavirus on the atmospheric particulate matter: possible early “indicator” of future recurrences of the COVID-19 epidemic”, which is based, again, on unpublished work⁸.

Here the same authors of the previous position paper announce to have found traces of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in atmospheric PM10 taken in some areas of Bergamo. They go so far as to hypothesize the use of this discovery as important for the management measures of phase 2 of the COVID-19 epidemic.

But what have they really discovered? Even if the research has not yet passed the peer review and has not yet been published in a scientific journal, from the preliminary information it can be deduced that samples of ambient air have been taken: in these samples, which obviously contain particulate matter suspended in the atmosphere, the virus has not “been detected”, but only traces of its RNA⁹.

The presence of traces of viruses in particulate matter is by no means new, as traces of viruses from many millennia ago are also studied in ice cores¹⁰. But, of course, these are not active viruses, capable of being infectious. They are, in fact, fragments, traces that may indicate the presence of infectious viruses, but do not demonstrate it, as explained below.

Even if the presence of viruses still active on the particulate matter was confirmed in other studies, this would not lead to its infectivity. First of all, because after a few hours a virus, in the absence of a host to colonize and in whose cells it replicates, cannot continue to exist as a biological entity. Secondly, one or a few viruses are not enough to infect… but there must be a definite viral load under which there is no infection, as confirmed in a very convincing way on Nature by the Berlin Charité virologist Christian Drosten¹¹.

Let’s try to clarify. These traces (or “the swab” we talk about daily) are detected thanks to a technology called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (which won Kary Mullis the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993), thanks to which a DNA fragment can be amplified to infinity. It is essentially the equivalent of an electron microscope that allows us to see what is invisible to the naked eye or with a powerful optical microscope. However, even for PCR, there is a threshold in the genome amplification cycles beyond which the signal is confused with the inevitable “background noise” so that the presence or absence of the searched genome becomes negative or indeterminate (if the value is very close to the threshold value). The values reported in the work are very close to this threshold and definitely below the one indicated by Drosten as the watershed of infectivity. In addition, no control sampling was performed in a region with low PM10 presence, e.g. in the mountains.

Returning to the presence of RNA traces on particulate matter, the authors go so far as to argue that these virus traces would still be useful for monitoring the evolution of the epidemic: “This first test opens up the possibility of testing the presence of the virus on atmospheric particulate matter in our cities in the coming months as an indicator for early detection of the reappearance of the coronavirus and taking appropriate preventive measures before the start of a new epidemic”.

In fact, we read in the press release that the authors found the virus in 8 of the 22 days examined, while it is certain from the increase in positives that in the province of Bergamo in recent weeks the virus has been there continuously. Are we really sure that it is a good idea to adopt an “early detection method” that does not detect the virus in two-thirds of cases?

Another information disaster

If one reads the communiqué carefully, one understands that the authors are well aware that what they found does not provide any evidence to support the hypothesis of particulate matter as a booster of COVID-19 infections, but they write it ambiguously: “The evidence that SARS-CoV-2 RNA may be present on particulate matter in ambient air does not yet confirm with definitive certainty that there is a third infection route”. The problem is not that there is no “definitive certainty”: there is no minimum basis to demonstrate the presence of the virus on the dust particles suspended in the atmosphere and therefore, all the more so, to estimate if this represents a contagion route of some importance.

The consequence is that, again, the information conveyed by the media and social media is that the virus has been found in the particulate matter, and… this study confirms what the position paper suggested the previous month!

From the position paper, it seems that the authors are not yet able to evaluate the viability and especially the virulence of SARS-CoV-2, which, according to their position paper, would be particulate attached: “Further studies are underway to confirm these first tests on the possibility of considering PM as a ‘carrier’ of nuclei containing viral droplets, research that will have to go as far as evaluating the viability and especially the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 attached to particulate matter”. In other interviews¹², the authors state that their research does not imply that the traces of SARS-CoV-2 found on the particulate matter may be virulent or cause infection, but it is not strange that this consideration was not given much weight. Also because the conclusion reached by the authors is “it is necessary to take into account the need to keep particulate emissions low in Phase 2 in order not to risk promoting the potential spread of the virus”. And if there were no danger of infection, this conclusion would be meaningless.

Without having any new important scientific evidence in their hands, the authors go so far as to provide guidance to policy makers, for example by writing that the study “confirms the importance of widespread use of masks by the entire population”.

What does “generalized use” mean? Would it always seem, that is, every time you leave home as imposed in Lombardy? Instead in the press release it is written “If we all wear masks, the inter-personal distance of 2 meters is to be considered reasonably protective allowing people to resume a social life”. But then, generalized or 2 meters?¹³

Conclusion

There are already too many reasons to reduce emissions of particulate matter, or climate-altering gases, and regardless of the COVID-19 outbreak, we must reduce air pollution and drastically combat global warming. There is no need for theories, which have not yet been proven, to show other possible dangers related to particulate matter, and which are only likely to contribute to confusion in the communication of complex issues, at a time when it would be more useful for scientists to speak clearly, responsibly and effectively. A useful recommendation in this epidemic is rather to stay in the open air, because it does not hurt, and if you are indoors you need to circulate air by opening windows¹⁴.

Appendix

1. The “PM10 air pollution status” is described in the position paper with the average number of exceedances of the threshold of 50 ug/m3 PM10. This is an arbitrary and unfounded choice: this threshold is only a regulatory reference and the average PM10 concentration is more likely to represent the presence of PM10 in the atmosphere, and its hypothetical capacity to carry viruses.

2. The choice of PM10 alone is also arbitrary. If the virus is carried by fine particles, it should be more meaningful to refer to PM2.5.

3. The authors propose a direct relationship between the average of the exceedances of the 50 ug/m3 threshold of PM10 in the period February 10^th-29^th and the Covid-19 positives of March 3^rd, using the aggregated data of 5 classes of provinces. But they do not say how they defined the 5 categories of provinces.

4. The use of average PM10 data from as many ECUs in one province, and even more so from more provinces, makes little sense. For example, if we consider the province of Lodi, the data of Codogno, Bertonico and San Rocco al Porto (within or near the red hotbed zone) are necessarily considered together with those of Montanaso and Lodi (further away). The number of “infected” in Lodi on March 3^rd was 38, compared, for example, to 97 in Codogno; this means that, per resident inhabitant, Codogno had 7 times the “infected” of Lodi. If we look at the exceedances, we can see that Codogno has 11 exceedances of 50 ug/m3 in the period 10-29 February, while Lodi-Vignati has 9, just because in two days (11 and 14 February) PM10 concentrations in Lodi were 44 ug/m3, and in Codogno 51 and 57 ug/m3. The modest difference between these two PM10 values, recorded 18 and 21 days before March 3^rd, can be in “direct relation” with a 7 times higher “contagion” value? Not at all.

5. The average of exceedances is calculated by combining the data of many provinces (which exactly is not explained in the position paper), therefore considering also very different types of control units, both “traffic” (which have higher values) and “urban background” (which generally have lower values). Putting them together does not make much sense. For example Lodi-S. Alberto (urban background station) has practically the same annual average concentrations of PM10 as Bertonico and S.Rocco al Porto.

6. Figure 1 of the position paper is constructed by correlating the average number of exceedances in the period February 10^th-29^th with the logarithm of the total “COVID-19 infected” of March 3^rd, by province. But nobody knows the number of “infected”, only the number of those who tested positive to the buffer or other analysis systems is known. The number of swabs performed was very different, depending on the province. Especially in the first days of the epidemic, the number of swabs in the Lodigiana red zone was very high: they were performed not only on the symptomatic people requiring treatment (as now), but also on those who had been in contact with the positives. Then it stopped. This explains, in part, the high number of positives in Lodigiano in the first days, but it is not certain that in other areas there were not as many (e.g. Bergamo). For this reason, the number of infected people per province should be considered with great caution, particularly during the first weeks of the epidemic.

7. It is not surprising, therefore, that if one tries to replicate the methodology used in the position paper, applying it to 7 provinces in Lombardy (Bg, Bs, Cr, Lo, Mi, Mn, Pv, Va), one finds an evident absence of correlation. The following figure shows the clear absence of correlation between the exceedances of the threshold of 50ug/m3 for PM10 10-29 February and the positives of March, 3^rd. These are provinces in which the “contagions” data are a little more homogeneous than those evaluated by the authors, as it is the symptomatic positives that have had access to treatment (however, the limit remains as to how much they can be truly representative of the total number of positives, which also include asymptomatic positives).

8. Even if we consider the average of PM10 concentrations, instead of the number of exceedances, no correlation can be found.

9. The methodology adopted to search for correlation, therefore, appears very questionable, and it can be safely argued that the proposed ‘direct relationship’ of the position paper between PM10 presence and Coronavirus spread has no support in the data.

Notes

Please note that the article Setti et al (2020) Is there a Plausible Role for Particulate Matter in the spreading of COVID-19 in Northern Italy? published in the British Medical Journal Rapid Responses, is a peer-reviewed communication (sent, among other things, in response to an article dealing with an issue that is inconsistent with the subject of the communication) ↩︎
Setti L, Passarini F, de Gennaro G et al. (2020) “Report on the effect of air particulate pollution and the spread of viruses in the population”. Position paper Italian Society of Environmental Medicine, University of Bologna and University of Bari ↩︎
www.tg1.rai.it/dl/tg1/2010/edizioni/ContentSet-9b6e0cba-4bef-4aef-8cf0-9f7f665b7dfb-tg1.html?item=undefined, minute 31.56 ↩︎
IAS contribution to the discussion on the relationship between air particulate pollution and Covid-19 diffusion (in Italian) ↩︎
It is important to remember how it is not difficult, by properly processing the data, to find “spurious” correlations between different variables, which do not in any way mean a causal link, as has been shown very clearly and even ironically by some scholars. See for example www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations ↩︎
Italian Environment and Health Network, Air Pollution and Covid-19, Scienza in rete, April 13^th, 2020 (in Italian) ↩︎
Emanuele Bompan, The coronavirus claims another excellent victim: scientific communication. Here are the mistakes to avoid, Il Fatto Quotidiano, April 22^nd, 2020 ↩︎
Setti L, Passarini F, de Gennaro G et al. (2020) SARS-Cov-2 RNA Found on Particulate Matter of Bergamo in Northern Italy: First Preliminary Evidencemed. Rxiv preprint. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.15.20065995 ↩︎
Let us suppose, instead, that large quantities of infectious particles were found (which they were not). We know that the virus, in the presence of infected and infectious individuals, is carried in droplets varying in size from a few tenths to a few microns in diameter. If we sample under these conditions, these droplets, which are suspended in the atmosphere, will certainly be sampled as well, because they are part of the atmospheric aerosol, as are the dust. Even under these extreme conditions, however, this does not show at all that there is a link between dust and droplets containing the virus; it only shows that these two categories can coexist in the atmosphere and are both collected when air sampling is carried out. ↩︎
Zhong ZP, Solonenko NE, Li YF et al. (2020) Glacier ice archives fifteen-thousand-year-old viruses. bioRvx ↩︎
Wölfel R, Corman VM, Guggemos W et al. Virological assessment of hospitalized patients with COVID-2019. Nature (2020). doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2196-x ↩︎
Interview with Radio Popolare on 24/4/2020, Gr 12.30. ↩︎
If one reads the title of the sixth bibliographic reference one arrives at an article published by the authors themselves in Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health: “Airborne Transmission Route of COVID-19: Why 2 Meters/6 Feet of Inter-Personal Distance Could Not Be Enough”. It’s all clear, isn’t it? ↩︎
Floriano Bonifazi and Francesco Forastiere, Opening windows in times of coronavirus, Scienza in rete, March 12^th, 2020 (in Italian) ↩︎

Epidemic: from reality to fantasy

Luca Morandi — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 11:44:00 +0100

Epidemics is an often recurring theme in world literature, where authors share with us their realistic and unrealistic version of them. I recently read two books with global plagues in them: “The White Plague” by Herbert (1982) and “Station 11” by St. John Mandel (2014). These books came to mind at the outbreak of the new coronavirus epidemics, and I was reminded of the traits of their own epidemics and how puzzled they had left me. I will not compare these three diseases scientifically, as that would be impossible. Instead I will try to focus on the plausible reality in the fictional ones.

In Mandel’s book there isn’t a precise description of the virus, except for extrapolated data on contagiousness, virulence and mortality. “The georgian flu”, as the virus is called in the book, is a flu or flu-like disease (much as the coronavirus) with high contagiousness and very high mortality rate.

As an example, I’d like to recall the description of a New York-London flight. It usually takes 8 hours of flight, plus a couple to check-in. Mandel describes how, during this flight, one infected person not only spreads the disease to 99% of the other passengers but also that these people, at landing, show grave to moderate symptoms while “patient 1” is in critical condition and will die shortly after. Let’s construe this scene. Classes in infectivology and microbiology lessons come to mind. Based on what we learned during these classes, how high mortality rate usually is combined with low contagiousness, Mandel’s virus pandemic isn’t possible. If we analyse it closer still, we notice that the “georgian flu” kills the host in less than 12 hours. This doesn’t leave enough time to infect a high enough number of people to create a pandemic; smaller epidemics may still occur, but are easily controlled due to the rapid development. Moreover, in a modern world (like the one in “Station 11”) there are numerous self-defence mechanisms that are seen in response to the coronavirus as well; quarantine, airport controls and much more. Just imagine an airplane landing with a comatose person on board and quite all the others suffering greatly. Would you have it land as usual? Would you let the people onboard get into the airport? Or would you rather send for highly specialised transportation?

Obviously this couldn’t happen with the coronavirus. While the coronavirus is quite contagious it doesn’t have a very high mortality rate, with 80% of patients showing little to no symptoms. Furthermore, it’s possible for infected people to avoid quarantine and continue to infect others; we are experiencing the result of this. The only the only real disease comparable with “georgian flu“, with obvious differentiations, is the ebolavirus. The ebolavirus has low contagiousness (only if in contact with bodily fluids), high virulence (easiness to catch the disease if in contact with infected bodily fluids) and high mortality rate (60% and higher mortality rate in Africa’s 2014 outbreak).

It’s more difficult to talk about Herbert’s “White Plague”, even if we do know more about the disease he presents. We know that it’s a lab-created virus, not using a pre-existent micro-organism, so even nowadays quite impossible; it has already been shown that SARS-CoV-2, more commonly known as COVID-19, isn’t lab-created. Moreover, the lab-created plague from the book was more targeted than modern illnesses, only affecting the female part of the population while being asymptomatic in males. Leaving out the impossibility of that situation (in medicine nothing is certain), this trait could help illustrate to normal people how the coronavirus was able to spread around so much. In our world the number of infected people keeps increasing, but now we all know symptoms and people try to protect themselves and others by not going out even if they have a normal cold.

However, asymptomatic infected, virus carriers that keep on living normally, still exist. This is mirrored in Herbert’s book where the male population, appearing healthy but still carriers of the disease, manages to spread “the white plague” to the vast majority of the population.

I’d like to state again that the books described aren’t scientifically conceivable and it’s therefore not correct to compare them with the real world, even though curiosity led me to do it anyway. The books are nice to read though, for different reasons. “Station 11” has a highly poetic and evocative writing while “The White Plague” makes us dive into the human psyche and reality, giving numerous hints on ethics, moral and personal codes.

COVID-19 in Italy: lessons learnt and points for immediate discussion

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 19:19:00 +0100

These notes are strictly personal but express ideas which are shared by a vast community of researchers, including epidemiologists, clinicians, immunologists and lab scientists. This is meant to be a working document.

Possible scenarios for the exit phase of the pandemic period

The papers produced by Neil Ferguson’s group at Imperial College have inspired the policies of various countries. One of the most recentproposed that the strategy of bland mitigation involved a high health impact and that a more vigorous strategy of suppression was necessary (1); this strategy was then implemented by many countries. The same study also proposed a strategy of lifting each of the measures at the start of the exit from the lock-down phase. This third strategy of “stop and go” was proposed based on the need of intensive care beds and the predicted number of deceased. In essence, this strategy proposes the implementation of restrictive measures for a certain period of time, and then the lifting of some of the same until the saturation of beds and number of deaths reach unacceptable levels; at that point the measures would be implemented again. The key open questions of this strategy are: which elements of suppression should be lifted and what the duration of each of the two phases should be (stop-and-go).

A more recent paper (2) uses a method of “back calculation” to estimate the impact of the measures taken weeks before, on the basis of the reported number of deaths. It suggests that the containment measures adopted in Italy have been effective, with a value of R0 (the number of infections caused by an infected individual) close to 1 around March 11th. Although the implemented measures vary from country to country, Italy is one of the countries (amongst those analysed) which has implemented them all, that is case isolation at home, social distancing, prohibition of public events, school closures and nationwide lockdown (home isolation for all, all travel banned, only workers of essential services allowed to move). Furthermore, the paper estimates that there have been around 6 million people infected in Italy in total as of March 28th, and that 38.000 deaths have been avoided thanks to the measures taken by the government (but with a wide confidence interval).

As of today, we are observing a progressive decrease in the daily number of cases. It is clear that the effectiveness of the measures that have been put in place and the current deceleration of the epidemic growth curve do not allow for the relaxation of the measures at this time. To this end, modellers are also working on understanding how the relaxing of the different measures of containment (for example social distancing and school closures) can influence the trend and therefore the number of deaths and ICU bed demand. In these estimates, the distribution by age and geographical area are also considered. It is currently too premature to draw conclusions on any practical implications, but this could be the starting point for decisions to be taken. Assuming a large positive effect of the national lock-down, an aggressive action to actively identify and interrupt local transmission has to be planned, overriding the recommendation of limiting viral detection only to symptomatic, severe cases.

The data available for our country clearly identifies the elderly population, with chronic diseases, as being the group most vulnerable to COVID-19. Currently in less affected areas in Southern Italy, outbreaks occur in nursing homes for elderly and disabled. The exit strategy must involve the implementation of a programme of active surveillance that also includes remote monitoring of the health conditions of this population. With every proposed strategy particular attention should be paid to the issue of healthy inequality and access to healthcare.

Scientific data availability from Italy

At present, the national information system of infected cases is managed by Istituto Superiore di Sanità and Protezione Civile on the basis of the reports made by the regional health services. We believe that the data collected for monitoring the pandemic in Italy should be shared with the research community. We understand that calls for access to data are coming from different parties, and this would greatly upsurge both epidemiological and clinical research and timely contribute to the advancement of science which should guide the response. Amongst the numerous opportunities for research is the need to try and understand why the lethality of the disease appears to be so variable across European areas with the extreme cases of Lombardy (high) and of Germany (low). Several hypotheses have been put forward, none of which is convincing in its own right. In particular we ought to try and understand the role played by the different organisations and primary care resources and the regional management of the epidemic.

A rational use of tests based on the viral RNA detection

There is a broad consensus that the investigation of viral infections secondary to SARS-COV-2 should be aimed at (a) confirming clinical diagnosis (symptomatic cases), (b) confirming recovery, (c) contact tracing and isolation to interrupt the chain of transmission, (d) monitoring the health of those working in environments where they are potentially exposed to infection and could in turn infect other people.

At the peak of a pandemic the priority is to diagnose the symptomatic cases and the confirmation of those in recovery. To contain the spread, it is necessary to find each individual contact and isolate them. The general lock-down will be effective on the currently unidentified infected contacts, but not on the household transmission, so at least the cohabitees of the positive cases ought to be tested. Those working in essential services, in contact with many people, should be periodically tested and isolated if positive. If they test positive their household contacts need to be monitored in the same way as those who are ill. It is a priority to take care of the more vulnerable groups of the population such as care home residents: suspected cases should be isolated as soon as possible (even whilst waiting for the result of the test), hence the importance of monitoring of this group using apps on smartphones (managed by carers) - which will be discussed further on.

The search for those infected in the general population, such as screening through swab testing, is not very efficient as infection does not spread by chance but follows traceable routes of transmission. Testing should be based on prioritisation criteria as follows:

Immediate priority ought to be given to swab all health workers (particularly hospital staff) who have a high infection risk, and then other key workers who are in contact with the public. All the contacts of those who test positive should be tested as well. A negative test for viral RNA is valid only for the moment it is performed, therefore it is also important to monitor early signs and symptoms to isolate the cases.

Accuracy and predictive values must be monitored. It is essential to understand the sensitivity, specificity and predictive values of the laboratory tests. When the prevalence of the infection in the population diminishes (due to the lock-down effect) the predictive values will change. Low sensitivity indicates many false negatives, that is, people reassured by the results but in reality still contagious. Low specificity implies many false positives, and therefore it would be a waste of resources to isolate them and trace their contacts. Low specificity translates into a low positive predictive value (which could be as low as 50%, i.e. if 100 people tested positive only 50 would actually be infected with the virus). Work is being carried out to improve the efficiency of testing of the virus (high-throughput). An appeal signed by almost 300 researchers in Italy has made available the use of laboratories, equipment and staff to undertake wider testing. These are precious resources that ought to be used immediately. With regard to the tests it should be made clear that the test for viral RNA allows for the identification of those who are contagious and the positivity lasts for a maximum of 2-3 weeks, after which the test becomes negative. Commercial rapid tests must undergo validation before extended use.

Early identification of hotspots and use of technology

The search for those infected cannot be carried out by population screening, but in the early stages for hotspot detection, or during the lifting phase of the suppression measures. For example it may be considered during the partial relaxation of the lock-down. In the preparation for a second peak in the autumn active identification of the cases and contact tracing must be reinforced as they will be crucial. With regards to the CFCT methods (case finding contact tracing) there have been innovative approaches also in Italy that should be harmonised and made widely available. For example, the use of an app for the early detection of symptoms would allow for a prompt isolation. Infection prevention and control in the household is one of the elements that the WHO has identified as critical, due to both the high risk of intra-family transmission and the clinical management of the cases. Isolation in structures such as requisitioned hotels should be considered, where not only those infected and their contacts can be isolated but also infected healthcare workers, thus allowing for care provision.

A task force of the Ministry of Innovation and Digitalisation (MID) is working on solutions for the active tracking of movements through the use of mobile phones and possibly an app that would bring together all three functions: the CFCT, telemedicine and data gathering. Restrictions due the law on confidentiality and individual data protection are a limiting factor in EU, compared to other countries and we will need to work keeping in mind our settings

Research on immunity response to the infection

Various groups are working on developing assays for the assessment of the antibody response. Antibodies, unlike viral RNA detection tests, are indicators of an immune response to infection. They do not indicate whether someone is still contagious and they cannot be used for CFCT, except to trace people who have already had the infection and therefore may be protected. However, there are many aspects which need clarification, such as the sensitivity and specificity of the antibody methods and the duration and extent of the protection conferred by the antibodies measured.

Coordination of the informative systems

In addition to the number of positive results and the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 that health administrative units gather on a daily basis and send to Istituto Superiore di Sanità and Protezione Civile, what has also proved useful is the surveillance of the daily death toll commissioned by the Ministry of Health. The first completed report for the 2019-2020 season was published by the journal Epidemiologia e Prevenzione (3). The system was launched for the monitoring of mortality due to heatwaves and concerned 33 municipalities (all the province capitals and municipalities with over 250,000 inhabitants). As of today only 19 provide up-to-date data. An extension of this system to 1800 municipalities (approximately 20% of all Italian municipalities) has been provided recently.

The integration of all healthcare information systems with the surveillance systems of cases and contacts, would be essential not only to monitor the efficiency and efficacy of the surveillance itself but also to analyse the risk factors for the incidence and lethality of COVID-19. It is worth remembering that a decree which provides for the integration of all the information systems available at national level has already been issued in 2017, but since then there has been no progress in the interconnection of the systems and their operation.

Population sample and estimate of prevalence

Many, including the WHO, have suggested carrying out a statistical survey of the population with different aims: (a) to monitor and study behaviour during the lock-down; (b) to estimate the prevalence of the infection or of immunity. A study using swab testing would offer an estimate of the number of infected at a given moment and strictly depends on the phase of the epidemic in which it is undertaken. It does not seem to be useful at this moment even though it was very informative in Vo’ Euganeo.

There is an increasing interest in seroprevalence studies aimed to identify “immune” subjects, also to be allowed to go back to working settings and possibly re-start economy. However, even the worst case scenario has estimated the number of infected subjects in Italy to be 10% of the entire population. With such low prevalence any further individual decision will be problematic.

If different initiatives are to be undertaken, the Italian Association of Epidemiology is proposing a common “core” protocol for study through serological (antibody) tests, according to the WHO template in order to allow collation of obtained results

We hope that we can reach rapid consensus on these points and that we may pass to the implementation phase.

I thank Francesca Burns, Marina Davoli, Ruggero De Maria and Paola DiGiulio for the exchange of ideas and experiences.

Epidemiology from obituaries

Luca Carra — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 15:13:00 +0100

The number of deaths from Covid reported yesterday (26 March 2020) by the Civil Protection was 662 [1]. The whole of Italy, however, wants to know another fact: the all-causes mortality per day compared to the previous year. This number, indeed, seems to show us the effects of the epidemic much better than the deaths for and with Covid.

It is plausible that since the epidemic started fewer people have died than in previous years from road accidents, accidents at work and from flu, whereas more people died of heart attacks and cancer because of delays in treatments, as well as pneumonia, of course. On closer inspection, although not all of them are positive for SARS-Cov-2, these deaths are mostly an effect of this epidemic, which is the result of an avalanche that has wiped out the lives especially of fragile and elderly people.

This work should be done by “field” epidemiologists, whose absence Walter Ricciardi complained about in an interview.

But the first one who started to do it was the Editor-in-chief of the Eco di Bergamo Alberto Ceresoli, who came up with the idea of counting the obituaries in his newspaper, which in these tough days arrive even after midnight, comparing them to those from the same day of the previous year.

It is a rather brutal way to calculate mortality compared to the expected. But since the director of the Eco di Bergamo is a science enthusiast, he went one step further, ordering a specialized agency to carry out a survey about the 243 municipalities in the Bergamo area, that will soon be available. In the meantime they have written an essay on the Municipality of Bergamo, where the increase in all-causes deaths is frightening (here the article).
“From an average of 45 deaths per week, during the last ten years has been recorded a surge up to 313 deaths per week, almost seven times as much in the seven days from 15 to 21 March. From 1 to 21 March, on the other hand, the ratio is four times the average of the last ten years”, writes the editor.

Graph from “A Bergamo decessi 4 volte oltre la media. L’Eco lancia un’indagine nei Comuni”, Eco di Bergamo, 26 March 2020.

A similar calculation was made by Luca Foresti, CEO of the Sant’Agostino Medical Centre in Milan, and his friend Claudio Cancelli, mayor of Nembro, which is the main outbreak of the epidemic, located in Val Seriana, in the province of Bergamo. In their article published yesterday by Corriere della Sera the two authors, both trained physicists, write: “We looked at the average number of deaths in the municipality in previous years, especially in the period between January and March. Nembro should have had - under normal conditions - about 35 deaths. The ones recorded this year by the municipal offices were 158. That is 123 more than the average”. Against the 31 deaths registered as Covid by the Civil Protection. They then continue, using simple arithmetic: “The difference (123-31, ed.) is enormous and cannot be a simple statistical deviation. The demographic statistics have their own “constancy” and the annual averages change only when completely “new” phenomenas arrive. In this case the number of abnormal deaths compared to the average that Nembro recorded in the period of time under consideration is equal to 4 times those officially attributed to Covid-19”.

Not satisfied, the mayor and the entrepreneur have redone the math looking at the deaths in Cernusco sul Naviglio (in the province of Milan) and Pesaro, finding a 6.1 times difference between the excess mortality this year and the official deaths of Covid. The mayor of Bergamo himself, Giorgio Gori, pointed out that the number of people dying outside hospitals, at home or in hospices, is enormous, and for the moment escapes official statistics.
“We are facing an epoch-making event, and to fight it we need credible data on the reality of the situation, which should be widespread in a transparent way among all the experts and people who have to responsibly manage the crisis” concluded Cancelli and Foresti.

Epidemiologists and statistical institutions are still unable to provide us clear and timely data, as the epidemiologist Eugenio Paci pointed out in this journal, as we can see from the fact that a fundamental service such as the “rapid mortality surveillance” of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità was suppressed more than ten years ago.

Also to make the statistics on the cases less foggy, as the journalist Dario Di Vico reported in the Corriere, the former presidents of ISTAT suggested the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza to make a sample survey with swabs between symptomatic and asymptomatic. The Italian Association of Epidemiology is also trying to give real weight to the fanciful numbers that we Italians receive daily, like a liturgy.
In the meantime, people have made do with a much higher than expected deviation in mortality. This makes clear the epochal dimension of the challenge we are facing. In Italy, as in all the other countries that even more than ours are underestimating this tragedy.

Translation by Sofia Carra

Research agency: our proposals to the government and parliament

Gruppo 2003 — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 11:59:00 +0100

Gruppo 2003: It is important that the Research Agency is transparent and independent from politics, starting from the choice of its governing bodies.

The Italian Government has finally proposed a National Agency for Research, which has been advocated for many years by the Gruppo 2003, a charity of Italian highly Cited scientists focused on Italian research policy. For the moment, information on the characteristics of the Agency is contained in Article 28 of the Draft Budget Law for 2020, which will be discussed in the Chambers in the coming days.

Reading the draft, one gets the impression of a body with a strong political-ministerial prevalence, far from the idea of an independent agency, a technical body managed by experts chosen in a transparent way, which is responsible for the management of a substantial and qualified part of research funding.

Gruppo 2003 calls on the government and parliament to amend the article in the parts that distort the characteristics of independence of the agency.

On the subject, we believe that the most critical point of the proposal is the way in which the management bodies are recruited. The article of the law, in fact, correctly indicates the candidates as persons of high scientific qualification and with management experience in research bodies, but leaves the choice to the ministries, the Conference of Rectors and the Council of research bodies. The 2003 Group considers this practice unsuitable and proposes the establishment of a “Search Committee” made up of researchers and experts (including foreigners) able to identify the best candidates on the basis of scientific and managerial merits in a way that is completely independent of politics.

On the other hand, it is believed that the agency has the main task of providing competitive funding to deserving researchers, ensuring transparency, certainty and continuity to the scientific community. This can only be done if the government and the parliament have the courage to separate the technical function of the management of the calls for proposals (in the hands of the agency) from the political function of research planning, which identifies the research strands and funding priorities, which remains in the hands of the ministries.

Reading the article of the law, it is also clear that, when fully operational, the agency will have a budget of 200-300 million euros, the origin of which is unknown, but it is strongly hoped that they will be additional to the research budget, and not subtracted from other items. The 2003 Group, while recognising the delicate budgetary situation facing the government, considers that this budget is totally insufficient to provide the impetus needed by Italian research.

In this regard, it should be noted that the National Research Agency should manage all the funding provided on a competitive basis following calls for proposals now scattered under different ministries, each of which is managed according to different logics. The added value of an agency of this kind, in fact, is precisely to bring back to unity the funding of research according to international good practice.

In conclusion, Gruppo 2003 invites the government and parliament to amend the article of the Stability Law dedicated to the National Research Agency to make it a truly competent, transparent and independent body for funding scientific research.

National Agency for Research: what is there, what is missing

Luca Carra — Sun, 03 Nov 2019 12:06:00 +0100

The Italian National Agency for Research is about to be established. Article 28 of the draft budget law for 2020, which will be discussed at the Chambers in the coming days (see below for the text) and by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, talks about it. It coordinates and directs the research of universities, public research institutes and bodies. The objectives are dictated by the programming that remains in political hands. Like other research agencies around the world, the NRA is responsible for funding highly strategic projects “selected according to criteria and procedures that conform to international best practice”; among its tasks also the measurement of the impact of funded projects and the internationalization of research, in particular to maximize the results in European programs. Among its functions, also the task of increasing the efficiency in the disbursement of resources, especially those of the National Fund for Innovation (about 1 billion euros) managed by the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, as well as “attracting funding from the private sector”.

The majority of the appointments are political: the director is chosen by the Prime Minister, while the eight members of the Board of Directors are chosen by the Minister for Education, Universities and Research (2), the Minister for Economic Development (2), the Minister for Health (1), the Minister for Technological Innovation and Digitisation (1), the Rectors’ Conference of Italian Universities (1), the National University Council (1), the Council of Presidents of public research bodies (1). The candidates are ‘persons of high scientific qualification, with a deep knowledge of the research system in Italy and abroad and with many years of experience in public or private bodies or organisations operating in the research sector and it is a preferential requirement to have experience in the management of complex projects or strategic research infrastructures’.

The statute of the Agency should be approved in the first months of next year, regulating a structure composed of up to 34 people.

Comment

A number of comments can be made in the heat of the moment, which will certainly also be reflected in the debate in Parliament.

1. Unlike other foreign agencies, the Italian NRA will not manage much of the competitive funding from the State, but will manage its own budget, which will amount to EUR 300 million in 2022. It seems to understand, therefore, that the individual ministries will continue to manage their own calls (PRIN, FIRB, Finalized Research, etc..) as before. This would be a missed opportunity to standardize under a single body and in a transparent and independent manner the entire batch of research calls. If all the ministries continue to maintain their projects, in fact, NRAs would become an additional body, without the simplification required. And again it would be in vain to ask for a precise, annual calendar, which is one of the requests of the scientific community: in other words, to know when calls for proposals are coming out to avoid the discontinuities that have characterized, for example, the PRIN calls.

2. The Italian agency seems to be mainly inspired by the French ANR (here the decree establishing the French ANR in 2006), so with a strong political imprint in the appointments, but with the difference that the French ANR also has a scientific committee (comité de pilotage scientifique) composed of scientists, including foreigners, foreign to the political logic. It is a steering and control committee that meets at least three times a year, and that has its weight. A similar body, however, is also present in the governing structure of the Coordination of British Research Councils (https://www.ukri.org/about-us/our-councils/).

3. The recruitment of the Director and the eight members of the Board of Directors does not currently include a search committee which would operate the selection according to the best practices in use in the international scientific community. This is perhaps the most critical point of the draft.

It will therefore be important to follow the debate in Parliament on this point, and intervene with analysis and proposals to ensure that Italy does not waste the opportunity to equip itself with an agency equal to the challenges posed by international research.

Art. 28

(Establishment of the National Research Agency and other measures to support research and education)

In order to strengthen the research carried out by universities, public and private research bodies and institutes, expenditure of 25 million euro for the year 2020, 200 million euro for the year 2021 and 300 million euro per year starting from the year 2022 is authorised, to be entered in a special fund in the budget of the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, of which 0.3 million euro in the year 2020 and 4 million euro per year starting from 2021, for the operation and staff of the agency referred to in paragraph 2.

In order to achieve the objectives referred to in paragraph 1, a special agency, called the National Research Agency (NRA), has been set up, with statutory, organisational, technical-operational and management autonomy, and is subject to supervision by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Education, University and Research. The NRA promotes coordination and directs the research activities of universities, public research bodies and institutes towards objectives of excellence, increasing synergy and cooperation between them and with the economic-productive system, public and private, in relation to the strategic objectives of research and innovation as well as economic policy objectives of the Government functional to the productivity and competitiveness of the country. The NRA also promotes the internationalisation of research activities, promoting, supporting and coordinating Italian participation in European and international projects and initiatives.

The Agency referred to in paragraph 2, in particular:

a) in order to define the National Research Programme (PNR) referred to in Legislative Decree No 204 of 5 June 1998, it shall verify the implementation of the general lines of development of national research and shall suggest updates to the Programme;

b) promotes and finances research projects to be carried out in Italy by public and private entities, including foreign ones, highly strategic for sustainable development and social inclusion, highly integrated, innovative and able to aggregate initiatives promoted in contexts of economic and social disadvantage, selected according to criteria and procedures in accordance with international best practices;

c) assesses the impact of the research activity, taking into account the results of ANVUR’s activities within the scope of the powers provided for by Presidential Decree no. 76 of 1 February 2010, in particular in order to increase the cost-effectiveness, effectiveness and efficiency of public funding in the sector, including the public resources of the National Fund for Innovation managed by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and to attract funding from the private sector;

(d) define a plan for the simplification of administrative and accounting procedures for research projects for the adoption of implementing legislative and administrative measures.

The Agency’s bodies are the Director, the Steering Committee and the Board of Auditors.

The Director is chosen by the President of the Council of Ministers. The Steering Committee is composed of eight members chosen: two by the Minister of Education, University and Research, one by the Minister for Economic Development, one by the Minister of Health, one by the Minister for Technological Innovation and Digitization, one by the Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities, one by the National University Council, one by the Council of Presidents of public research bodies.

The director and the members of the steering committee are appointed by decree of the President of the Council of Ministers and remain in office for four years. They are chosen from among people of high scientific qualification, with a deep knowledge of the research system in Italy and abroad and with many years of experience in public or private bodies or organisations operating in the research sector and it is a preferential requirement to have experience in the management of complex projects or strategic research infrastructures.

The director is the legal representative of the Agency, directs and is responsible for it and performs the other tasks assigned to him by the statute.

The Board of Auditors is composed of three full members and two alternates, appointed by decree of the Minister of Education, University and Research. One full member, who assumes the functions of President, and one alternate member are appointed by the Minister of Economy and Finance. The Board of Auditors performs the functions of administrative and accounting control referred to in Article 20 of Legislative Decree No. 123 of 30 June 2011. The members of the Board of Auditors shall remain in office for three years and may be renewed only once.

By decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Minister of Education, University and Research, in agreement with the Minister of Economy and Finance, to be issued within ninety days from the date of entry into force of this law, the statute of the Agency that regulates its activities and rules of operation is approved. The decree referred to in this paragraph also defines the organic endowment of the Agency, up to a maximum of 34 units in total, including three second tier managers, as well as the remuneration due to members of the administration and control bodies. The provisions of Legislative Decree no. 165 of 30 March 2001 and the collective agreement for the Education and Research sector apply to the agency’s staff.

By decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Minister for Education, Universities and Research, in agreement with the Minister for the Economy and Finance, to be issued within 60 days from the date of entry into force of this law, the alternative procedures for simplification in alternative administrative and accounting matters and the procedures for implementing this paragraph are defined. In drawing up the plan referred to in paragraph 3(d), the NRA shall take account of the results achieved by the simplification obtained by applying this paragraph.

In order to ensure the continuation of the financing of national space programmes, in international cooperation and within the framework of the European Space Agency, while ensuring the coordination of budgetary policies in this area, the amounts allocated by the Prime Minister’s Decree of 11 June 2019, adopted pursuant to Article 1, paragraph 98, of Law 30 December 2018, n. 145, increased by 390 million euros for the year 2020, 452 million euros for the year 2021, 377 million euros for the year 2022, 432 million euros for the year 2023, and 409 million euros for the year 2024.

The sums referred to in paragraph 1 are allocated by decree of the Prime Minister, on the proposal of the political authority delegated to coordinate space and aerospace policies pursuant to Article 21 of Legislative Decree No 128 of 4 June 2003, after consulting the Interministerial Committee for Space Policies and Aerospace Research.

The expenditure authorisation referred to in Article 1(591) of Law No 205 of 27 December 2017 shall be increased by EUR 30 million per year as from 2020, to be allocated to the single national fund for the position and performance remuneration of school leaders.

In order to provide for measures aimed at strengthening the qualification of teachers in the field of school inclusion, for the year 2020 the expenditure authorization referred to in Article 1, paragraph 125, of Law No. 107 of 13 July 2015, is increased by € 11 million.

In order to promote digital innovation in teaching, for the year 2020 the expenditure authorisation referred to in Article 1(62), second sentence, of Law No 107 of 13 July 2015, shall be increased by EUR 2 million.

To promote the right to university study, the fund referred to in Article 18, paragraph 1, letter a) of Legislative Decree no. 68 of 29 March 2012, has increased by € 16 million for the year 2020.

Illustrative report

Art. 28

(Establishment of the National Research Agency and other measures to support research and education)

Paragraph 1 establishes a special fund in the budget of the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research in order to strengthen the research carried out by universities, public and private research institutions and bodies. An appropriation of expenditure for the staff of the institution in question is also authorised (referred to in paragraph 2).

Paragraphs 2 and 3 provide for the establishment of a new agency, called the National Research Agency, under the joint supervision of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, with the aim of strengthening research activities in the country, increasing synergy, cooperation and integration between universities and public and private research bodies, in relation to the strategic objectives of research and innovation as well as the Government’s economic policy objectives, functional to the country’s productivity and competitiveness.

The Agency verifies the implementation of the general lines of development of national research and suggests updates to the National Research Programme (PNR), promotes and finances research projects to be carried out in the Italian State, highly strategic for sustainable development and social inclusion, highly integrated, innovative and able to aggregate initiatives promoted in contexts of economic and social disadvantage and assesses the impact of research activities and defines a plan for simplification of administrative and accounting procedures relating to research projects for the adoption of legislative and administrative measures of implementation.

Paragraphs 4-9 identify the bodies of the Agency, represented by the Director, the Steering Committee and the Board of Auditors, and regulate their appointment criteria and their composition. By decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Minister of Education, University and Research, in agreement with the Minister of Economy and Finance, to be issued within ninety days from the date of entry into force of this law, is approved the statute of the Agency that regulates the activities and rules of operation. This decree also regulates the organic endowment of the Agency, up to a maximum of 34 units in total, of which three are second tier executives, as well as the remuneration due to members of the administration and control bodies.

Paragraph 10 provides that, by decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, on the proposal of the Minister of Education, Universities and Research, in agreement with the Minister of Economy and Finance, alternative simplification procedures in administrative and accounting matters and the related implementation procedures are defined.

What is a National Research Agency?

Luca Carra — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 12:25:00 +0100

What is a National Research Agency? Conduct: A National Research Agency is a national and international research funding and coordination body, independent from the relevant ministries. If we look around, almost every country has at least one. Except for Italy, which has now decided to set it up. This is undoubtedly good news, very good news. And let us, at least for a moment, be pleased that our country will also have a technical structure for the orderly management of research funding according to government directives.

United States

There is no shortage of models for this ambitious project. The United States was one of the first to set up not one but two research agencies. The National Science Foundation (NSF) calls itself: “an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to promote the advancement of science; to promote national health, prosperity and well-being; to ensure national defense…”

With an annual budget of $8.1 billion (2019), it funds 24% of all federal basic research conducted by American colleges and universities in fields such as mathematics, computer science and social sciences.

In the USA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are responsible for funding biomedical research. There are 27 institutes, but they are coordinated by a central body, currently directed by the scientist who completed the sequencing of the human genome, Francis Collins. To use their words:

NIH is the world’s largest public contributor to biomedical research, investing more than $30 billion from taxpayers to fulfil its mission to improve health, extend life, and reduce disease and disability. In doing so, NIH promotes prevention and treatment, contributes to society by stimulating economic growth and productivity, and broadens the biomedical knowledge base by funding cutting-edge research and cultivating the biomedical workforce of today and tomorrow.

United Kingdom

In the UK, the Research Agency is called UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a new body that governs the seven Research Councils and the other two bodies, Innovate UK and Research England. UKRI is to all intents and purposes the engine of British research, which it funds with about 7 billion pounds a year in connection with universities, research institutes, businesses, non-profit organizations and governments “to create the best possible environment for the development of research and innovation”.

It is not a ministry, but an agency governed by research managers and a board of top researchers.

Germany

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) is Germany’s leading research funding agency, supporting it with an autonomous (growing) budget of €3.4 billion (2018) through scholarships, awards and infrastructure funding. The autonomous organisation is based in Bonn and is financed by the Land and the federal government. Since 2017, the organisation has coordinated around 100 research universities and other research institutes. The 2018 activity report focuses mainly on funding for research excellence, which Germany wants to strengthen in order to better compete internationally.

France

The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) was established in 2005 both to fund research and innovation through calls for proposals and projects and to improve “the positioning of French research at European and global level”. It is again a technical body separate from the policy and implements its programming, which remains the responsibility of the Ministry. For example, the 2020 Action Plan “integrates the strategic priorities defined by the State and the implementation of government plans, which are: artificial intelligence, human and social sciences, quantum technologies, antimicrobial resistance, autism in the context of neurological development disorders and translational research on rare diseases”.

Like the other agencies, the NRA also has the task of analysing the supply of research and measuring the impact of funded projects on national scientific production. The budget for 2018 has reached almost 800 million euros after a few years of marked decline.

Switzerland

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SFN) is the country’s largest research funding agency. Created in 1952, it is a private law body with the task of evaluating and financing research in all sectors with competitive instruments, both at home and abroad. The budget for 2018 was CHF 1,138 million (around EUR 1 billion). Its main tasks are to promote scientific excellence, to establish international relations and to evaluate the scientific results of both the projects financed by the Fund and the main Swiss research programmes.

Spain

The last to join the club of agencies is Spain, which in 2015 created the Agency Estatal de Investigacion (AEI), which went into operation in 2016 and had a portfolio in November 2017. The purpose of this “financing agency” is to “simplify the management of available funds, reduce administrative burdens and simplify and standardise procedures, and monitor research funding”.

In this case, it is an autonomous structure established within the Ministry of University and Research, which has as its president the Secretary General of State for Research, Development and Innovation, appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Minister of Research, while the Director General is appointed by the Minister of Economy. The budget for 2018 is 640 million euros out of the total budget for the “Fomento y coordinación de la investigación científica y técnica” of 2 billion and 980 million euros.

And in Italy?

Let’s go back to Italy and the last announcement of the establishment of the Agency by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte last October 15. To quote Conte’s words:

The National Agency for Research will be included in the budget maneuver. It will have a very important function, to coordinate all research and innovation activities in Italy, then the university centers, public research centers and private research institutions. Through the Agency we will strengthen the research system, but not so much and only in terms of some additional funding that we will bring to the benefit of the world of research, but in terms of a tool to network, to make system.

Words that leave open various interpretations. The 2003 Research Group, which is the Agency’s ideal godfather, has always insisted on one thing: not inventing things different from all existing research agencies. That is to say that they are funding agencies with an autonomous budget, independent of politics, managed by research managers and scientific advisors and possibly transversal to the various ministries that provide funds for research. As Silvio Garattini explained at the 2003 Group conference in 2016, ideally all resources for competitive research funding should flow into this agency, which should be divided into departments (not disciplinary but thematic) and translate into calls for proposals and targeted allocations the policy guidelines developed by the policy. To these functions should be added, as for the agencies mentioned above, the international reports and the monitoring of the results. “It seems utopian, I know. But utopias must be pursued,” Garattini concluded at the time.

It has become fundamental for Italian research to be able to count on an agile, autonomous and efficient structure that gives oxygen to researchers with continuity and certain times, according to transparent logic. We researchers are often too shy, but in reality we don’t ask for impossible things. We only ask to be a normal country.

Global initiative to integrate patient input in MS research and care

Fri, 13 Sep 2019 15:33:00 +0100

The European Charcot Foundation and the International MS Federation have launched a new global initiative to put patient experience at the heart of MS research and healthcare. The Italian MS Society will act as the lead agency on behalf of the Global MSIF Movement. The initiative was presented on 12 September at ECTRIMS 2019.

The Patient Reported Outcomes Initiative for MS (PROMS) will bring together the global MS community, people with and affected by MS, healthcare workers and researchers, healthcare industry and many more- to enable science with and of patient input in research, clinical trials of new therapies, and the design of healthcare systems.

Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) reflect the experiences that patients have in relation to their treatment or condition. This could include how they feel, their symptoms or what they are able to do.

People with MS are the first experts on what it means to live with this disease, on the impact that a treatment has, on the decisive aspects of their life to which a new drug or rehabilitation intervention must respond. In order for their voice on these issues to have a full meaning that can be shared by all the actors in the field, they have to be scientifically qualified (science of patients input).

Enabling PROMS initiative will ensure an informed and quality participation of people with MS in the decision-making processes of research and healthcare regarding their treatments and performances. The initiative aims to focus on the symptoms and aspects of living with MS that matter most to patients.

Efforts to enable the uptake of existing PRO into clinical practice and regulatory agencies decision-making processes will be greatly enhanced and informed by a commonly held strategic PRO research agenda and roadmap, shared by all relevant stakeholders.

The PROMS initiative, launched today, will take a global approach to tackling this challenge. It will advocate for a set of standardised PROs to be used in therapies development and health care and promote research to develop new PROs to meet the needs of all relevant stakeholders.

Engaging people with direct experience of MS in governance is crucial in achieving the initiative’s overall mission, as is measuring the impact of the initiative against what matters most to patients.

The programme of work will be led and coordinated jointly by the European Charcot Foundation and the MS International Federation. It will build on the experience and expertise of the Italian MS Society, who will act as the lead agency on behalf of the global MSIF movement.

Giancarlo Comi, President of the European Charcot Foundation said:
“This global initiative aims to give value to the “patient voice” with a multistakeholder approach. We need shared and validated PROs to be used both in experimental medicine and in clinical care.”

Peer Baneke, Chief Executive Officer of the MS International Federation said:
“This exciting initiative will transform the future of research and clinical care. It gives the global MSIF movement a unique opportunity to ensure the voices of people living with MS right around the world are placed at the forefront of MS research, trials and healthcare design.”

Mario Battaglia, President of the Italian MS Society Foundation said:
“The global MS movement will play a pivotal role to implement a global master framework for systematic engagement of people with MS in health research and care. The international experience in applying framework for Multistakeholder Initiatives and on PROs for MS research and healthcare positioned Italian MS Society as lead agency of PROMS initiative.”

Carnivorous plants can be a source of inspiration for new materials

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 11:39:00 +0100

Carnivorous plants can be a source of inspiration for new materials with specific mechanical properties, according to researchers from the Centre for Complexity and Biosystems (CC&B) of the University of Milan. In a paper recently published on PNAS– and selected for the journal’s cover –they analysed the mechanics by which one of these plants, Drosera capensis, folds its leaves around insects trapped on their sticky surface in order to digest them.

Carnivorous plants have fascinated scientists – including Charles Darwin, who wrote a book on the subject – for a long time, but most of the research activity focused on the biochemistry behind their leaf’s movements. This allowed to identify a bunch of molecules, including plant growth hormones, that are triggered by the presence of a prey and, in turns, can induce leaf closure. However, how mechanical forces actually carry out such a process in Drosera capensisis still unknown. Other carnivorous plants actuate their capture mechanisms by storing elastic energy that is then released through an extremely rapid movement, but that is not the way D. capensisacts: its leaves close on much slower time scales (from twenty minutes to up to three hours), thus suggesting a different self-shaping mechanism.

Researchers from CC&B studied this mechanism by using milk drops of different volumes to simulate different preys landing on the plant surface, and then quantified the mechanical dynamics of the closure process by applying a counteracting force at the tip of a leaf until it is open. They combined these experiments with a detailed analysis of leaves’ geometric and elastic properties, in order to build a reliable model of their mechanical behaviour, and with an examination of their microstructural features and biochemical signals.

Their results showed that the bending of D. capensisleaves is encoded in their cellular architecture, which is able to convert specific biochemical signals into an asymmetric response, which in turns triggers the closure movement.

«I happened to read carefully what Darwin wrote on carnivorous plants and was fascinated by how nature could create such a sophisticated machinery» said Caterina La Porta, professor of General Pathology at the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and one of the two lead authors of the study. «As a general pathologist, I want to understand the roots of biological processes. Understanding carnivorous plants has been a tremendous challenge that helped me better clarify how different organisms combine mechanics and biochemistry to achieve their goals»

«The mechanism underlying the movements in carnivorous plants could provide inspiration in the design of bio-inspired materials with advanced functionalities», said Stefano Zapperi, professor of Theoretical Physics at the Department of Physics of the University of Milan, the second leading author of the paper. «In fact, in this study we managed to design a metamaterial structure that responds asymmetrically to a symmetric mechanical stimulus, following our experiments on Drosera capensis».

A similar strategy can be exploited to design other shapechanging metamaterials – i.e., artificial materials with electromagnetic properties usually not available in nature – that could find possible applications as components in soft robotics and provides examples of bio-inspired design.

Metamaterial architecture from a self-shaping carnivorous plant, PNAS,Caterina A. M. La Porta, Maria Chiara Lionetti, Silvia Bonfanti, Simone Milan, Cinzia Ferrario, Daniel Rayneau-Kirkhope, Mario Beretta, Maryam Hanifpour, Umberto Fascio, Miriam Ascagni, Larissa De Paola, Zoe Budrikis, Mario Schiavoni, Ermelinda Falletta, Alessandro Caselli, Oleksandr Chepizhko, Ausonio Tuissi, Alberto Vailati, and Stefano Zapperi, (2019), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904984116

Scientists revealed a weak spot of the Huntington’s disease

Mon, 27 May 2019 19:50:00 +0100

Researchers have found that aberrant protein aggregates responsible for Huntington’s disease have some weak spots that could be exploited to hinder the development of this pathology. The study, published on Scientific Report, has been conducted by scientists of the Centre for Complexity and Biosystems (CC&B) of the University of Milan, in collaboration with colleagues from Penn State University.

Huntington’s disease is a genetic neurodegenerative disorder caused by the production of an abnormal version of a protein, huntingtin, which is involved in several cellular processes. Mutated huntingtin tends to form aberrant aggregates – like those characteristic of other neurodegenerative disorders – that, as the disease advances, interfere with neuron functions and can also be toxic to certain cell types in the brain.

Recent studies have shown that in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases the formation of these lethal protein aggregates can be transmitted to neighbouring cells, with potential prion-like infection and propagation as in the mad cow disease; these aberrant proteins can also induce their normal counterparts to change their structure assuming the aberrant one. Basically, they are capable of “infecting” the normal proteins, thus spreading the mutated conformation. Recently, it has been found that something similar occurs also in the Huntington’s disease but the biological dynamics that leads to the formation of heterogeneous aggregates – i.e. those formed by both normal and mutated huntingtin – have never been studied so far, since most of the research focused on homogeneous aggregates of aberrant huntingtin.

CC&B researchers used their consolidated multidisciplinary approach to study the formation of heterogeneous aggregates of huntingtin, combining computational models and biological experiments. As a first step, they run a particular type of computational simulation that allowed them to investigate protein structures and their possible interactions. In this way, they identified a possible aggregation mechanism through which a single mutated huntingtin can bind to its normal counterparts, and some elements of the protein structure that trigger the aggregation process. After that, they verified their computational results in the laboratory, by adding mutated huntingtin in cell cultures that only possesses normal huntingtin, and analysing them with a special microscopic technique that allowed them to observe the co-localization and likely formation of heterogeneous aggregates of the two protein versions.

«Once we managed to identify the configurations that characterized the aggregates, we could understand which were the most promising molecular targets to destabilize these abnormal protein agglomerations», explained Silvia Bonfanti, post-doctoral researcher at CC&B and first author of the study.

«The identification of these possible “weak spots” in the structure of toxic aggregates of huntingtin could allow the development of drugs capable of hindering their formation, or at least of slowing it down, thus impeding the progress of the disease», added Caterina La Porta, professor of General Pathology at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy of the University of Milan and coordinator of the research.

Poverty gets into your skin. The findings of Lifepath Project

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 11:45:00 +0100

Poorer people are more likely to experience worse health throughout the course of their life, especially in older age. The risk of poor health is associated with a step-by-step decrease in socio-economic position, creating what has come to be known as a social gradient in health [Figure 1]. In theory, if the more affluent can achieve healthy ageing it should be possible to achieve healthy aging for all. This was the challenge faced by Lifepath, a European project started 4 years ago and presenting its findings in the final meeting held in Geneva (CH) on the 26-27 March 2019.

Figure 1 - The social gradient of health.

“The most disrupting result of the project is that socio-economic position is an independent risk factor for premature mortality and physical functioning, of nearly the same extent as life style risk factors such as smoking, high alcohol use, poor diet, and physical inactivity. If smoking is responsible for 4.8 of years of life lost and hypertension of 1,6 years, the disadvantaged position in society ‘takes out’ 2,1 years [Figure 2]”, says Silvia Stringhini (University of Geneva), main author of one key study (Read more on this issue here).

Mediating factor	“Years of life  lost (YLL)”
Alcohol (high use)	0.5
Diabetes	3.9
Hypertension	1.6
Obesity	0.7
Physical inactivity	2.4
Smoking	4.8
Socioeconomic position (SEP)	2.1

Figure 2 - Years of Life Lost associated with 6 major risk factors and low SEP.

“Our epidemiological and biological data show that socio-economic disadvantage, expressed by income, education, housing or job position, accumulates from the very beginning of life due to several different kinds of exposures and circumstances, including psychosocial stress”, says Michelle Kelly-Irving (Inserm, Toulouse). “The evidence from our project shows that this chronic stress may induce systemic inflammation in our bodies that leads to biological age acceleration, premature diseases and mortality in the most disadvantaged. Literally, poverty gets under the skin”.

Early age is a veritable game changer, and it is crucial to intervene to support poorer families and children to make them more resilient to adverse circumstances during life and to ensure a healthy ageing. “Studies from Lifepath show that children and adolescents from low socio-economic backgrounds were more likely to be overweight, having a higher Body Mass Index from as young as the age of three, then affecting health in adulthood. Biological markers in children, such as epigenetic age acceleration, were affected by the social position of the family as well, while living in disadvantaged neighbourhood negatively impacts on several cardiometabolic risk factors [Figure 3]”, says the leader of the project Paolo Vineis (Imperial College, London).

Figure 3 - Risk factors of cardiometabolic health by age and cumulative neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage.

One of Lifepath’s goals was also to assess the impact of the 2008 recession in Europe. Lifepath researchers completed a study of health inequalities in 27 European countries that included the period of the 2008 banking crisis. “Most European countries have experienced many decades of mortality decline and the evidence suggests this was not derailed by the recession”, comments Johan Mackenbach (Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam). “This study likely reflects a level of resilience in most European countries built up through the provision of financially accessible health care and social support systems. However, mortality from smoking-related causes increased for younger less educated women and mortality from alcohol-related causes went up among less educated men and women” (read more about this issue here).

“Studies from Lifepath can be very useful to understand the real causes and biological mechanisms of growing health inequalities affecting our societies, but can also give useful suggestions to policy makers about timing of interventions in order to break the intergenerational transmission of health injustice”, says Michael Marmot (UCL, London). “Undoubtedly, the effects of education and social support in early life is as crucial as interventions on life style factors and on social conditions in adulthood”.

About Lifepath

Lifepath is a research consortium funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020, aimed to understand the impacts of socioeconomic differences on healthy ageing with a life-course approach that considers the relative importance of lifetime effects by comparing studies on childhood and adult risks. Lifepath researchers have integrated Europe-wide data from different cohorts *[Figure 4] *on socioeconomic position, environmental exposures and behavioural risk factors with health and other biological measurements. They investigated the biological imprints left in our bodies by exposure to socioeconomic factors – such as education, occupational title, or income. Chronic psychosocial stress was also considered as it may exert long-term effects through inflammatory responses, reduced immune function and biological age acceleration. The evidence from Lifepath can help to steer policies to reduce health, showing that healthy ageing is an achievable goal for society.

Figure 4 - Map of the cohorts involved in Lifepath research.

Socioeconomic disadvantage may trigger chronic inflammation

Mon, 28 Jan 2019 00:22:00 +0100

Socioeconomic disadvantage may trigger chronic inflammation, thus leading to health inequalities

London, January 28^th2019– Populations from countries with higher income inequality have higher average levels of inflammation and display greater differentials in inflammation based on individuals’ socioeconomic position. These are the striking findings of a study published on *Scientific Reports *by researchers of the LIFEPATH project, an EU-funded consortium that investigates the biological pathways underlying social differences in healthy ageing.

It is now a well-established fact across all societies where evidence has been collected that socioeconomic position (SEP) has important effects on health and life expectancy. Irrespective of the measure of SEP used (e.g. income, education, social class or status), one thing is clear: socially and economically disadvantaged individuals have a shorter life expectancy and worse health during life. Moreover, these external influences on health start to emerge early in childhood and gets steeper with age.

SEP can impact on our life by influencing biological function via the material environment – the location and quality of housing, exposure to pollutants, damp and pathogens as well as health behaviours. But there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that SEP may also directly shape biological health via neurological and hormonal pathways.

Economic strain, uncertainty and lack of control or threats to social status may provoke chronic psycho-social stress, which in turns can result in a chronic inflammatory response. This emerging link between psycho-social stress and disease could provide an explanation of cross-national variation in health and well-being that is not based on national wealth. Several scientists have developed the ‘status anxiety hypothesis’, which argues that absolute variation in morbidity – the rate of illness in a population – and mortality across developed societies is more strongly correlated with level of income inequality than to gross domestic product per capita.

To test this hypothesis, LIFEPATH researchers analysed data from 18,349 individuals aged 50 to 75 from Britain, Ireland, Portugal and Switzerland, using the individuals’ employment position as a marker of socioeconomic position, the concentration of the C-reactive protein (CRP) as an indicator of chronic inflammation and a series of parameters like smoking, body-mass index, diabetes and hypertension to adjust for variation in lifestyle factors.

What they found is that, holding the distribution of age, sex and SEP constant, the mean concentration of CRP is highest in Portugal, the country with the highest income inequality and lowest in Switzerland, the lower income inequality country. It is possible that this pattern actually reflects the per capitaincome of these countries, but the research also shows that the absolute and relative differentials between SEP groups also varies across countries in a way that would be expected if level of income inequality contributes to inflammatory processes. Age seems to act as a leveller, since differentials between low SEP and high SEP in inflammation are highest at the age of fifty and fall thereafter. LIFEPATH results also suggest that health behaviours play a relevant role in the development of inflammation.

«Across countries socio-economic mortality differentials have been rising since the 1980s and in some countries such as the US, overall life expectancy is now falling compared to previous generations», commented Richard Layte from Trinity College Dublin, the leading author of the study. «Is this trend related to the economic changes that have occurred since the 1980s, one dimension of which is increasing income inequality? Some have labelled this excess mortality as “deaths of despair”, driven in large part by decreasing psychological well-being. Our paper provides the first evidence of the physiological process that may account for this trend and the important role of inflammatory processes for the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer».

«This study constitutes an important step in our understanding of the origins of social inequalities in health, and also in the understanding of cross-country variations in population health. Further studies using markers of stress at the individual level will help in validating our results», added Silvia Stringhini from the Lausanne University Hospital, another author of the study.

Creativity and Human Brain

Ernesto Carafoli — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 10:06:00 +0100

Creativity is one of the most fascinating topics in the area of Neuroscience. It has generated a number of books, including a two-volume Encyclopedia, and countless essays. The amount of information available has now become enormously large, and continues to grow at an exponential rate: yet, gaps in our understanding of the process are still conspicuously evident. The book by Elkhonon Goldberg (Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation, Oxford University Press, 2018) is unique in ways more than one: it fills many of the gaps, and it has the additional merit of being written in a particularly attractive way: the author is not only a first class Neuroscientist, he is evidently also gifted with the special talent that only born writers have.

Research on creativity has variously focused on its manifold aspects: psychological, humanitarian, socio-cultural, cognitive, evolutionary, pathological. Neuroanatomical and neurophysiological aspects have naturally also been considered: after all, no matter how one looks at the topic, creativity is the product of the activity of the brain. Surprisingly, however, in depth and comprehensive studies of brain anatomy (including microanatomy), and physiology are very scarce. This is why the book of Goldberg is uniquely important: it deals masterfully with the multifarious aspects of the creativity knowledge, but the background leitmotiv, sometimes overt, other times hidden, always is the anatomy and the physiology of the brain. No other contribution, to my knowledge, be it a book or a massive reviews, offers such a solid and all pervasive “brain” foundation for the development of ideas and propositions on creativity.

Take for instance the matter of the functional specialization of the two brain hemispheres: as expected, the book does justice to the once popular concept of the strict division of tasks between the two brain hemispheres: others have done it too, but the way Goldberg does it is the most comprehensive and detailed I could find in the literature. It provides very detailed evidence for the cooperation of the two hemisphere in the process of creativity, obviously disposing of the old dogma that the left hemisphere is the master, and the right hemisphere the obedient slave that only expresses creativity when it somehow manages to escape the domineering negative influence of the master. In the end, the painstaking analysis of connections, networks, and mutual influences leads to the objective conclusion that yes, the left is the rational hemisphere, and the right the creative hemisphere. We knew it already? Yes, but now we have the necessary experimental evidence to say it with all possible confidence. And perhaps, at the end of the game we could even afford to retain with the author some grains of the old discredited idea of the negative influence of the left hemisphere on the creativity of the right one: he says that, at least for certain tasks, the capacity of the right hemisphere to generate novel content “may benefit from liberating it from the stifling impact of the left hemisphere”….

Goldberg obviously loves the prefrontal cortex, which is the anatomical and functional protagonist of the book: he involves it in practically all discussions , including those not immediately related to creativity. But the book has a number of other important general points that are, in a sense, preliminary messages that the author shares with the reader to help him frame the more technical matters in the right perspective. One , right at the outset, is the declaration that creativity is a two-sided process: its generation by the creative individual, and its fruition by the consumer. I.e. the brain mechanisms involved, for instance, in creating a symphony and those involved in its appreciation are the same. A second “preliminary” point which the author also introduces at the very outset, and to which he insistently returns throughout the book, is the culture-dependence of creativity: or rather, more generally, of cognitive skills and habits. Later in the book the author adds details to the concept, even using the famous metaphor that important discoveries, i.e., acts of creativity, are made by individuals who stand on the shoulders of giants. To put it differently, creativity does not appear out of the blue. It is the obligatory expression of a cultural milieu in which the creative individual operates and which he owns. The idea is echoed by the famous statement of a famous photographer, maybe he was Robert Capa, who had said that in principle anybody could shoot the perfect photograph; as a rule, however, the person who does it is the professional photographer.

Then, and this is perhaps the most important preliminary point, there is the attempted definition of creativity: for the author, creativity is inexorably linked to novelty. Throughout the book novelty seeking and creativity are used interchangeably (only in later portions of the book some sort of distinction is attempted, when the author says that creativity is a more complex multidimensional construct than novelty seeking).. Understanding the brain machinery of novelty seeking is a crucial step toward understanding creativity. The point is important, because it generates conclusions of general significance, e.g. on the “negative” personality of creative individuals, on the “divergent thinking” and the attraction to novelty as a prerequisite of creativity. Interestingly, however, the emphasis on novelty seeking is tempered by a caveat: novelty seeking must stem from the recognition of established knowledge. Which is another way of saying that novelty is OK, it must be ahead of established thinking, but not too much ahead of it. Anything in creativity that is totally new is probably wrong. Goldberg insists on it, particularly in the discussion of creativity in scientific discoveries.

The discussions and conclusions on anatomy and microanatomy, on circuitry and connections, and on the two way activator and inhibitory influences are the man corpus of the book, and set it apart from all other contribution on creativity. However, the book also deals with other general points related to the mechanism and properties of the process. One is the lateralization of the brain activities , the importance of which is underscored by its presence even in organisms that are evolutionarily very distant from humans. Another is the well supported relationship between creativity and brain connectivity: to put it in simplified words, creative individuals have highly interconnected brains. Classical work had already shown that split brain patients have low creativity, but the book shows that increased connectivity involves more than the simple interhemispheric communication: it involves the ability of diverse brain regions to interact and cooperate. Still another conclusion of the book, a negative one in this case, is that creativity cannot be attributed to a single brain structure. The frontal lobes are certainly essential, and the prefrontal cortex pays a critical role. But even the prefrontal cortex, the darling of the author, is not the only player: to the point that Goldberg even warns against the “frontal idolatry”!

The book devotes ample space to the genetic basis of creativity, mentioning the numerous multigenerational families in which famously creative individuals have appeared with high frequency. These individuals, however, have acquired different types of prominence, for instance even as politicians. Even if their “creativity” must be considered with a grain of salt, it has nevertheless generated the idea that exceptional abilities could be inherited.

Coming to creativity proper, Goldberg describes in some detail the recent attempts to identify candidate genes that could control it, but warns that creativity is a complex multidirectional construct, and concludes that it would be naïve to expect it to be linked to a single gene or enzyme, in what he defines a “royal road” to creativity. The discussion of creativity genes leads him to discuss the interesting topic of axonal myelination and the genes that control it, which he considers a promising future path in the search for factors on the inheritance of creativity.

A particularly lively portion of the book deals with the cognitive skills of primates and other animals: the amazing abilities of Koko the gorilla and his mother Matata, of Chantek the orangutan, of Kanzi the bonobo and his vocabulary of 384 lexigrams, had been described by others, but Goldberg extends the discussion to the skills of other animals, from parrots to porpoises, and does it in a very entertaining way, concluding that we humans are not alone in displaying a range of individual differences in cognition. He even goes back to the metaphor that in producing cognition feats animals “stand on the shoulders of other”: meaning that the contact with human culture alters their behavior and even impacts their sense of self.
Toward the end, the book offers a very interesting discussion of creativity and intelligence, and of the concept of “divergent thinking”, i.e., the response to questions with no obvious, singular answers, as the hallmark of creativity. Divergent thinking and the tests to judge it have become popular, but consensus among creativity researchers, including Goldberg, is now growing that they are not valid measures of creativity. Goldberg colors the discussion of divergent thinking with the amusing logarithmic scale of productivity and creativity that the great physicist Landau had applied to some of his important physics fellows, and quotes extensively the discussion on the matter he had made in one of his previous books.

Europe health saved by welfare

redazione — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 09:09:00 +0100

Mortality trends in Europe have been decreasing in recent years, differently from what happened in the United States with the rise in the so-called “deaths of despair” among low educated middle-aged white Americans. Most of all, such trends in Europe show no interruptions due to the economic crisis. This is the conclusion of a study published on PNAS by LIFEPATH, a project funded by the European Commission, which investigates the biological pathways underlying social differences in healthy ageing.

Health inequalities between different socioeconomic groups are a highly persistent phenomenon, despite having been the focus of public health policy in many countries. Since the early 2000s, the United States has experienced rising rates of suicide and poisonings among low educated middle-aged white Americans, partly due to an epidemic of misuse of opioid painkiller drugs. The multidisciplinary team of LIFEPATH experts tried to see if similar trends occurred also in Europe.

The researchers, led by Johan Mackenbach, professor of Public Health at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, collected data on mortality from 1980 to 2014 for 17 countries (covering 9.8 million deaths), and data on self-reported morbidity – which is a condition of disease, disability, or poor health – from 2002 to 2014 for 27 countries (covering 350,000 survey respondents). And they found that, in contrast to the United States, and despite the occurrence of an economic crisis, health of the low educated in Europe has improved in recent years, while health inequalities have sometimes narrowed.

«As the negative consequences of economic crises are likely to strike harder on the most disadvantaged, it is important to assess the health effects by socioeconomic group», said Mackenbach. «Our study shows that, despite the recession, most European countries have experienced an improvement of the health of the low educated in recent years. In Eastern Europe, this even represents a reversal as compared to previous decades».

In most Western European countries, mortality has steadily declined among both the low and the high educated without visible signs of a trend interruption due to the 2008 financial crisis, despite the very real increases in unemployment and poverty, often accompanied by cuts to social security and health services. «We think that the underlying trends were too powerful to be derailed, and the short-term effects of the crisis on people’s living conditions were too weak and too well-buffered to be translated into wide-spread health risks», said Paolo Vineis, professor at the Imperial College of London and leader of the LIFEPATH project.

Also, the effects of the economic crisis on people’s health risks were probably mixed, because some risks, such as the stress of being laid off or having financial debts, increased, contributing to a rise of the suicide rate, whereas other risks, such as the risk of dying in a car crash or of excessive drinking, declined.

In several Eastern European countries, particularly Hungary, Lithuania and Estonia, a trend reversal has occurred: after a dramatic increase due to the political and economic transformations following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mortality has started to decline among the low educated. These changes have been attributed to a combination of long-term declines in smoking, improvements in health care, dietary changes, road traffic safety measures and alcohol control policies. The massive investments in these countries’ infrastructure, supported by the European Commission, may also have helped. «This is probably our most remarkable finding, as such an inversion has not been reported before», concluded Mackenbach. «It seems that mortality-lowering policies have finally also reached the low educated. This means that inequalities by socioeconomic position need to be monitored when new health strategies are being implemented ».

Source
Johan P. Mackenbach et al. “Trends in health inequalities in 27 European countries,” PNAS 4/6/2018.
Read the article on PNAS and on Eurekalert.

Italian research "condemned to steer by sight"

Fabio Turone — Tue, 22 May 2018 16:13:00 +0100

First published in Research Europe (http://info.researchprofessional.com/research-europe/), 17 May 2018.

The great and the good of Italian science met in Rome last week, but politicians were nowhere to be seen.

“Scientific research: value for the country” as the topic of discussion at a conference taking place at the national research council would sound self-evident in many parts of Europe. But the social value of research and innovation is still far from obvious in today’s Italy. Among the dozens of experts convened at the meeting of the Gruppy 2003, a group of highly cited researchers, not one was representing the government, and no member of the parliament, past or newly elected, showed up, not even in the audience of some 150 people.

The meeting, held on 10 May at the CNR’s headquarters in Rome, comes in the midst of difficult coalition building by the government. This may have kept many political figures busy that day. But the meeting left an aftertaste, a vision of a scientific community steering by sight, without a grand plan. Researchers were just getting on with the job, left to themselves.

The only sign of appreciation came from Italy’s President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella who awarded a special medal to the event’s organisers to highlight their hard work. Sadly, the gesture also drew attention to the rarity of a one-day gathering of top-level figures to discuss the country’s plans for science policy, or lack thereof.

Economist Mario Pianta, from the Università di Roma Tre, opened the meeting by describing the general picture of Italian science, based on a report by the EU’s Joint Research Centre, published in April. Simply put, most Italian universities and research institutions are suffering from the protracted austerity, with only the area between Milan and Bologna resisting well. Pianta also cited a report on competitiveness just published by Italian statistical institute ISTAT, which showed that the government plan Industria 4.0 has so far been unable to spark private investments. Despite many generous fiscal incentives, private spending on research increased only by 0.1 per cent, favouring big business in northern Italy.

Many of those at the meeting blamed a lack of consistent ex-post evaluation of research spending for the weakness of R&D spending. Without proper evaluation, funders do not know which research has succeeded and are reluctant to invest again, they said. The Italian government focuses instead on evaluating projects before they take place, which can delay funding and penalise researchers for bureaucratic reasons.

“The system is based on distrust between the public administration and academics,” said Luigi Nicolais, former president of CNR and of the Gruppo 2003. “Public servants know that they will risk being sanctioned if their ex-ante evaluation is challenged, while there is no similar interest in ex-post evaluation,” he said.

The result is regular paralysis within the research system, with projects hanging in uncertainty for months, often until private partners get fed up. “The current rules of the public administration are incompatible with innovation,” said Francesca Pasinelli, director-general of the charity Telethon.

The other huge hurdle is the irregular and unpredictable availability of public funding, which makes the long-term planning of projects impossible. Pier Giuseppe Torrani, president of the Italian Association for Research on Cancer, said it is unacceptable that many researchers do not know in advance when public calls will be launched, what their content will be and how long the selection will take.

Considering this scenario, the European Research Area represents both an opportunity and a steep challenge. Italy wants to remain attractive, and possibly become more attractive for top researchers, but the unpredictability of funding and policy make this difficult. Luca Moretti, from the CNR office in Brussels, blamed the lack of a selective national strategy for slow European investments in research.

“Germany has six priorities, while Italy has 12 clusters,” he told the audience, saying that this was just one example of framework conditions as being conductive, or not, to science. The Italian situation is exacerbated by the dearth of training opportunities to help researchers win EU funding, the conference heard. In his Brussels office, Moretti said, he still receives calls from people who would like to see their own research funded, but have no clue of how the EU funding system works. “We need an efficient system for supporting and backing researchers,” he said.

“Italy’s research system needs to innovate, because we need to provide young researchers with some certainties about their future,” said Cristina Messa, rector of the Università di Milano-Bicocca. “But this requires undergoing change. Researchers must accept the idea of being evaluated in a new context, where responsible research implies understanding the needs of citizens and of the society.”

Messa also praised the proposal of establishing a national agency for research, for many years the main goal of Gruppo 2003. But she said that this must have an efficient system of political governance and involve academics from the start.

A case in point would be the launch of a government-backed foundation for the promotion of research and technology transfer on the same day as the event. Messa spoke of her “surprise and dismay” at having been completely clueless about this new foundation. “Many among us first heard about this by reading today’s newspapers,” she said.

Homeopathy: harmful or helpful?

redazione — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 15:00:00 +0100

Homeopathy: harmful or helpful? European scientists recommend an evidence-based approach.

A new evaluation from EASAC confirms there is no robust, reproducible evidence that homeopathic products work.

Across Europe, many people use homeopathic products, which claim to treat a wide array of illnesses. Though these products may be popular in some countries, scientists question whether they are helpful or harmful. In a new statement, a Working Group of the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) - a group composed of leading scientists from across Europe - says that there is no robust, reproducible evidence that homeopathic products are effective for any known diseases, even if there is sometimes a placebo effect. Moreover, homeopathy can actually be harmful: by delaying or deterring a patient from seeking appropriate, evidence-based, medical attention and by undermining patient and public confidence in scientific evidence. There are significant implications for public policy, public health, and the regulation of homeopathy in the European Union.

From analysis of the appropriately controlled, verifiable evidence base, any claimed efficacy of homeopathic products in clinical use can be explained by the placebo effect or attributed to poor study design, random variation, regression towards the mean, or publication bias. While the placebo effect can be of value to the patient, there are no known diseases for which there is robust, reproducible evidence that homeopathy is effective. The scientific claims made for homeopathy are implausible and inconsistent with established concepts from chemistry and physics.

We recognize the fundamental importance of allowing and supporting consumer choice. But patient choice must be appropriately informed and this raises issues for achieving a standardised, knowledge-based, regulatory framework and sound advertising practices that can apply equitably to all medicinal products, whatever their origins and whatever their mechanisms.

The promotion and use of homeopathic products risks significant harms as mentioned above. In addition, homeopathy raises issues of concern for patient informed consent if health practitioners recommend products which they know are biologically ineffective. There are also potential safety concerns for homeopathic preparations because of poorly monitored production methods.

EASAC recommends that:

• There should be a consistent regulatory requirement for claims for the efficacy, safety and quality of all medicinal products to be based on verifiable and objective evidence, commensurate with the claims being made. The necessity for robust data applies to products for both human and veterinary medicine.

• Public health system budgets are under increasing pressure. Evidence-based public health systems should not offer reimbursement for homeopathic products and services unless they are demonstrated to be efficacious and safe by rigorous testing.

• The composition of homeopathic products should be labelled in a similar way to other health products available in the pharmacy (OTC) or elsewhere. That is, the current exceptional labelling permitted for homeopathic products should be replaced by a simple description of the ingredients and their amounts present in the formulation.

• Advertising and marketing of homeopathic products and services must be regulated to be accurate and clear: advertising claims made for efficacy and safety should not be allowed without demonstrable and reproducible evidence.

Our recommendations on testing, regulation, labelling and marketing have significant implications for the European Commission: in particular, for the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (covering both human and veterinary medicine), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and the Directorate General for Justice and Consumers. There are also major implications for Member State health services and medicine regulatory agencies. In addition, there are significant challenges for patient education and dialogue, and public engagement.

Notes for editors:

Homeopathy is a concept for the manufacture and use of various highly diluted products to treat diseases, that was created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. His doctrine was based on “like cures like”, whereby a substance that causes a symptom is used to treat the same symptom in illness. A second central principle is the “law of infinitesimals”, which involves a process of serial dilution and shaking (succussion) that is asserted to increase potency. Some practitioners claim that homeopathy works by stimulating the body to heal itself.

Many scientists and medical doctors are very critical of the health claims made for homeopathic products and practices and consider the explanations advanced for their efficacy scientifically implausible.

EASAC, the European Academies Science Advisory Council, is publishing the present Statement to reinforce and reiterate this extensive and well-founded critique and to encourage and support (i) policy makers in the EU in taking a more explicitly evidence-based approach to assessing the claims for homeopathy and (ii) all those interested in stimulating better public engagement with these contentious issues and in improving consumer’s rights to correct information.

In preparing our Statement, EASAC is building on work already done by member academies, in particular the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Our Statement is prepared with the help of an expert Working Group (Appendix 1 in the Statement) whose members were nominated by the constituent academies of EASAC.

EASAC is formed by the national science academies of the EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland, to collaborate in giving advice to European policy-makers. EASAC provides a means for the collective voice of European science to be heard. Through EASAC, the academies work together to provide independent, expert, evidence-based advice about the scientific aspects of European policies to those who make or influence policy within the European institutions.

Read statement online here.

Public engagement and trust building on social media

ASSET Project — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

This editorial introduces the new release of ASSET paper series.

Social media, mobile technology and social networks constitute an extremely rich and dynamic information ecosystem. With a world population of more than seven billion people, almost half of them have an internet connection, while the active social media users are about 2.8 billion. Huge numbers, which clearly shows how deep these instruments are rooted into our society. It is not a surprise, then, that social media are also increasingly present in disaster and crisis response efforts. Their growing presence in these scenarios represent an issue, but also an opportunity.

Fake news have always existed, but the debate over them has risen to unprecedented levels in the wake of events such as Brexit, Trump’s election, and alleged Russian hackers attacks on US. The lack of a mediation mechanism on social media brought a radical change in the information system, strengthening the role of confirmation bias in our information consumption. In such a context, the already criticised one-way approach in the communication of medicine and science – the so-called deficit model – further shown its limits, for it may promotes polarization and isolated echo chambers or bubbles, incapable of communicating with each other.

However, social media may also represent an opportunity, as they may be used to provide information and to engage citizens. In some cases, they might be more effective than other communication tools like landline phone networks, as proved, for instance, by the violent terror attack in Paris, in November 2015, and in the police operation launched by the Belgian police few days later. During Paris crisis, people used social media to help others finding refuge during the shootout or sharing information about missing persons. On the other hand, Belgian police engaged citizens in order to avoid that information shared on social media could become an issue for the secrecy of ongoing investigations. And citizens not only recognized the importance of the situation but also soothed the tension caused by fear, by flooding the internet with pictures of cats linked to the operation but without any details, using the hashtag #BrusselsLockDown.

Being able to effectively communicate and engage the public through social media in crisis situation may thus represent a great advantage for a public institution. But such a potential advantage needs to be properly managed, in order to avoid serious mistakes. In the field of public health, an excellent example of social media management comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Their page dedicated to social and digital tools is a valuable source of information, conceived to encourage people to participate and share information provided by the organisation.

CDC has many different Twitter accounts: three are national profiles, one is dedicated to the emergencies, and other 23 are related to specific health topics like hepatitis or tuberculosis. They also implemented a Twitter account for their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (@CDCMMWR). On the website, a series of guidelines and best practices can be found, through which CDC “encourages the strategic use of Twitter to disseminate CDC health information and engage with individuals and partners”. Something similar is also available for Facebook, in a page dedicated to social media tools, guidelines and best practices. Which also includes two documents of great interest: the Social Media Toolkit and the CDC’s Guide to Writing for Social Media. Both these guides are downloadable as pdf, intended for a beginner audience and, as explained on the site, were designed “to provide guidance and to share the lessons learned in more than three years of integrating social media into CDC health communication campaigns, activities and emergency response efforts”.

They provide a wide amount of useful instructions and information, from the key attributes necessary to talk about public health on social media channels – personalisation, presentation and participation – to a series of tool – buttons, badges, images, blogs – that can be used based on the purpose, be it dissemination or engagement. They also offer several practical writing tips, supported by good and weak example: respect your audience, quickly engage your readers and tell them what to do, do not be ambiguous, limit the use of jargon, and so on.

It is interesting to note that all these guides, information and tools are not just internal documents used only by those who manage online communication. They are freely available and easy to find on the CDC website. A highly interesting choice, for it is part of the communication approach itself. It is a message of transparency and also a way to promote a certain approach to the use of social media to talk about public health.

And then, there are the social media campaigns.

In 2011, CDC issued an unusual warning: people should better be prepared, for a zombie apocalypse is coming. It was the beginning of a viral campaign that was not referring or reacting to any specific disaster. Its aim was to engage people and to talk about preparedness, combining an efficient social media marketing and a powerful symbol from pop culture like zombies. Needless to say, it was a success.

In 2014, CDC launched the Public Health Nerd online campaign to mobilize people who are passionate about public health, in order to promote awareness about CDC’s work, and to encourage learning and increase knowledge about health topics. The main motto of the campaign was “You are a Public Health Nerd if you…”, and most of the pictures and tweets (with the hashtag #PHNerd) contained questions and sentences aimed to boost conversation, not just to give information in a strict top-down approach. Not meaning that such an approach is wrong per se, as it is effectively used in other sections of the website, but communication and engagement on social media clearly requires a two-way approach.

What emerges from this overview is a highly coordinated and carefully planned two-ways communication strategy. A strategy based on a long-term perspective, aimed at engaging different kind of stakeholders into a network, and at trust building. Reciprocity, engagement, trust. Fundamental pillars for an effective public health and risk communication, whatever the instrument. This is why the CDC example is a powerful lesson for anybody in this field.

Michele Bellone, Science writer

Bibliography
Fake news and hoaxes: are you looking for information or just confirmation? Quattrociocchi W. ASSET, 2017
Beyond the expert, Sandal M. ASSET, 2017
Social media in crisis events: Open networks and collaboration supporting disaster response and recovery. Akhgar B, Fortune D, Hayes RE, Guerra B, Manso M. IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security. 2013 Nov. doi:10.1109/THS.2013.6699099.
CDC Twitter Guidelines & Best Practices
Social Media Toolkit
CDC’s Guide to Writing for Social Media

Why we still need to talk about AIDS

ASSET Project — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

In 1347, Siena, a flourishing, beautiful city-state on Tuscany hills, was a leading world power for its age. Just one year later, plague had already killed almost half of its inhabitants, changing its history forever. That did not happen only there: the impact of the Black Death – as the Middle Age epidemic was named – involved all Europe, with huge human, economic, political and cultural consequences. A typical, extreme, example of how infectious diseases can influence the course of history.

The memory of this catastrophe was continuously being reminded in the early Eighties of past century, when a previously unknown, and at the time inevitably deadly disease, emerged in the USA. Referring to AIDS as the 20^th century’s plague surely did not help patients at that time, but it can be useful today to understand how this epidemic introduced what we call Science-in-Society issues (governance, gender, communication, participatory governance, law and ethical themes, intentionally caused outbreaks) into the public debate.

A “different” emerging disease?

AIDS did not seem to have the classic characteristics that one could foresee for an emerging infectious disease. When we think of a new virus, we usually expect acute symptoms: fever, cough, vomit, diarrhoea or, in the worst case, haemorrhages. The first people who showed the new syndrome, on the contrary, had other diverse superimposed infections or even tumours: pneumonia by Pneumocystis carinii or Kaposi’s sarcoma, for example. The unknown disease did not kill the patients directly, but compromised their immune response. It had a slower evolution than pandemic influenza, though being much more lethal, and in few years spread all over the world.

Since the first cases were diagnosed in homosexual men in California, it was suggested that the cause had to be somehow related to this kind of sexual attitudes. For the first time, the issue of gender entered the field of infectious diseases. The syndrome was therefore initially called Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (or GRID). This careless name contributed to the prejudice that this disease should not concern straight people, helping the virus to spread undisturbed through heterosexual intercourses. Even though its name was soon changed into “Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)”, the stigma related to the disease did not improve for many years.

Stigma does not help

The awareness that the disease was also common in people who inject drugs made part of the public think that, even though not “for gay only”, this was anyway a disease of somehow marginalized people: nothing to worry about, if you are a “proper” person with a “regular” lifestyle. The diffusion of the virus to thousands of people through infected blood did not succeed in correcting this wrong idea.

Soon, it became clear that the communication evoking “a new plague” and “plague-spreaders” did not help either. Fear appeal did not work. On the contrary, many people hesitated in having themselves tested for fear of being discriminated, and so they kept on spreading HIV without knowing they were infected. And in some cases, even if they knew their HIV positive status, they did not tell their partners, either for fear of being left alone, or even on purpose, as a reaction for being outraged.

Governance is a clue

Deniers of the link between HIV and AIDS made their part, providing the South African government with apparent proofs that the epidemic was something invented by “white-led” European and US pharma companies against African people. This governance of the crisis in South Africa caused a severe delay in treating people, which worsened the situation and caused tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

In theory, experts have now become aware of the importance of avoiding any discriminatory reference in emerging infectious diseases, starting from naming. Any geographical, professional, ethnical or gender indication, in fact, more than unfair, can make people falsely reassured, while discouraging others to seek help.

A lesson learnt?

Nevertheless, some mistakes in communication are still occurring. Saying “swine flu” instead of A(H1N1) influenza could have had an impact on people working in pig farms and on pork sector, discouraging people from eating this kind of meat during the crisis, even without any scientific and reasonable basis for this. Calling “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” the SARS-like emerging disease by coronavirus, as if it should regard only the Arabic countries, could have been misleading, with more severe consequences. Korean doctors, in fact, were late in recognizing it, when it appeared in a severe outbreak in their country, maybe because it is in not in Middle, but in Far East.

AIDS crisis, anyway, was a turning point also in a positive way. It caused society to have a first, strong, participated reaction. From the most diverse forms of fundraising by thousands of charities and the launch of private/public funded initiatives, to the open declaration of their own HIV-seropositivity by sport and cinema celebrities to break the stigma, the public started to feel personally involved in the response to an infectious disease. Paraphrasing the lines of EU-funded research, science is already in society, but also society is already working with and for science.

The genetic signature that links obesity, diabetes and breast cancer

redazione — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 15:25:00 +0100

A novel approach to big data analysis allowed a group of researchers from the Center for Complexity and Biosystems (CC&B) of the University of Milan to identify a sort of genetic signature shared by obesity, breast cancer and diabetes.

Obesity is increasing worldwide, with impressive data showing that about 10% of children are overweight or obese in USA and Europe. From the medical point of view, obesity is overtaking smoking as the leading cause of premature death. In fact, obesity contributes to more than 70% of diabetes cases and it has been seen associated to some types of tumours, such as breast cancer.

The link between obesity, diabetes and breast cancer is based on clinical and epidemiological evidence, but a strong confirmation from gene expression data is still lacking. This is mainly due to the high variability between patients and the limits of in vitro models, but also to the massive amount of noise that is unavoidable in any available data set, which makes difficult to reveal a clear signature from a large set of genes.

“The huge amount of experiments in the biomedical field allowed to establish public databases that gather a large quantity of biological data”, says Caterina La Porta – member of the CC&B and professor of General Pathology at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy of the University of Milan – who coordinated the research, just published on NPJ Systems Biology and Applications. “Merging data sets from different studies would be extremely useful to extract relevant information, but it is difficult because of what we call the batch effects”, explains La Porta. “Each experiment introduces a bias in the data that is due to technical processing but is unrelated to biological factors. This means that this noise can mask any biological differences when comparing samples coming from distinct batches, and this is a problem”.

A problem that the researchers coordinated by La Porta tried to alleviate with a new approach, based on the combination of two techniques called singular value decomposition and pathway deregulation analysis. By doing so, they manage to identify 38 genes that are differentially expressed in adipocytes coming from obese and lean subjects. Furthermore, this signature appears to be specific to the biological condition of obesity and is not linked to the gender of the subjects.

These genes are mainly linked to inflammation and immunity and well-known complications of obesity such as type 2 diabetes or fertility. Moreover, by comparing data from breast cancer tissue with healthy breast tissue, they were find to be similarly deregulated in breast cancer and obesity, confirming the strong association between the two. Some of them might thus represent interesting biomarkers for further studies on these topics, or even for prognostic purposes.

“The strength of our work comes from the use of appropriate filtering and noise reduction methods that allow to mitigate batch effects. This general strategy can be naturally extended to other pathological conditions, providing a clear avenue to analyse the massive amount of data accumulating in the biomedical literature”, concludes La Porta. “In this case, our approach allowed us to detect a list of genes characteristic of obesity, which are also associated to type 2 diabetes and breast cancer, with a degree of precision similar to that used to identify the Higgs Boson”.

Gender integration in Horizon 2020

ASSET Project — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Gender is considered a main issue in Horizon 2020, the largest ever EU Research and Innovation programme, with €80 billion worth of funding available over seven years. The European Commission has identified seven priority areas of societal challenges, with the goal targeting investment in research in these fields. They are:

Health, demographic change and wellbeing
Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy
Secure, clean and efficient energy
Smart, green and integrated transport
Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials
Europe in a changing world - inclusive, innovative and reflective societies
Secure societies - protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens.

Gender is relevant across all the seven challenges, and has been mainstreamed into each of the different parts of the work programme. In support of gender integration in Horizon 2020, the European Commission have published a paper to highlight the applicability to gender integration in all of the Societal Challenge areas, and the benefits it will have on research and innovation. We took a look at this document, to see what this means in practice for research and innovation and general, and the issues of the ASSET project in particular.

Rationalisation for gender integration

There are three main objectives with Horizon 2020 gender equality activities:

Fostering gender balance in Horizon 2020 research teams
Ensuring gender balance in decision-making
Integrating gender/sex analysis in research and innovation content

While the first two objectives are more concerned with ensuring that there is an equal gender representation at all levels, the third goal is focused on gender within the research. Gender integration, in other words, is not about the gender composition of decision makers or the research team, but rather about including gender in the research itself.

Gender in research

Including gender in research is obvious in many areas – for example, while researching issues around domestic violence, or poverty in single parenting households. However, there are very few, if any, areas of research where gender is not relevant, even in “hard science” areas.

In the area of Smart, green and integrated transport, the issue of transport safety has a strong gender component. The document cites the fact that in consumer and legal evaluations of transport safety, the average male respondents have represented the whole population. If this were corrected to also include females, data would now show a more accurate picture of transport safety, and not continue to portray a situation where only males use transport. Another example is statistics - gender tends to be divided up in very simplistic categories in transport data and statistics, mainly only binary female/male categories. However, this creates data that lacks more specific information in terms of age, class, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and so on. Using these two examples, it is clear that in both transport safety and transport statistics, there is room for much improvement.

Another area that at first glance does not seem to have any room for gender integration is the Internet of Things – the connectivity between virtual objects and humans. Designing these smart devices, a part of information and communications technology that can greatly improve the lives of people, needs to include the gender differences of people that will use them and the effects they will have on the everyday lives of people. For instance, the paper uses the example of a project designed to help older people by providing mobile emergency assistance. It was designed with adherence to the body of the user, however only a male user was kept in mind – men predominantly carry things in pockets, and the female preference of carrying devices in bags was overlooked. This might seem to be a trivial issue, but if the objective is to create a device that will actually be used, such issues must be kept in mind.

In societal challenge 5, Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials, there is also a gender dimension. Research on climate action generally tries to understand how societies are impacted by major climate events – and reactions to disasters have been shown to be gendered, as are migration behaviours and poverty. Also, daily activities affected by climate change, such as hunting, fishing, and agriculture, also have a strong gendered element. In research trying to find nature-based solutions to Nature-based solutions, such as urban issues and urban spaces, which would seem to be fairly sexless, are actually very gendered.

In researching specifically urban issues, the population inhabiting any space is taken into account. Poverty, a main issue in such research, is highly gendered as the risk of poverty is significantly higher among single parents, who tend overwhelmingly to be women.

Gender integration in health research

Societal challenge 1, Health, demographic change, and wellbeing, is the most relevant in terms of ASSET. It would come as no major surprise that there exists a gendered dimension within health research, however this dimension is not only social but also biological. Both sex differences and gender aspects jointly determine the eventual health outcome of an individual. In terms of sex differences, these biological determinants are well documented but not widely researched or understood, as we have seen in the continued lack of research into what constitutes a sufficient dose of influenza vaccination for women.

Including sex in research will lead to more efficient and targeted approaches for the individual patient, as sex determines cellular pathophysiology and the connection between the organism with the environment. Also, sex and gender determine stress responses of isolated cells, meaning that coping strategies of women and men, which tend to be different, should be included in all research.

Chronic diseases and gender integration

The fact that there is often a difference between women and men in how they react to the same illness is slowly becoming more well known. For many of the major chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, heart failure, and diabetes, the manifestations are different – for example in heart attacks, women tend to have symptoms that differ greatly from men. These symptoms are nevertheless classified as “unusual”, as they differ from that of men (EIWH 2014).

This is not down to any form of active discrimination, but simply the fact that most research is done on men. Extrapolating research findings from studies involving primarily men on women is not suitable, and health professionals are left assuming that interventions and medication that have a certain effect on males will have similar effect on women, which is not always the case. More targeted and therefore more efficient treatment strategies for such chronic diseases will improve disease prevention and healthy life expectancy.

In terms of chronic diseases, lifestyle factors are often an influence on the development of disease. Lifestyle factors are influenced by gender norms, which determine differences in diet, nutrition and exercise patterns between women and men. By adopting gender-sensitive approaches in research, and integrating how sex and gender influence risk factors for chronic diseases, public health policies can be made much more effective and interventions can save both lives and money.

Data collection and clinical trials and gender integration

Collection of data is also an issue, as data for understanding disease pathways and for identification of risk factors should be conducted in a sex and gender sensitive manner. As an example, the Horizon 2020 document cites GWAS, the genome-wide association study, where inclusion of women is low and sex chromosomes are frequently excluded from the analysis. Also, data collection in basic and preclinical research should take sex differences into account. For example, the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the U.S. decided in 2014 to address the over-reliance on male cells and animals in pre-clinical research. They did this as translating male sex-biased preclinical research to improvements in human health could result in adverse consequences for women’s health. In this initiative, the NIH also committed to educating scientists on connects of sex and gender, and various ways to implement those concepts into the design of preclinical research. Another aim was to increase the use of female cells and animals in preclinical studies to expand the pool of data derived from females (McCullough et al 2014).

Some argue that while sex differences in biology exist, most drugs are similarly effective in both sexes, and physiological and pharmacological mechanisms are shared between women and men. Conducting experiments on both men and women therefore result in unnecessary duplication of data and add limited knowledge, and doubling cells and animals to include both male and female will increase costs and slow down progress due to the added workload. Nevertheless, the NIH argue that it is necessary to understand the physiology and pathophysiology of females in the same details as that of men, to avoid situations where a drug has to be withdrawn from the market due to adverse side effects in women. Drugs that are apparently efficient in both males and females may not be using the same mechanisms, or perhaps the dosage of the drug should not be the same for women. Therefore, the risk of not studying women in equal measure to men is too much of a gamble (McCullough et al 2014).

Conclusion

The Horizon 2020 document contains many more examples of where a gendered dimension in research is overwhelmingly beneficial. Including gender as a key category is crucial for addressing societal challenges in Europe – these challenges must be met in an intersectional way in order to build inclusive, innovative and reflective societies. ASSET’s focus on Science in Society and Mutual Learning and Mobilisation goes a long way to address these challenges in respect of pandemics/epidemics and vaccination, and the inclusion of gender issues as a cornerstone in ASSET ensures that problems long ignored will be addressed.

Vanessa Moore
Senior Researcher at the European Institute of Women’s Health (EIWH)

Training a computer to assess sperm quality

redazione — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 09:02:00 +0100

Training a machine to classify sperms based on their physical traits: this is the task accomplished by a group of researchers from the Center for Complexity and Biosystems of the University of Milan, who just published the study on Scientific Report. A task that might be of great help in the field of reproductive medicine.

The presence of abnormalities, such as a large or misshapen head or a crooked or double tail, might affect the ability of the sperm to reach and penetrate an egg. For this reason, sperm morphology is one of the factors that are examined as part of a semen analysis to evaluate male infertility. And such evaluation is usually performed by experts with a trained eye, who look at the semen under a microscope and classify sperms based on their aspect. However, due to the increasing amount of available digital images, it is becoming important to develop automatic techniques of classification and diagnosis.

To do such a thing, it is then necessary to develop reliable automated methods for cell morphology assessment but, at the moment, objective tools exist for sperm motility assessment, while current automatic methods for sperm morphology are still not accurate and difficult to use. Hence, subjective morphology sperm cell assessment is still the standard in laboratories but results in large variability in the outcome.

“Machine learning-based intelligent systems could play a pivotal role to reach this goal”, says the biologist Caterina La Porta, from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, who coordinated the research. “These systems can train themselves to learn the patterns of the data we provide them and produce a prediction model. The final goal is then to be able to automatically classify a data set with unknown labels”.

The researchers focused their attention on the morphology of the acrosome, an organelle with the shape of a head-cap that covers the sperm nucleus. The acrosome contains the enzymes necessary to break down the outer membrane of the egg, allowing the sperm to get inside it and begin the fertilization process. They used a large amount of images of mouse sperms to perform a three-dimensional digital reconstruction of their acrosomes, and then compute a series of parameters such as volume, surface and local curvatures. Finally, they analysed these traits by machine learning and compared them with the ground truth provided by a direct assessment by eye. The algorithm spotted differences that an expert eye was not able to distinguish, and its classifications were corrected in 73% of trials – a higher percentage than those obtained with other methods.

“We have proposed a general strategy to classify acrosomes during the course of sperms development, according to their morphological features”, concludes La Porta. “This could help solve the relevant clinical issue of quantifying the percentage of sperm cells with normal acrosome and therefore assess fertility”.

Beyond the expert

ASSET Project — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Some things just do not want to die. In public health, anti-vaccination movements keep sizzling debates, just as they did in the XIX century. At the same time, the “deficit model” of science communication – the myth that the “public” is just ignorant and that it would support science, if spoon-fed information from the ivory tower – still haunts the relationship between health, science and the community, despite having been repeatedly debunked. The two zombies are more related than one could believe. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination movements grow in the cracks between trust and knowledge, and these are the fault lines that communication should heal – or rip apart, if it fails.

An interesting case in point is Italy, where vaccination is the talk of the town. On Friday, May 19, following falling immunization rates, lawmakers just decreed to make compliance with numerous vaccinations a requirement for kids to be allowed in school, raising a significant debate. Many feel that the decree is too weak, probably yielding easily when probed in courts by parents that will demand a right to education regardless of their personal health choices. Others instead worry that such a heavy-handed approach, without a focused vaccine awareness campaign, could further increase distrust in the health and political institutions.

In the last couple of years, a prominent media figure emerged in the heated vaccination debate in Italy. Professor Roberto Burioni, an expert academic microbiologist, amassed a surprising media following for a scientist (and even more so for an Italian one), by sternly but rigorously and clearly rebuking antivaccination myths on social media. He is now regularly invited in TV program to discuss vaccinations, and has a strong core of supporters. Burioni also employs a distinctly top-down approach – an approach that, on vaccine communication, is known not to work or is even counterproductive. His recent popular science book on vaccines features the not exactly soothing title Vaccines are not an opinion: The vaccinations, explained to those who just refuse to understand them. After a rush of comments in January, blaming immigrants for introducing meningitis, Burioni snapped on his Facebook page with the following comment, that became quickly viral and debated on Internet and press:

“I clarify that this page is not a place where people who know nothing can have a ‘civilized discussion’ on the same ground as myself. […] Anyone can check personally the truth of what I report. However, they cannot discuss with me. I hope to settle the issue: here, only who studied has a right to speak, not the common citizen. Science is not democratic.”

So much for all painstaking attempts at a dialogue-based approach to health communication, amento those believing that health decisions should not be shoved down the throat of the citizens without their understanding. When the post went viral, the science/health communication community in Italy panicked, trying to remind that a top-down attitude can further polarize the public opinion, entrenching anti-vaccination attitudes and pushing fence-sitters away from vaccination. On the other hand, many scientists and science fans consider Burioni to be a charismatic figure who speaks his mind clearly and “puts antivaccinists in their place”, accusing critics of being just envious of his success. The debate smouldered for months on social media, and is currently being revived by the recent decree on compulsory vaccination. It split a camp that fights for the same aim: a society taking sensible health choices. What went wrong?

It is true that vaccine communication is still in trouble. While we know what does not work, there is still little consensus on what actually works. A review of reviews on strategies intended to address vaccine hesitancy found “no strong evidence to recommend any specific intervention”. It is also true that many health communication interventions happen away from the spotlight of media, giving an impression of absence, while scientist-media-stars seem to do all the hard work. But perhaps science communicators must acknowledge failure on their own turf -educating the scientific community on how to communicate. No matter how much evidence shows it fails at counteracting anti-scientific sentiments in the public(s), the deficit model is still standing. So much that the journal Public Understanding of Science devoted half of its May 2016 issue to essays trying to explain its persistence. The attitude of the Italian microbiologist, indeed, is hardly unique. Almost identical declarations of “science is not a democracy” have been used by scientists and science writers repeatedly. Most remarkably, scientists worldwide gathered in a March for Science April 22, 2017, apparently a huge public outreach success. Yet c ritics pointed that the March aim ed more at instructing than engaging, bringing as evidence, for example, the AAAS statement endorsing it.

Ironically, papers lamenting this stubborn survival tend to assume a deficit model themselves, calling for more education of scientists and medical professionals on the issue (e.g. Besley and Tanner, 2011). This is not necessarily wrong – there is evidence that communication training helps. Yet at its core the problem is not a knowledge deficit (see the pattern here?). It is cultural. As pointed by Simis et al., scientists support a deficit model because of their cultural assumptions. Being trained to be rational agents, they assume their public will act as a rational agent as well. They often assume a *“*us vs. them” distinction between themselves and the rest of the public. They lack formal training on communication. Finally, researchers in STEM tend to have a dim view of “soft” disciplines such as social sciences. Such a dim view is correlated with endorsement of the deficit model. In short, these scientists do not trust experts. Scientists choose what science to trust and what not like any other, depending on their own experience, knowledge and beliefs.

There is a remarkable parallel with the dynamics of antivaccination and other pseudoscientific movements. Scientists and physicians often are frustrated at the how the public distrust experts – and, consequently, they do not trust the public. When Burioni declares that “science is not democratic”, he meant that only what experts say matters. However it is not true people do not believe experts at all: more often, they choose the experts to trust. In this case, of course, “expert” means “whoever the public feels to have trustworthy knowledge on the subject”. Nonetheless, more often than not, these are people that would be considered experts by many definitions of the word. Yet Andrew Wakefield was a physician who published his bogus vaccine-autism correlation study on Lancet. V accine skepticism is often endorsed by healthcare professionals. Worse, there is plenty of Nobel Prize winners that publicly hold pseudoscientific beliefs, from Luc Montaignier belief in homeopathy to Kary Mullis AIDS/HIV denialism – so much that the expression “Nobel disease” has been coined. Why should not a layperson believe them? Are not they as qualified as humanly possible?

The deficit model thus seeds its own demise. If we communicate medicine and science as a one-way interaction between omniscient self-declared experts and a passive public, the public will internalize this hierarchy. In the moment the omniscient expert fails (being, in fact, hardly omniscient), the feeling of betrayal will readily remove trust in that expert. But the overarching frame of blind belief in a figure of trust will lead to the search of another authority – more or less real – in tune with the personal narratives or experiences. Communication becomes a competition between magic pipers, with the public left with little or no tools to understand which one to follow. This is further exasperated by the contemporary social media dynamics, which promotes polarization and isolated echo chambers or bubbles, incapable of communicat ing with each other.

Indeed, there are concerns that such a polarization is transforming science support, in popular culture, in a n ideological faction instead of a basis on which to build consensus. Consequently, the current vaccine debate in Italy is increasingly fractured among political lines. Some comments on social media even begin to conflate support for vaccination with other unrelated issues such as support for abortion, euthanasia and even same-sex marriage.

Is there a way out? An alternative would be to reposition trust from experts or qualifications to a trust in the process of knowledge-generation of science and medicine. The attitude should therefore shift from “believe us, because we are experts” to “believe this, because it is the result of a robust process”. It is hard to trust knowledge that appears from behind curtains; it is easier, perhaps, if we open to the public(s) how it is made and we engage it.

This means more than many current attempts at “citizen science” do, where citizens are “engaged” by helping researchers with menial, highly-parallelizable tasks. This requires to engage the public in a conversation about the practical process of building scientific knowledge. It would show that for example science is self-correcting on the long run, while pseudosciences tend to be static and deaf to evidence against them. Concerns about political, societal and economical bias in medicine and science should be explicitly addressed and acknowledged, not hidden or dismissed. Scientists should learn to trust the public, to understand that they are a public too: that even if the public has bizarre or false beliefs, the concerns behind them are all too real. Of course, this means we must act at a much deeper level than healthcare providers communicating about vaccines: in school, in media, in the general science-society relationship.

The same should happen in the internal debate between scientists and communicators. Science communication should engage with scientists, taking into account the cultural differences between social sciences and STEM disciplines. The rift between “hard” and “soft” sciences is perhaps the worst outcome of the infamous “Two Cultures” split that C.P. Snow described more than half a century ago. Gaining the trust of scientists, often frustrated by sloppy descriptions of their work on media and by the rising of pseudoscientific attitudes, should be therefore a top priority for science communication research. This could also help public discussion, giving tools to science fans to channel their enthusiasm and frustration into useful forms of engagement, possibly breaking the curse of social media polarization. And then, science and health care might really become democratic.

Massimo Sandal

Science journalist

Compulsory vaccination in healthcare workers

ASSET Project — Sat, 13 May 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

In front of low rates of immunization, many claim for compulsory vaccination, especially as far as healthcare workers are concerned. Their institutional role and ethical purpose is to take care of a subgroup of citizens particularly weak, because of their health conditions. This is always true, but even more when immunocompromised or frail patients, vulnerable to infections, are involved. All healthcare workers have therefore a moral duty not to hurt people they have to take care of, following the ancient principle “Primum non nocere”.

A further obligation is on behalf of the hospital or the clinic, which must guarantee the safety of its customers against any preventable risk. Any healthcare worker in fact can be infected and become a source of infection for healthy or frail people. For this reason, healthcare systems have an unquestionable duty to provide “safe staff”, i.e. professionals that cannot be, in any sense, a risk, for the people they assist. Moral suasion is of course the first step to pursue this objective. Anyway, if this does not work, in this case the collective interest seems to be prevailing on the individual one, as even John Stuart Mill (London, 1806 –Avignone, 1873) said.

Philosopher and economist, he was a leading figure of Utilitarianism and his ideas are considered the highest expression of democratic liberalism. His most important text is On Liberty (published in 1858), where Mill says: «The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part that merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign». And again: «…as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only for the security of others».

In my opinion, this last sentence is the only answer that can be given to the issue of making vaccination compulsory for healthcare workers. Following this idea, not all the available and effective vaccinations should be made mandatory for healthcare workers, but only those without which the individual could be a risk for their patients. For example, we couldn’t force a healthcare worker to vaccinate against tetanus: in fact, this vaccination is efficacious and recommended to protect the individual, but, because of the way of transmission of the disease, a lack of vaccination in this case is not a risk for others.

Similarly, I consider ethically unacceptable the idea that healthcare workers should get a mandatory vaccination to reduce their sick leaves, and so guarantee assistance and reduce cost for the healthcare system. This reason, in fact, though realistic and common sense driven is against the main principle by Mill mentioned above. If this approach were to be accepted, it would drive us on a slippery slope, allowing the employer to forbid workers to have unhealthy behaviours also outside the place of work: they should not smoke tobacco nor drink alcohol; they could not get overweight or they could be forced to practice at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day.

It is often said that the recent spread of vaccine hesitancy and refusal is associated with the introduction of new social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Nothing more wrong.

Vaccination was harshly contested on social, politic and technical basis since its very beginning. And compulsory laws aimed at reaching the widest range of population, far from fighting it, fed this hostility. The birth of vaccination is conventionally set at 1796, when Edward Jenner tested its new calf lymph against smallpox, overcoming obstacles and limits of previous vaccination practices and opening the way to mass vaccination. Nine years later, in 1805, Napoleon introduced compulsory smallpox vaccination in the French army. The following year, the practice became compulsory for all newborns in the Princedoms of Piombino and Lucca, in Tuscany, Italy. This decision was followed by many governments, among which the Kingdom of Italy in 1888.

In the beginning, England provided free vaccination to everybody, making it compulsory by Vaccination Acts in 1840, 1841 and 1853. Following Acts, in 1861, 1867 and 1871, allowed “vaccination officers” to try jail and seize belongings of parents refusing to have their children immunized. That raised a passionate debate on which limits should be put to the possibility of the government to infringe personal freedom and evoked a protesting movement that could obtain the abolition of compulsoriness in 1898. History, as well as current experiences, teaches that making vaccination compulsory is a hard way to follow: therefore, policy makers and experts need clear and strong guidelines, when taking this direction, without thinking it as an easy shortcut to overcome hesitancy and refusal.

Massimo Valsecchi
Former Director of the Department of Prevention of the Local Health Unit, Verona

Open letter to the Minister of Health, Italy

Autori vari — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 08:35:00 +0100

Honorable Minister,

The signers of this letter, all active in the field of health care, research and teaching of medicine, are surprised to hear that a widely appreciated physician and researcher, for many years active in the field of cystic fibrosis, has not been considered adequate to serve as the director of the main Italian center for the treatment of this disease.

The Cystic Fibrosis Center of Verona is recognized as the leading in Italy and is known worldwide for its excellence in the treatment and research on cystic fibrosis. This center has developed programs for basic research, has started one of the first newborn screening programs in the world, is engaged in research of new drugs, has always been represented at the level of committees and international scientific institutions.

Dr Carlo Castellani is a world-known personality. He has been secretary of the European Cystic Fibrosis Society (ECFS), vice-president and later president of the Italian Cystic Fibrosis Society; has been presented with the 2015 ECFS award as a personality who has made an outstanding contribution to the care of people with cystic fibrosis; has directed and coordinated international programs and led more than 100 scientists from different countries to produce the current guidelines for the standards of care for CF; is deputy editor of the world’s leading scientific journal in the field (Journal of Cystic Fibrosis) and has authored of more than eighty scientific papers published in main medical journals; has received funding from Italian, European and American institutions; has been invited to give talks in many countries and by several scientific societies; he is a recognized authority in the world in the field of genetic and newborn screening for cystic fibrosis. He continues to lead international programs of great importance for the study of this disease. Finally, Dr. Castellani has recently obtained the credentials for Associate Professor of Medical Genetics and Full Professor of Pediatrics in Italy.

We strongly feel that Dr. Carlo Castellani deserves the position of Director of the CF center in Verona, but we are dismayed to hear that his merits were not properly acknowledged.

We sincerely believe that this affair harms the scientific and clinical image of Italy in the specific field of cystic fibrosis.

Signed by:

Carlo Di Lorenzo
Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus Ohio (USA)
Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at Nationwide Children’s, Columbus Ohio (USA). Past president of the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition (NASPGHAN)

Alessio Fasano
Harvard Medical School – Boston (USA)
W. Allan Walker Chair in Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition - Division Chief, Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition; Director, Center for Celiac Research and Treatment - Director, Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center; Associate Chief for Basic, Clinical and Translational Research – Harvard Medical School – Boston (USA)

Stefano Guandalini
University of Chicago (USA)
Professor and Chief, Section of Pediatric Gastroenterology - University of Chicago (USA)
Professor of Pediatrics – University of Chicago (USA)
Section Chief, Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition
Founder and Medical Director, University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center
Già Presidente della European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN) e della Federation of International Societies of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (FISPGHAN)

Luigi Daniele Notarangelo
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH Bethesda (USA)
Chief, Immune Deficiency Genetics Section - Deputy Chief, Laboratory of Host Defenses
National Institutes of Health (NIH) – Bethesda (USA)

Giulio Cossu
Constance Thornley Professor of Regenerative Medicine Manchester Academic Health Science Center, Manchester UK

Christiane (Kris) De Boeck
Prof Pediatrics, University of Leuven, president European Cystic Fibrosis Society (ECFS)

Pavel Drevinek
Director, CF Centre Prague, ECFS Board member

Milan Macek
Professor of Molecular Genetics, Cochair of the Prague Cystic Fibrosis Centre
Sr. Head of the Diagnostics lab, CF Cetnre Prague

Keith Ooi
Paediatric Gastroenterologist and Head of Cystic Fibrosis Gut Research

Vera Vavrova
CF center, Prague

Kevin Southern
Professor of Child Health, University of Liverpool, UK

Kevin Gaskin
Professor and Director James Fairfax Institute, Children’s Hospital at Westmead , Sydney Australia

Claude Férec
Prof of Human molecular genetic, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, INSERM

Patrick Sosnay
Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University, US

Anders Lindblad
Associate Professor, Head of Gothenburg CF center

Lena Hjelte
Professor of Pediatrics, Stockholm CF Center, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm

Felix Ratjen
Sellers Chair in Cystic Fibrosis, Head, Respiratory Medicine, The Hospital for Sick Children, Professo, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Carlos Vazquez Cordero
Health of Cystic fibrosis paediatric center. HU Cruces. Bilbao. Spain

Anil Mehta
Division of Molecular & Clinical Medicine School of Medicine, University of Dundee

Yeshoua Cohen Hemsi
The eldest pharmaceutical generic businessman (retired)

Prof. Dr. Harm Tiddens
Head of CF Research Erasmus MC -Sophia Children’s Hospital, Rotterdam

Harry Heijerman
Pulmonologist, Head of Department of pulmonology, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands

Isabel Barrio
Head of Cystic Fibrosis pediatric unit .Hopspital Universitario La Paz .Madrid .Spain

Hugo de Jonge
Professor of Biochemistry, CF reseacher

Anne Munck
University Hospital Paris 7, Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris, Hopital Robert Debré, Paediatric CF centre Director

Stuart Elborn
Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Imperial College, and Consultant Physician, Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, London

Silvia Gartner
Coordinator of Cystic Fibrosis Unit. Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron. Barcelona.Spain

Clement Ren
Professor of Pediatrics and Cystic Fibrosis Center Director, Indiana University USA

Mary Corey
Scientist Emeritus, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto

Susanna McColley
Professor of Pediatrics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine; Associate Chief Research Officer, Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute; Associate Director, Cystic Fibrosis Center, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Chicago, IL, USA

Danieli Salinas
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, University of Southern California (USC). Director of Cystic Fibrosis Research

Tania Pressler
MD, head Cystic Fibrosis Centre Copenhagen

Daniel Sher
Pediatrician

Isabelle Sermet-Gaudelus
Professor of Pediatrics, Director of INSERM REsearch lab

Eitan Kerem
Professor of Pediatrics, Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School, Head CF Center, Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem

Batsheva Kerem
Professor of Genetics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Karen Raraigh
Genetic counselor, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

Gilles Rault
Head of Roscoff CF Centre

Laurent Meijer
President & Chief Scientific Officer of ManRos Therapeutics, Roscoff, FRANCE

Sara Sher
Medico Anestesista Rianimatore ASST Niguarda Ca’Granda Milano

Michele Fiore
Ricercatore, IBF, Genova

Giuseppe Magazzù
Professore Ordinario di Pediatria – Università di Messina
Già Presidente della Società Italiana di Gastroenterologia, Epatologia e Nutrizione Pediatrica (SIGENP) e della Società Italiana Fibrosi Cistica (SIFC)

Giuseppe Maggiore
Professore Ordinario di Pediatria
Direttore della Sezione di Pediatria - Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche Università di Ferrara
Già Presidente della Società Italiana di Gastroenterologia, Epatologia e Nutrizione Pediatrica (SIGENP)

Mattia Gentile
Direttore UOC Laboratorio Genetica Medica
ASL Bari - PO Di Venere

Antonio Amoroso
Professore Ordinario di Genetica Medica Università di Torino

Michele Samaja
Professore Ordinario di Biochimica Università di Milano

Stefano Ceri
Professore ordinario di Database Systems Politecnico di Milano

Paola Emilia Cicerone
Giornalista scientifico

Faustina Lalatta
Responsabile UOSD di Genetica Medica
Dipartimento Area della Donna del Bambino e del Neonato
Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda
Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico MILANO

Baroukh Maurice Assael
Ex direttore Centro Fibrosi Cistica Verona

Francesca Torricelli
Ex direttore della SOD di Diagnostica Genetica Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Careggi Firenze
Coordinatore del Gruppo di Lavoro Sigu Sanità
Membro del consiglio dell’Istituto di Bioetica Italiano sez. Toscana e della Fondazione Firmo

Paola Mosconi
Laboratorio di ricerca sul coinvolgimento dei cittadini in sanità
IRCCS Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri

Anna Bossi
Associato di Statistica Medica
Presidente del Corso di Laurea in Medicina e Chirurgia - Polo Centrale
Laboratorio di Statistica Medica, Biometria ed Epidemiologia “G.A. Maccacaro”.
Dipartimento di Scienze Cliniche e di Comunità

Anna Zolin
Dipartimento di Scienze cliniche e di Comunità Università di Milano
Responsabile di Gestione e Analisi dati European Cystic Fibrosis Society Patients Registry

Roberto Satolli
Zadig, Scienzainrete
Consigliere Fondazione Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico Milano

Giulia Candiani
Zadig, Partecipasalute

Antonio Addis
Ricercatore

Francesco Blasi
Professore ordinario Università degli studi di Milano

Luca Carra
Direttore Scienzainrete

Giuseppe Castaldo
Ordinario di Medicina di Laboratorio Università di Napoli Federico II, già Presidente della Società Italiana di Biochimica Clinica

Bruno Dallapiccola
Direttore Scientifico Ospedale Bambino Gesù, Roma

Pietro Dri
Giornalista scientifico

Stefano Duga
Professore Ordinario di Biologia Molecolare, Humanitas University. Direttore del Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche

Luigi Greco
Prof. di Pediatria, Univ. di Napoli Federico II

Oscar Moran
Ricercatore, Istituto di Biofisica, CNR, Genova

Rita Padoan
Responsabile Centro Regionale di supporto per la Fibrosi Cistica - ASST Spedali Civili Brescia

Anna Roberto
Laboratorio di ricerca sul coinvolgimento dei cittadini in sanità IRCCS Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri

Silvana Tedeschi
Laboratorio di Genetica Medica, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milano

Emanuela Caci
PhD. Istituto G.Gaslini, Genova, Italia

Mario Romano
Direttore Laboratorio di Medicina Molecolare, Università degli Studi G. D’Annunzio di Chieti-Pescara

Gennaro Lacaita
D.M. Ospedaliero

Marco Soria
Professore Ordinario di Biochimica Università di Salerno

Giovanni Morana
Direttore UOC Radiologia Diagnostica Ospedale di Treviso. Centro di Ricerca sulla RM in Fibrosi Cistica

Stefano Costa
Pediatra

Marco Lucarelli
Professore Associato di Biochimica Clinica e Biologia Molecolare Clinica, Sapienza Università di Roma

Fulvio Ferrara
Direttore Servizio Integrato di Medicina di Laboratorio e Anatomia Patologica - CDI - Centro Diagnostico Italiano, Milano Professore a Contratto Corso di Laurea in Fisioterapia Università Vita Salute San Raffaele, Milano

Claudio Beltramello
Medico

Carlo Manfredi
Presidente Ordine medici Massa Carrara

Paola Primignani
Dirigente biologo, Servizio di Genetica Medica, ASST Grande Ospedale Metropolitano Niguarda, Milano

Alessandro Ventura
Professore Ordinario di Pediatria, Università di Trieste

Elisabetta Dejana
Prof Ordinario di Patologia Generale alla Università di Milano e alla Università di Uppsala Svezia. Direttrice della Unità di Ricerca di Biologia vascolare all’istituto FIRC di Oncologia Molecolare

Fabio Majo
Pediatra, Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù, Roma

Antonio Manca
Responsabile Centro Regionale Pugliese di Riferimento per la Fibrosi Cistica, A.O.U. “Policlinico” Bari

Laura Minicucci
Responsabile Centro di riferimento regionale per la Fibrosi Cistica della Regione Liguria I.G.Gaslini, Genova

Pierfrancesco Morganti
Temporary prof of Skin Pharmacolgy, 2nd University of Naples,Visiting Professor China Medical University, Shenyang

If you want to join sign here

Citizens have their say on epidemic and pandemic threats

redazione — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 12:26:00 +0100

The ASSET project, Action plan in Science in Society in Epidemics and Total pandemics, presented today its Policy Report at the European Parliament. The EU-funded project has performed a citizen consultation in eight different European countries to engage citizens in preparedness and response towards crises caused by emerging outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics. The countries are: Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Norway and Switzerland.

The results from the citizen consultation shows a clear consensus among the majority of the 400 people who participated in the consultations, in terms of transparency and public health safety during an emerging outbreak. ASSET also presented today policy recommendations, to politicians and decision-makers across Europe, based on citizen input. Some of the suggestions are: clearer risk communication to restore trust in society; public health interests being given priority over individual freedom in an emergency situation; and public health authorities devoting more resources to collecting citizen’s input on policies regarding epidemic preparedness and response.

Public health safety is essential in case of an infection threat

According to the citizen consultation results, more than 82% of consulted citizens consider that public services, such as kindergartens, schools, and offices, should be closed in case of a pandemic. Denmark leads this question with 93%, while France is the least determinant, with only 60%.

Previous outbreaks such as 2009 A(H1N1) pandemic flu, Ebola and Zika have had an effect on large international events. The citizen consultation included a question in this regard. 69% of the consulted European citizens think that large international events, such as the Olympic games, should be cancelled during a similar outbreak.

It is also relevant to highlight the consensus about mandatory flu vaccination for healthcare workers in case of a pandemic or epidemic risk. 85% of the European consulted citizens said that public health authorities should be mandatory for every single health professional.

Communication between citizens and public health authorities should be improved

Risk and crisis communication channels are important for European citizens. Only 29% of consulted citizens are satisfied with the information from public health authorities during epidemic threats like Zika in recent years. The consultation reveals two exceptions: Denmark with 48% and Norway with 64% of satisfied citizens.

In case of a pandemic outbreak, citizens considered that the most important piece of information from the public health authorities is what to do (67%), and secondly, routes of transmission (19%). Authorities should use this piece of information in their future communications strategy during a outbreak.

The citizens believe that honesty and good communication can increase public trust (no matter how bad the situation is), and that it is their right to know and understand the situation accurately. They can even accept uncertainty, if this is well explained.

The general practitioner is still the preferred source of information

Another theme addressed in citizen consultations has been the sources that the European citizens used to acquire knowledge and their most trusted sources of information on the recent Zika epidemic.

The general results show a clear preference for the general practitioner as source of information. However, we observe a different perception of the Internet as source of information in the north of Europe (Ireland, Denmark and Norway). In these countries, we see how the Internet is playing an important role. 31% of the people prefer the Internet, versus 34% that prefer information coming from the general practitioner in Denmark, 37% versus 25% in Ireland, and 42% versus 42% in Norway.

In terms of sources of information, the most trusted for the citizens are the general practitioner (74% of trust), European health authorities (70%) and national health authorities (70%). The sources that are the least trusted are newspapers (48%), the Internet (49%) and TV (52%), during a case of pandemic.

All the data, by country, can be examined at this web tool on the ASSET website.

You have access to the Policy Report here.

Fake news and hoaxes: are you looking for information or just confirmation?

ASSET Project — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

In the wake of events such as Brexit, Trump’s election and the rumours about Russian hackers interfering with political events in USA and Europe, post-truth has been chosen by Oxford Dictionaries as the Word of the Year 2016. The awareness of the danger represented by the spread of fake news over the web has risen to unprecedented levels and this, in turns, ignited an already intense debate over the earthquake that is running through the information system, where the official narratives always seem to be weaker than the alternative ones. The mediation layer represented by journalists and experts does not exist anymore.

Such a disintermediation is not limited to politics and economics but involves all complex and articulated topics – including science and science journalism – in relation to which false information and different interpretations, both instrumental or not, are often born. Issues related to emerging infectious diseases (i.e. stigma against migrants during Ebola outbreak) and vaccines (i.e. misinformation about false links between them and autism) are in the spotlight. Many people now point the finger at social media, holding them responsible for the wide, pervasive and unstoppable spread of fake news and hate campaigns. The debate is still in its infancy and tends to put all these elements in a single pot, that of a post-factual society.

Internet – and social media in particular – destroyed the mediation mechanism within the information system in favour of a more crowd driven process of agenda setting. Indeed, an impressive amount of tailored news and interpretations circulates on the web and feed prior convictions. People find the information that suits them, guided by their prejudices and by confirmation bias. Everybody does that, without exception.
The information is not processed as true, but as a confirmation of a personal view of the world. The very broad range of sources, versions and contents on the Internet maximizes this process. We performed a Quantitative analysis on social media (made of millions of users), showing that we tend to choose a story without really caring about its validity; the most important thing is that we like it. The post-truth is just another way to say that information consumption is driven by confirmation bias.

We tend to acquire information not because of its intrinsic value and credibility, but rather because it confirms our thesis, our beliefs, our prejudice. If we are sceptic towards vaccines, we will like and share news about their low efficacy or mentioning a side effect, while ignoring favorable contents. The more an issue becomes complex, the more our cognitive limits and our tendency to approximation – where confirmation bias is even more powerful – are revealed. The intellectual world, like the information one, is a cauldron of opinions, positions and voices. A world of tribes: pro-vaccines versus anti-vax, with no distinctions and shades. And the main behaviour that stands out is the annihilation of the opponent (kind of identification bias). Probably the best way to fight fake news is to start thinking about what leads to such a polarization, since this seems to be the real enemy. Polarization dramatically characterises the way information is processed and commented, giving rise to symmetries of an almost mathematical regularity. A game of contrasts and opposing arguments.

In light of these results, the idea of introducing fact checking – or even worse, fact checking-based search engine – as a countermeasure is childishly naive, as well as a source of further polarization and acrimony. There is a space to reshape, a trust to rebuild. Speaking without knowledge of facts, just to defend our own positions, should be avoided. There is too much chatter, too much speculation. We should learn to accept the uncertainty that invariably follows complexity. As Cass Sunstein says, we have to promote the culture of humility at the expense of sterile and egoic rhetoric.

Walter Quattrociocchi
Head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy

Can we make science communication more scientific?

ASSET Project — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Effective science communication, especially when engaging with genuine two-way discussions with audiences, is quite a complex issue, and far from simple to study. Much of what works and what doesn’t is highly dependent on contingent factors, from what specifically is being communicated, to the social dynamics around the issues, to the political context in which the engagement occurs. This makes deriving general insights and lessons that can be applied across the board particularly challenging. Because of this complexity, journalists, press officers and media professionals, as well as scientists and stakeholders, often end up treating the practice of science communication as more of an art than a science.

Last year, the US National Academy of Sciences brought together a panel of top experts to produce a report on the science of science communication. Decades of research social sciences, from communication studies to behavioural economics to sociology, contributed to the formation of the first public draft of the report Communicating Science Effectively: a research agenda, published this January. The document hopes to be not only a consensus report of where the science is, but a helpful tool with concrete, evidence-based guidance on best practices.

While the report clearly states that we lack critical research to draw sweeping conclusions on many aspects of science communication, it highlights a series of common misunderstandings that however well intentioned, end up hamper most of the goals of the communicator.

The seductive simplicity of the deficit model

Possibly the most common misconception scientist have about the nature of science communication is their often uncritical acceptance of the knowledge deficit model. The deficit model is the idea that if the public just had access to the right, well explained information, society’s lack of understanding and appreciation of science would quietly fall by the wayside. This model is especially seductive to scientists because it makes sense in the context of the rational approach that most scientists are trained in and adhere to. Unfortunately, plenty of evidence shows that this simply does not work. This is not just because people are simply irrational, but rather because interpretation and values very often weigh in as much as facts when making decisions. Lack of nuance and complexity often leaves the public more uncertain than before, and the fact that rarely communication goes straight from scientists to the laymen, and it’s actually filtered through journalist, press offices, media and all kinds of middlemen each with their own voice and interest slowly erodes trust in the source.

The biggest problem with the deficit model, however, is that it implies an inherently one-way mode of communication, from the experts to a mostly ignorant public. There are, in fact, many different kinds of audiences and they vary wildly in their knowledge and predisposition to accept scientific information. The only effective way to cross this gap is to get an honest bi-directional dialog with the public, creating engagement through discourse.

Lecturing and motivated reasoning

For many scientists, lecturing is a kind of reflex, but the same tools that work in a classroom, with a captive audience of students motivated to please the professor, could be actively counterproductive in the larger society. When exposed to new information, human beings use a wide variety of heuristics to make sense of it. When communicating science, and especially controversial topics, one of the most relevant concerns is motivated reasoning: we take at face value information that seems to confirm our pre-existent worldview, and we are sceptical of what contradicts what an already established belief or our immediate emotional reaction. A lecturing-like approach rather than correcting misinformation often ends up making individuals feel threatened and reinforce their pre-existing belief or, worse, makes them angry at the messenger.

Framing and narratives

Framing theory is a very well-studied area in social science, and another critical point according to the experts that compiled the report. Framing is the idea that how something is presented to an audience significantly influences how the information is interpreted and used. Describing something as “problematic” or as a “high priority” is putting something in a particular frame. Narratives and personal anecdotes are a very common way to frame health issues persuasively, but even deciding what to emphasize and what to ignore creates the frame for the issue. There is no such thing as frame-less communication.

When talking about genetically modified organisms, the “Frankenfood” frame distracts from the hard data and subconsciously connects the issue with moral concerns about scientist violating nature. When talking about climate change, one can put emphasis on the environmental dangers, the public health hazards, or as an opportunity for a new and completely different way of economic development. Different frames have different impact on different audiences, and picking the right one can help avoid (or exploit) negative knee-jerk emotional reactions. There is no one-size-fits all solution.

The nature of controversies between scientist and the public

According to the reports, the public generally trusts scientists, especially when compared to other figures like lawyers and politicians. The perception of a constant tension between laymen and experts is due to some very polarized scientific controversies, which are often result of specific socio-cultural backgrounds. Some of these controversies, however, like those involving vaccines and climate change, appear to be global. Once again, despite the very different issues and stakeholder involved, the experts have been able to pinpoint three common characteristics that are shared by all these controversies:

There is a conflict involving beliefs or values, and not simply a lack of knowledge
There is a public perception (or misperception) of conflict inside the scientific community
Some particular stakeholders have a disproportionate voice in the public debate, muddling the issues

These points, once again, show how it is dangerous to think of the public as simply lacking knowledge. Even scientifically literate people pick a side on climate change along the lines of their political affiliation. Even worse, examples in public health, like the HPV vaccine, show that an issue can be rapidly polarized by simply being covered by partisan media. This decreases trust in expert opinion, suddenly perceived as biased despite no action by the experts themselves.

Science communicators must be very careful not to mix personal values, beliefs and perspectives with what the scientific consensus says, and always be willing to engage in honest discussion with the public. While experts and scientists are well equipped to explain and document the health risks of declining vaccination rates, for instance, the question of whether mandatory vaccination is an acceptable solution requires political and ethical considerations that cannot be resolved by science alone. Involving the public in every step of the way and having open, common deliberation is the best way to build and keep the trust in science.

Using science to improve science communication

Journalists, scientists and all stakeholders must be willing to accept that communicating science is itself a science, and to familiarize themselves with the insights that show a better way to get important information across to the public. While still more research is needed to fill gaps in our knowledge, the National Academy of Sciences report makes many important recommendations to make science communication better. Among those, a few stand out:

always remember that the idea of a general laymen public is a useful fiction, not reality: the message must be tailored to the specific audience of interest to be persuasive;
make an effort to create meaningful, honest engagement between scientist and others about the promises and pitfalls of science;
recognize that conflicts between scientist and the public are not due to a lack of knowledge or understanding, but involve differences of beliefs and values that cannot be solved through simply more lecturing;
assess the effectiveness of science communication and design communication efforts based on empirical insights about both the specific context and the target audience.

Addressing these issues is not going to be easy, and will require a concerted effort and collaboration between scientists, public and the media. The need for effective communication – for the good of public discourse, of citizens and of the scientific community itself – has never been greater, and the only way to fulfil this need is to more effectively implement the insights from the science of science communication.

Pandemic Legacy: what a game can teach us about pandemics

ASSET Project — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Month by month, the diseases spread across the world, cities fall into panic and some of them are even wiped out by virulent outbreaks, while tenacious experts cooperate to find a cure before it’s too late. This is not the plot of one of those end-of-the-world movies that Hollywood loves, but a scenario that everybody can experience by playing Pandemic Legacy, a board game released at the end of 2015 that quickly rose in ranking on the BoardGameGeek websites, the biggest online database for tabletop games, finally getting to the top. That of Pandemic is not a new brand for board games enthusiasts, since the first edition of the game was published in 2007.

“At the time when I created the first version of the game, there were a lot of pandemic in the news”, told us its creator, Matt Leacock, a former user experience designer who became a full time game designer in 2014. “I was working on the game concept and I wanted to come up with an enemy that the players can all agree is bad and must be stopped. And pandemics perfectly fit into my idea”.

Pandemic is a cooperative game where players take the roles of experts with different specialisations, whose task is to find the cure for the four diseases that are swiping the globe. At the same time, they will also need to contain the spread of these diseases, in order to avoid outbreaks and chain reactions that could trigger more outbreaks and thus leading to a defeat. A simple and effective card-driven mechanic dictates where and how fast the four pathogens propagate. “At the beginning I thought I could make a kind of educational game, adding text and information on the cards”, explained Leacock. “But then I changed my mind and decided to focus more on emotions, since they are more engaging than facts”. And the emotional approach works, for Pandemic conveys a sense of pressure, hurry and emergency that effectively reflects the fight against time to halt the spreading infectious diseases. Most of all, it absolutely requires players to coordinate themselves in order to win.

The game was an immediate success and, in the following years, spawned a series of expansionsand spinoffs, of which Pandemic Legacy is the last and most successful one. Its idea is simple: the core mechanics of the game are integrated within the Legacy system, developed by Rob Daviau. Legacy games are board games that physically change over time based on the outcome of each match and the various choices made by players: cards are destroyed, secret boxes are opened and stickers are added to the board. Permanently. There’s no turning back. In Pandemic Legacy, players embark in a yearlong campaign against the four diseases, each game representing a month of such struggle. And after each game, something happens that will influence the following ones. As the story develops, new scenarios unfold and new mechanics are introduced, forcing players to face new challenges and to carefully plan all their actions, for they may have unpredictable consequences.

Pandemic Legacy won four golden geek awards in 2015, including best board game of the year, best strategy game, most innovative game and best thematic game, and the Pandemic series in general achieved great success. Not only amongst board gamers, but also amongst experts in medicine, communication and teaching.

“Even if I abandoned the idea of making an educational game, I got a pretty good feedback from the scientific community about the way the game simulated reality”, said Leacock. There are many notable examples of such a recognition. One of the most striking came from Robert Keegan, who has used the game in a project he started at the University of Leicester Medical School. His aim was to address a very difficult and important problem in medical education: teaching teamwork and communication. He prepared interactive sessions where students in groups of four played Pandemicwhilst being observed by a tutor who was trained in using specific criteria of teamwork. Once feedback was completed, students had a few minutes break before playing a second game, again observed. This allowed for direct recording of the impact of teamwork and communication teaching.

Using games for educational purpose is not something new; serious games have been around since the Sixties and, in the last decade, an increasing number of them has been produced. However, serious games are specifically designed for purposes other than pure entertainment (like healthcare, defence, education, communication, politics), whilst a game like Pandemic is primarily conceived to engage and entertain players. But, while doing that, it also manages to teach something, not by being didactic but by leading players into an immersive experience, allowing them to delve into their roles and the complexity of a critical situation, where only through collaboration they may achieve victory. And this may represent a very powerful tool for health and risk communication. Sherline Lee, a CDC epidemiologist who works in the Healthcare Preparedness Activity program, wrote about the game on her blog on the CDC website, praising it for how well it reflected the reality and values of public health, especially for its focus on cooperation between different expertises, which is a key element in public health response.

Democracy and human rights in a Public Health Emergency

ASSET Project — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

This editorial introduces the new edition of ASSET paper series.

Human rights are at the very core of EU democracy. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU became legally binding and the EU acceded to the European Convention on Human Rights. The Charter contains rights and freedoms under six titles: Dignity, Freedoms, Equality, Solidarity, Citizens’ Rights, and Justice. In this contribution, I would like to have a quick look at how far these principles of democracy and human rights are stressed with the current flow of migrants and people seeking protection towards the EU and how health can contribute in preserving these rights. However very clear the EU basic principles seem, we might wonder if the European health systems can somehow coop and apply these fundamental values in the context of current migration, overburdening the health service delivery of the host countries.

Health is written as a human right since long in international texts. Examples include the 1946 World Health Organisation Constitution, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Health is indispensable in fulfilling the fundamental human rights principle that human dignity is inviolable. The right to health covers the right to accessible, available, adequate-quality health care. It also includes a wide range of factors that can lead to a healthy life, including the protection of health, providing equality of opportunity for everyone to enjoy the highest attainable level of health; the right to prevention, treatment and control of diseases; access to essential medicines; maternal, child and reproductive health. Health as a human right therefore defines both a legal obligation and a set of values that are applied in a human rights-based approach to local, national and global health.

The individual rights to health may sometimes be balanced against the greater good for a community. Health concerns can according to the international agreements be used as potential restrictions. “No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are in accordance with law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the maintenance of order public, for the prevention of crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” (Convention Protection of Human Rights).

Public health protection is a permissible ground for limiting the rights to liberty of movement, freedom of religion, of expression and of association. In various countries, quarantines and limitations on freedom of movement often have been imposed for public health reasons. There is a danger that such restrictions on rights may not be justified on health grounds. Under international human rights law, national decisions to limit rights may be overseen by international committees, which can require states to provide adequate justifications for rights limitations. Many human rights documents acknowledge this need for extreme measures, but prioritize public health only as a method of last resort.

But while the health and well-being of individuals suggests the need for adequate medical personnel, diagnostics, and treatment, public health refers to disease prevention and health promotion at the level of the collective: defined as group, community, organizational, geographical, national, or international levels. The current situation of people trying to cross the EU borders as a consequence of social and political instability, is a humanitarian disaster and crisis which calls for emergency responses.

Since years and certainly in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 9/11 in the US, the anthrax threat, the EU has organised itself to protect lives and assets of EU citizens as well as to provide effective assistance to non-EU countries, as an important expression of European solidarity. Enhancing Europe’s resilience to crises and disasters is one of the core objectives of the Internal Security Strategy in Action (2010). The Solidarity Clause in the EU Treaty introduces a legal obligation to assist each other in case of a terrorist attack or a natural or man-made disaster. The implementation of this clause, aims for a better organised EU and a more efficient crises management.

Different crisis coordination mechanisms have been set up to enhance the EU’s crisis management capacity. The EU emergency and crisis coordination arrangements (EU-CCA) define rules for interactions between EU institutions and affected EU States, while the integrated EU arrangements with cross-border effects (EU-ICMA) facilitate practical cooperation. At Commission level, the rapid alert system – ARGUS - brings together all relevant Commission services to coordinate efforts during an emergency. Public health mechanisms have been strengthened to respond accurately to health threats. Decision 1082/2013/EU on serious cross-border threats to health, is coming into play for events that may constitute public health emergencies of international concern under the International Health Regulations, provided that they fall under one of the defined categories of threats in this decision.

The EU is seeking to harmonise and support national efforts to better manage returns with the Return Directive and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund for non-EU nationals who are staying irregularly. We see here a package of legislation, principles, instruments to protect EU citizens and in some cases for individual non-EU citizens to benefit from an equitable treatment. However, we are confronted at our borders with a flux of people and no doubt a shortage in EU and Member States resources at a point where the concept of solidarity amongst EU Member States is becoming doubtful. It’s a very complex situation, in which without knowing the complete context, one might jump to quick conclusions.

Nevertheless, the threat is real that rights to health are less taken into account, which may lead to a violation of the individual rights, and which entails a public health risk for that community of migrants waiting for a new life in settlements and camps. The emergency in public health is there in many ways. Continuing to protect the EU’s public health, is one requirement. At the same time, protecting the individual physical and mental health of a migrant but also protecting the health of the migrant community. And organising the available resources, including respect for the aid workers.

The issue of dealing with a public health emergency and countering public health threats from outside the EU brought humanitarian aid efforts and support together. In the current context, we may wonder if the real threat is not about respecting human rights. We should keep in mind that the role of governments, professionals, international institutions is a matter of building solidarity in order to give those seeking for protection the same opportunity as any EU citizen.

Solveig Wallyn
Welzijn, Volksgezondheid en Gezin, Belgium

Engaging citizens in pandemic preparedness and response

ASSET Project — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

In the wake of the 2009-2010 H1N1-pandemic, also known as the swine flu, a web of mistrust between the public and health authorities was spun. National pandemic plans were usually based on a single scenario that was more severe than the actual 2009 pandemic, and that was extrapolated from the severity of previous outbreaks like SARS and Avian flu. In effect the 2009 pandemic was nicknamed the false-pandemic or ‘the pandemic there never was’. However, national health authorities had declared a pandemic and bought vaccines for billions. Such an approach was blamed as too much alarmistic, and left institutions open to criticism and suspects.

Engaging citizens in pandemic preparedness and response might be an effective way to deal with this issue. Hereto, ASSET project aims to be EU’s counter to this by engaging citizens in the debate of pandemic crisis prevention and management.

The Danish Board of Technology was asked to develop and test a participatory and inclusive method for engaging citizens. The method should convince the EU that citizen participation could be done within a field normally dominated by technical experts. In fact, epidemic response and planning has clear normative components, involving obvious conflicts and dilemmas, combined with a well-documented scientific knowledge base, and a need for political action in the crisis situation and fulfilling all conditions for citizen participation. We decided to develop a multi-site method, where the citizens received the same information prior and during the consultations at the same time across Europe. Their votes were reported in real time into a webtool, were all the results can be seen and analysed. See Box2 for more information.

The citizen were very satisfied with the process and would like the process to be repeated on different or similar issues. They provided policy makers with clear demands and thought-provoking insights. Analysis of the results are still ongoing, but some trends are already now evident. Citizens want more transparency in the work of health authorities and are not satisfied with the level of information provided during epidemic threats. Actually, less than half of the citizens are confident with information being withheld, even for security reasons by health authorities. Same goes for the satisfaction level during an epidemic threat.

Figure 1: Result example from the webtool

Some of the more remarkable results from the consultation included vaccination and information channels. While half of the citizens found mandatory vaccination as an appropriate tool for public health authorities during epidemic threats, more than eight-of-ten answered that it should be mandatory for health care workers (Figure 1). This discrepancy is very interesting, and we will go more into detail in upcoming policy workshops in Bruxelles. As mentioned in the lead paragraph, an insight that policy makers cannot overlook is that the citizen deems the internet as the least trusted information channel, and yet it is the one they consult first. Research has showed that even if this insight, information read online has a subconscious effect on decision-making.

Figure 2: Co-hashtag analysis of policy recommendations

Finally, we organized an open session where the citizens were asked to write policy recommendations in their native language. In addition to their recommendations, they were asked to encircle the most important words from their policy recommendations. The words have been translated and mapped according to the citizens’ priorities through a co-hashtag analysis (Figure 2). What we can see from this map is that information, transparency and citizens are very central and important to the citizens. By investigating the full recommendations behind these keywords, it is possible to explore the context behind the most popular recommendation, thus providing a helpful set of information for policy makers on such a delicate matter.

John Haukeland
Project manager at The Danish Board of Technology
On behalf of ASSET project

SaveSave

Ethical issues in national pandemic influenza plans

ASSET Project — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Influenza pandemics are unpredictable but recurring events that can have severe consequences on human health and socio-economic life to global level. For this reason, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended all countries to prepare a pandemic influenza plan following its own guidelines. The WHO guidance, revised in 2009, stresses the importance of ethical principles such as equity, liberty, solidarity and states that any measure limiting the individual rights and the civil liberties (such as isolation and quarantine) must be necessary, reasonable, proportional, equitable, not discriminatory, and not in violation of the national and international laws. For such purposes, WHO has developed a framework of detailed ethical considerations in order to ensure that overall concerns (such as protecting human rights and the special needs of vulnerable and minority groups) are addressed in pandemic influenza planning and response.

Experts from the ASSET project conducted a study on this issue, performing a semantic analysis of national pandemic plans developed by ten European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries and by Switzerland, member of European Free Trade Association (EFTA), including EU and WHO documents.

The analysis has been based on two keyword lists: in a first, generic, list, keywords represent areas of possible ethical interest; in a second, more specific, list, keywords are more precisely related to ethical issues actually addressed in each national pandemic plan. Aim of the research was to assess and compare the occurrence rates of each keyword within both lists, in order to evaluate the relevance of ethical issues and the application of ethical principles in the development of national preparedness and response plans. The semantic analysis showed little concern for ethical aspects and a lack of discussion on ethical issues in most pandemic plans developed from European countries, except for Switzerland, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and France. This is even more relevant since the analysis revealed multiple areas of possible ethical interest within the different plans.

Despite this work has some limits it may represent a useful tool to guide future drafters of pandemic plans. It aims at encouraging debate on the necessity to update all national pandemic plans including ethical and other SiS issues, such as gender and participatory governance, which have proved to be of great relevance in case of epidemics and pandemics.

Spotting the disease before it reveals its presence

redazione — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 12:21:00 +0100

A preclinical test that may open new perspectives in the diagnosis of neurological disorders. This is the result accomplished by a group of researchers from the Center of Complexity and Biosystems of the University of Milan, who just published their work on Physical Review Applied.

A vast class of incurable neurodegenerative disorders are characterized by the aggregation and deposition of aberrant proteins like the beta-amyloid peptide or the alfa-synuclein, considered to be a factor behind the development of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, respectively. Detecting the onset of such aggregations before the appearance of the symptoms of the disease is almost impossible nowadays, but some possible solutions have been proposed. One of the most promising ones is to take advantage of the same process that determines the spread of the diseases to amplify minute quantities of protein aggregates. By doing this, it would be possible to screen small biological samples for the presence of very low concentrations of aberrant aggregates, thus allowing preclinical diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases.

Recent advances in microfluidic technology allow analysis of protein aggregation in very small samples but, in order to enable such diagnostic approach, it is necessary to find a way to minimize the risk of false positive or negative detections, which may easily occur when analysing small quantities of biological material.

And here is where the group of researchers from the Center of Complexity and Biosystems comes into play.

The authors of the study addressed the problem with a computational approach. Basically, they simulated the onset of protein aggregations in small samples, in order to study how this process fluctuates depending on the volume of the samples. By doing that, they managed to design and validate a preclinical screening test that will ultimately allow the determination of the exact number of aggregates within the analysed sample. Such a result will improve the precision and quality of protein aggregations detection, thus representing a first step towards the realization of in vitro tests for early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases.

“This is the first proof of concept in silico that could guide the development of a test in vitro to identify neurodegenerative disease before symptoms appear”, said Caterina la Porta, biologist and leader of the research group.

Compulsory vaccination and rates of coverage immunisation in Europe

ASSET Project — Sat, 10 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

High rates of vaccination coverage in childhood are main indicators for public health. However, reaching and maintaining such a target is not always an easy task for public health institutions, and the spread of vaccine refusal and hesitancy is making this even harder.

Enforcing mandatory vaccinations is one of the strategies that some countries adopted and others are considering in order to face this issue. Depending on local legislations, legal consequences for those who do not accept the uptake can be very different, ranging from pecuniary penalties to hurdles to attend public schools. In some cases, parents may even incur penal consequences, as it recently happened in France, were two parents refusing to vaccinate their children risked a jail sentence. Nevertheless, the efficacy of such an approach has been questioned.

ASSET performed an analysis on the issue, comparing coverage rates of immunisation against polio (Pol3), measles (MCV1) and pertussis containing vaccines (DTP3)* in European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries, where, according to different policies, these vaccinations are either mandatory or recommended.

This comparison cannot confirm any relationship between mandatory vaccination and rates of childhood immunization in the EU/EEA countries.

* In some countries, such as Italy, vaccination against pertussis is highly recommended but not compulsory, while those against diphteria and tetanus on the contrary are, but the three are usually administered in one single shot.

The Environmental Epidemiology between science and ethics

Luca Carra — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 10:21:00 +0100

The last day of the ISEE Rome Conference (September 1st to the 3rd) opened with a plenary session with many contributions on methods and the ethical and scientific aims of this scientific discipline.

Joel Schwarz, from Harvard University, discussed the statistical methods needed to improve reliability in identifying causal links in phenomena under study, while Roel Vermeulen of the University of Utrecht illustrated the new techniques used to trace exposure to polluting agents down to a molecular level. “This type of science is very young and soon it will be possible to identify any sign of environmental contamination on the human body. We could monitor all the intermediate steps leading to the onset of diseases, thus being able to identify more effective forms of prevention and to offer early treatment of diseases caused by the environment” said Vermeulen. Current use of ‘omics’ have already made it possible to identify the molecular signature of atmospheric pollution on the organism, for instance of tobacco smoke, nanomaterials or other pollutants.

In the course of the day a series of sessions were devoted to the presentation of research projects that already use such methods to ascertain the damages of toxic materials such as arsenic, lead, coal, dioxin, asbestos, heavy metals and pesticides on humans, with a special focus on their effects during pregnancy and on young children.

Other sessions were devoted to the protective effect of urban green areas, and of active and sustainable urban transport. Progress in these new areas will enable a more effective impact of environmental epidemiology on health policies, as in courts.

The last presentation in the plenary session Shira Kramer (Epidemiology International Inc) told an audience of about one thousand researchers and students what the role of environmental epidemiology could be in trials where compensation for pollution was sought. Kramer is an epidemiologist who started to serve the US justice system in 1991 following the case of the parents of children who had developed neuroblastomas, a rare cancer of the nervous system. The case was held against a company that stored coal tar – a carcinogenic substance used in the production of gas – a few yards from a children’s playground. The captivating story of that legal case and of the many that saw Kramer as an expert witness, illustrate the public role for environmental epidemiology, helping us understand its limits and the difficulties science may encounter in the courtroom’s confrontational environment. Kramer highlighted the ethical mission and the responsibility environmental epidemiology had in defending public health against environmental threats.

Philippe Grandjean, the Harvard epidemiologist who discovered mercury’s neurotoxic effects on the foetus and on children, also shared Kramer’s views, as he made clear on receiving John Goldsmith Award for Outstanding Contributions to Environmental Epidemiology. Grandjean received the award on the first day of the conference: he highlighted the responsibility of epidemiologists to communicate and translate their finding so that the results can help exposed populations and inspire more cautious and protective policies.

A conclusive session was devoted to the case of glyphosate, the Monsanto pesticide currently being investigated by the European Union that has been the object of study by three international committees reaching differing conclusions. Such conclusions were not always transparent and suffered from conflicts of interest.

The Dieselgate case was also discussed with a focus on the relationship between regulations and the ethics of the car industry referring to the evidence on pollution being concealed by the car industry.

The conference was closed by a general overview on epidemiology by epidemiologist IARC’s (Lyon) Rodolfo Saracci, emeritus scientist and by Manolis Kogevinas, ISEE President.

ISEE conference website: http://www.isee2016roma.org
Conference programme: http://bit.ly/isee2016prog
Twitter account: @ISEEroma2016
Hashtag: #ISEEroma2016

Engaging citizens in public health decisions: the ASSET citizen consultation

ASSET Project — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 10:32:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Citizens from the eight Countries partner of the ASSET project will gather on September 24th to discuss and express themselves through a public consultation on some of the key topics of the project:

Personal freedom and public health safety
Communication between citizens and public health authorities
Transparency in public health
Access to knowledge
Open session

The event will involve 50 citizens from each Country – chosen in order to represent the whole national population – who, at the same time and with the same modalities, will be required to express their opinion on a series of arguments related to the chosen topics. Their answers will be collected into a database, analysed and then forwarded to the European Commission.

What are they?

The expression “Citizen consultation” refer to a wide range of activities that involve citizens in decision processes by asking them to express their opinion on specific topics. Examples of these practices are participatory budgetingand deliberative polling. Citizen consultations are part of an approach known as deliberative democracy. Two different steps are required in order for deliberative democracy to work properly: a first information phase, which needs to be complete, transparent, honest and balanced, and a deliberative phase, in which citizens may vote to manifest their opinion.

Some history

Born out of a growing concern for the environmental and societal consequences of industrialization in the 1960’s, citizen consultations were mostly established in recent years. This is due to the rising awareness from politicians, scientists and stakeholders of the great opportunity, offered by these moments of discussion, of understanding population’s viewpoints about subjects that strongly affect their lives. Abortion, genetic engineering and climate changes are just some examples of the several themes for which the classic unidirectional communication approach (top-down) proved itself ineffective in promoting the engagement of the population.

Moreover, during the 2009 A(H1N1) flu virus epidemic, the level of preparedness to such a threat was not yet completely adequate among European member states, despite the efforts made after SARS and bird flu crisis. Therefore, starting in 2010, the European Union and the international health authorities began to think about how preparedness and the role of communication in preparedness could be improved. ASSET project has been thus conceived with a specific focus on communication and citizens’ engagement in such debates.

Other examples of citizen consultation

Citizen consultations have been put to use in several contexts. Here are some of them:

The EU-project CIMULACT provides concrete and unique input to the identification of the future European research agenda by eliciting concerns about, wishes for and visions of desirable sustainable futures from 1000 citizens in 30 countries in Europe.
The national advisory group INVOLVE in the United Kingdom, established to promote the public involvement of citizens and patients in the National Health Service, public health and social care research.
The advisory groups of the US Food and Drug Administration, addressed to patients’ representatives.
The empowerment initiatives in the Emilia Romagna region, in Italy, like the Laboratorio Cittadino Competente in Modena; the Laboratorio dei Cittadini per la Salute in Bologna; the Age.Na.S. survey on empowerment activities at regional level; the PartecipaSalute project that, since 2004, develops training, information and research activities for and with patients associations.

How it works?

The citizen consultation promoted by ASSET will be carried out through a method developed by the Danish Board of Technology Foundation (DBT). The method has been developed taking inspiration by the World Wide Views method (used in 2009 for COP15 in Copenhagen; in 2012 for the Biodiversity COP in Hyderabad; and in 2015 for COP21 in Paris). The work will take form as a transnational citizen consultation with simultaneous national face-to-face 1-da meetings with a web-based framework for transnational comparison of the national results. All meetings follow the exact same format. The day is divided into five thematic sessions, followed by evaluation questions. An information video introduces the thematic issue and citizens are then presented with a set of questions with pre-prepared answering options. Groups of 5-6 citizens deliberate on the questions before them, assisted by a trained table moderator. At the end of each session – this can take between 1 and 1 ½ hour – citizens vote individually on the questions. Votes are then collected and reported to the World Wide Views website, where results can be compared as they arrive throughout the day. Comparisons can be made between countries, continents and different groupings, such as developing and developed countries. Results will be presented both at national and European level. We will keep you posted about that.

From Science-in-society to Science with and for Society

ASSET Project — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 09:39:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

There are times when science seems to be losing its connection to society and its needs, and its objectives are not fully understood, even if they are well intended. The lack of a common language on one hand and the rapid progress in many areas of research on another have increased the public’s concern. It is also contributing to the ambivalence surrounding the role that science and technology are playing in everyday life. However, science and scientists cannot and should not work in isolation, and advances in science and technology are not an objective in their own right.

On 4 December 2001, the European Commission published a Communication setting out the Science and Society Action Plan, which was based on a staff working paper of November 2000, titled ‘Science, Society and the Citizen in Europe’. These documents were followed by a resolution by MS research ministers to bring science and society closer, working both at national and EU level.

Since 2002, every year the European Commission has committed resources into making science more attractive (notably to young people), raising the appetite of society for innovation, and opening up further research and innovation activities. A number of EU projects have been developed and realized in the Framework Programme (FP) 6 with budget of 80 million euros, expanding to 330 million euros in FP7. It continues into the Science with and for Societ (SwafS) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) themes in Horizon 2020 (2014-2020), which is a cross-cutting issue, with a budget of 462,2 million euros.

SwafS, in particular as regards epidemics and pandemic,s is an extremely interesting although less developed area of Science in Society (SiS). In times of public health (PH) crises such as in the event of outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics, a number of SwafS issues may prove critical for the response and the control of an outbreak.

The effect of a pathogen on a specific population or gender (e.g. pregnant women with A(H1N1)pdm09 or currently with Zika virus), priorities in immunization, or even the need to enforce quarantine in some cases, are only few of the scientific issues that need to be well understood by the society. This is essential in order to ensure compliance by the public and the successful control of an outbreak.

Within ASSET project, the current scientific paper series aims to present and discuss various such issues in the form of an open access scientific quarterly newsletter. Experts in the ASSET consortium as well as invited authors will describe in the form of short communications the various issues related to SiS and epidemics/pandemics.

Athena Linos

Professor, Medical School, University of Athens

Professor & Chair of Dept. of Hygiene, Epidemiology & Medical Statistics, Athens Medical School

President of the Institute of Preventive Medicine Environmental and Occupational Health, Prolepsis

References

DG- Research and Innovation, SWAFS http://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/index.cfm?pg=home

http://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_public_engagement/ss_en.pdf

Zika won’t stop Olympic games

ASSET Project — Thu, 07 Jul 2016 10:41:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

A debate is ongoing if Olympic Games should be cancelled, moved or delayed because of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern declared by WHO on 1^st February 2016 on microcephaly in Brazil, which is being proven to be associated with Zika infection. On May 25^th, 150 experts in bioethics, public health and social sciences signed an open letter to the WHO, asking to skip the Games, in order to avoid a further spread of the epidemic. The main point of the letter is the uncertainty related to many variables, which “makes impossible for mathematical models to predict the epidemic’s course accurately”.

The response of the WHO, published on line on May 28^th, is clear: “…Based on current assessment, cancelling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus…”. Brazil is just one of almost 60 countries involved by the epidemic of Zika virus, and people continue to travel among these territories and abroad for a variety of reasons. The quote of people who will go to Brazil for the Olympics is small compared to the totality of those who visit it every year; the winter season, in which the Olympic Games will take place, implies a reduction in the number of mosquitoes, and postponing the Games would not be a proper solution. The WHO affirms that “…it is providing public health advice to the Government of Brazil and the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee, on ways to further mitigate the risk of athletes and visitors contracting Zika virus during the Games, and will continue to monitor the situation and update advice as necessary…”.

On May 12^th, recognizing the need of the athletes who are going to participate to the Olympic and Paralympic games to receive more information on the risk of Zika virus, the WHO had already published a statement on this topic.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) also took position against the possibility of cancelling the Olympics, and the Brazilian Minister of Health affirmed the commitment of the Brazilian government to put in place all the necessary measures to protect the health and safety of all people attending the Olympic Games.

Zika virus is transmitted by mosquitoes of Aedes species (Aedes egypti, but in some measure also by Aedes albopticus, commonly known as tiger mosquito). The research conducted during these last months brought light on a disease that had long been ignored, and now the risk of fetal microcephaly has been confirmed, as much as the possibility of sexual, transplacentar and blood transmission. While a DNA vaccine is entering a first clinical trial, the WHO has developed and transmitted a series of recommendations intended to reduce the risk of being infected: prevent mosquito bites; practice safer sex or abstain from sexual activity during the stay and for 8 weeks after the return (or for 6 months, if one has had symptoms of Zika infection); avoid travelling to areas with ongoing virus transmission during pregnancy. These same precautions were recommended to the athletes

But is the risk of “importing” Zika virus in Europe concrete?

“It is possible, but we need a competent mosquito,” says Claudio Venturelli, an Italian entomologist. “The virus should replicate in the salivary glands of the insect to be transmitted, and this process is highly effective in Aedes egypti, that we find in Europe only in some areas of Georgia and in Madeira. Aedes albopticus, much more common in Europe, is mildly competent, so the risk is low. Anyway, it is important to maintain a good level of consciousness without alarming people”.

“However, Zika is a RNA virus that changes rapidly,” explains Claudio Po, an expert in Hygiene and Public Health. Thus, “even if the Brazilian strain is the same previously circulating in Asia, it is partly different from it and we are not sure about its possibility of being transmitted by Aedes albopticus. This tendency of the virus to mutate makes more difficult even to realize a vaccine”.

The debate continues on the net, with Amir Attaran, the main author of the open letter, raising concerns about the risk of pandemic on his Twitter account, researchers trying to estimate the risk for acquiring a Zika virus infection, and athletes considering the possibility of giving up the Games.

The WHO is not ignoring this controversial situation.

On June 14^th, the third meeting of the Emergency Committee was held in order to consider the potential risks of Zika transmission for mass gatherings, with specific reference to the Olympic Games. The Director General confirmed the continuation of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (declared last February 1^st). The potential amplification of transmission of the disease does exist, nevertheless the Committee concluded that there is a very low risk of further international spread of Zika virus, considering the season and the vector-control measures taken. The Committee addressed its advice to two categories of people: international travelers (athletes included) and institutions responsible for the Olympics. The first were advised to follow the general health measures considered above. Institutions and governments were invited, according to their own role, to prepare a risk assessment prior to the event, to accomplish and increase measures to reduce the risk of Zika infection, to make travelers fully informed about the risk and the precautions to take, and to establish protocols for managing returning of people with Zika infection.

A dialogue among institutions and citizens – founded on transparency and sharing of knowledge – continues, in order to provide safety conditions to the event.

Vaccines: a case history of false balance on TV

Mon, 23 May 2016 10:44:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Until the end, it seemed it could sort out to be a happy-ending story, a demonstration of how new social networks, renown for spreading misinformation, can also correct it, when used properly. But the unfortunately predictable finale showed the opposite: counteracting false ideas about vaccines is not that easy. It will take time, a big deal of patience, communication skills and a good, coordinated strategy as well.

Protagonist of this story is Roberto Burioni, an Italian virologist, professor at the Vita-Salute University San Raffaele in Milan. In the last months, the researcher became very popular at a national level for his Facebook posts about vaccines. With evidence-based, plain and simple arguments, he answers all the doubts families can raise about the issue. For his fame, he was therefore invited to a TV talk shows on the national state channel RAI 2, called Virus (not a scientific program, despite its name), led by a journalist named Nicola Porro.

“I thought I would have had a chance to address a larger audience with good information about vaccines,” he says. On the contrary, he was given only few minutes through a link to Milan to rebut the hoaxes preached in the main TV studio by two questionable experts. One was Red Ronnie, a grown up DJ, who repeated the false and fraudulent connection between vaccines and autism, in addition to many other false circulating ideas. The other, even quirkier, was Eleonora Brigliadori, a former Italian actress, now dedicated to alternative medicines. She advocates against cancer therapies and supports fancy theories, such as the idea that drinking urine is healthy and that the growing number of babies born with microcephaly in South America is not due to zika virus, but to reincarnation of Spanish conquerors in them.

At the end of the program, the public could not have got the right side of the story, and the only expert there, Roberto Burioni, defending vaccines, seemed to represent a minority, maybe moved by conflicts of interest with the pharma industry.

“I could not accept this,” declares Burioni, who denounced Red Ronnie for insinuating this. The day after he wrote an effective new post on his Facebook page, giving his version of the facts. This had a huge success. While the TV show had been viewed by something more than 1.200.000 people, Burioni’s post was shared by 46.000 persons and read by more than 5 million in one day.

In the wake of tens of protesting voices coming from experts, science journalists, scientific societies and common citizens, rising up on Facebook and Twitter and addressing the Minister of Health, the Italian TV Surveillance Authorities intervened. It was stated that the program would not be allowed to continue next season, after the summer break.

The idea that anyone could have his/her voice on any subject, even if when thousands of lives are at stakes, seemed to have been overcome. There are issues that are not a matter of free thought, on which some opinions have the same weight than others, and this is simply because they are not just ideas, but facts. The safety of vaccine is a fact, as well as their importance for preventing dangerous diseases.

Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched, anyway. When you win, it can be risky to aim at out-matching. This happened when Burioni was invited again to participate to the program the following week. “I thought that it was a remedial action and that the journalist had understood his mistake,” he says. But that was not the case. The expert was faced again by a lawyer who has made a business out of compensation lawsuits, parents convinced that their children were hurt by vaccines and an old philosopher, taken as an example of how also educated academics can be sceptical towards vaccines, who claimed for the idea that anyone is entitled to speak on the issue.

What is the moral of the story, then? Looking at the bright side, something is certainly moving. A growing number of people, whichever their jobs and competences, are now aware of the importance of vaccines and, more generally, of the risk of false balance in media. They are ready to raise their voices, especially when a bad communication can turn out to create risks for public health. However, it’s a long way before we can get a honest and responsible information by the media, where the same non-specialist journalists are allowed to deal with health and science as they do with politics. Maybe both print and radio-TV journalists all over the world should follow the same courses recommended by BBC in 2014, which invited its staff to “stop giving undue attention to marginal opinions”. If cranks can give a touch of colour in a sport programme, the same cannot be said when talking about science and health. This misinformation can put lives at risk. On these topics, everyone is requested a strong sense of responsibility.

Roberta Villa

On behalf of ASSET project

Twitter, tweets and influencers

ASSET Project — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 11:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

How many ways are there to tell a story and who will do it?

In these months we tried to answer those questions by running an analysis of the most relevant tweets and accounts about some key words, chosen by the editorial board, focused on Zika virus and vaccines.

We then developed an application to identify the most influential Twitter users on specific topics, according to a list of hashtag we have provided. Being based on mentions and retweets, such an approach is also effective in discovering influential users on the short period.

Every day, the app extrapolates the most popular accounts according to our key words. A daily analysis of the firsts 20 accounts allowed us to identify some main categories:

• Institutions

• Media

• Firms

• Researchers

• University, organizations, and charities.

We analysed over 500 accounts: 13 belong to public institutions (i.e. United Nations or House Foreign Affairs Committee), 94 to public health institutions (i.e. CDC and WHO) and 66 to employees of public institutions (i.e. Gregory Härtl – Head of Public Relations/Social Media for the World Health Organization – or Tom Frieden – CDC Director). Six accounts belong to politicians (mostly in US).

This study underlined a strong prevalence of media related accounts. Among 100 accounts, we found that 16 belong to medical or scientific journals (as The Lancet or PLoS), 80 belong to newspapers (as Forbes) and 120 to journalists.

18 of the most popular accounts belong to researchers; universities, charities and organizations were included in a single group of 40 accounts.

#Zika and #vaccine have been the most used hashtags. In particular, #Zika has been used by 455 accounts, while #vaccine was often used in association with other terms or some related concepts, like #vaccineworks, #immunisation and #autism.

Finally, we found that 63 accounts were “unknown people” that, in most cases, only produced a few tweets. Our app recognised them as influencers because of their interactions with some relevant accounts (most of the times CDC, which often replies when cited).

The absence of European accounts may be due on the one hand to the strong presence of #zika (whose spread is mainly focused in South America), and on the other hand to a smaller social presence of European institutions and media.

WHO launched an app against Zika

Cristina Da Rold — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 11:05:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) developed an application that allowed people to share information on the spread of the contagion, which proved to be very useful to monitor the situation. Now that the Zika virus outbreak is raising concerns, would it be possible to use a similar approach?

Some weeks ago, the experts of the CDC argued that developing an app to track the spread of Zika virus would not be as effective as it was with Ebola. The main difference being the modality of virus transmission: Ebola infection is conveyed through human contact, while Zika virus is mainly spread through mosquito bites. Therefore, in the case of Zika, tracking the vector of the infection and monitoring the epidemiological situation is harder.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that using a tool like an app is not useful to spread information, especially for health care providers. Some days ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched an app for both iOS and Android that contains all the information about Zika virus and its suspected complications.

The app is especially designed for health care workers, it provides technical guidance complied by WHO experts and is focused on prevention and diagnosis, through a surveillance training and a facilitator’s guide.

Moreover, the WHO experts put a specific focus also on the management of risk situations, for instance on issues regarding pregnancy (i.e. the breastfeeding issue) and on the identification of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) and microcephaly in the context of Zika virus. The app includes the technical guidance on how to maintain a safe and adequate blood supply during Zika virus outbreaks, how to communicate the risk in this context and shows many case-studies to be considered as examples. It also contains a list of Q&A.

The app is made up of three blocks: first, a part dedicated to general information, that could be useful for the general public too; a second part that includes the latest news that come from the WHO official channels to spread only validated information; a thirds wider part dedicated to the health care workers, which contains a list of approved documents and guidelines to manage healthcare services during risk situations.

Despite its wealth of information, the expert themselves specified that this app is a tool “under construction”, especially the parts concerning the two main potential consequences of Zika: microcephaly and the Guillain-Barré Syndrome. The cause of the disease cannot always be determined, and researchers are studying a potential but still unproven link between the surge in these diseases and Zika virus infection.

However, “potential” does not mean “certain”. For this reason, the WHO experts suggest to keep the app updated. The knowledge about Zika diffusion and its consequences continues to evolve week after week.

Using the web to track flu and other infectious diseases

ASSET Project — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 17:05:00 +0100

Article published on ASSET website

Flutrackers is an online platform that gather information about infectious diseases from journals, news sources and citizens around the world. It was started in 2006 by a diverse group of volunteers, initially interested in investigating seasonal influenza, novel influenza, and chikungunya. In later years, we expanded our range by including other health threats such as the Ebola and Zika viruses, and drug resistant bacteria.

The platform is essentially an early warning system. Its members track media reports and other information to monitor global health status, looking for variances in normal disease patterns and trends. They provide support for health institutions through a constant surveillance activity. Their volunteers use their knowledge and experience in disease tracking to determine which information and data is pertinent.

They live in many different countries and publish daily in Italian, Dutch, French, and English. Many – but not all – of them are health professionals. They are a grassroots charity and our common goal is to lessen mortality and morbidity.

Key in their mission to lessen suffering is their belief that public health and human rights are connected. Access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation (toilets) for all humans could greatly improve global public health and diminish the effects of many of the diseases that we follow.

As highlighted in their mission statement, they are dedicated to the public health of the world’s citizens by advancing policies, protocols, innovations, and practices that improve the health of vulnerable populations. They will enhance the health of communities by informing, educating, developing and maintaining integrated programs. Moreover, they recognize and stress the importance of the relationship between human rights and health status.

“Joining the Flutrackers forum was a key step in my career” says Stefano Prandoni, Flutrackers senior moderator and editor. “It allowed me to get in touch with an international and well-established community, whose reputation was based on a long-standing experience in epidemic surveillance, and whose documentation was meticulous and evidence-based”.

New pathogens appear, old ones reemerge or broaden their range. Such events cause emergencies that need to be tackled promptly. In order to fight such threats it is thus crucial to have efficient surveillance tools, especially in those countries where – due to weak governments and the lack of well-organized healthcare facilities – a failure or a delay in communicating the risk to global health institutions may increase the dangerousness of infectious diseases outbreaks.

Unfortunately, global health crisis like SARS or avian flu were followed by a growing tendency – even amongst healthcare professionals – to underestimate the risk posed by these phenomena. If the consequences of these events have not been as dramatic as we were expecting, it is just a matter of good luck. In absence of proper preparedness plans, we run the risk of being overwhelmed by future emergencies.

Sharon Sanders
FluTrackers President and Editor-in-chief

Stefano Prandoni
FluTrackers Senior Moderator and Editor

Is Zika a lose-lose game for WHO?

Roberta Villa — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 16:25:00 +0100

Declaring an emergency is a dirty work, but someone has to do it. When facing a serious threat to global public health, even if complete evidence is lacking, someone has to take the responsibility to push the red button that activates a chain of coordinated actions (such as cooperation among states and research of vaccines). Choosing to do this, the risk of giving a false alarm is unavoidable. On the other side, one could decide to wait until something more is known, with the awareness that, in this way, it is possible to act when it is too late.

Facing the diffusion of Zika virus in Latin America, Margaret Chan, WHO director general – at least for the third time in few years – found herself in front of that button, while experts couldn’t provide her with sure answers to her most relevant questions.

PHEIC is not for the virus

Uncertainty is common in the first phases of an infectious outbreak on which little is known. But Zika is not a new emerging virus, such as influenza A(H1N1), which caused swine flu, H5N1 of bird flu, SARS or MERS. It has been known by experts for at least 50 years, even if nobody took too much care in studying it, nor investing on a vaccine, since it has always seemed completely innocuous: infected people are mainly asymptomatic and only some of them undergo a week of mild fever, joint aches and a skin rash. The scarce funding available for tropical neglected diseases needed to be used for much more important purposes than this.

It wasn’t the “explosive” spread of the virus, therefore, to convince the 18 members of the WHO Emergency Committee that a raise in the level of alarm was needed, but the concurrent warning of a suspect growing number of malformations and neurological syndromes indicated by Brazilian health authorities.

This circumstance still needs to be clarified by researchers, but claimed for attention by the WHO. While the Zika virus, which infected more than 1 million people in more than 30 countries in the last year, made no victims neither cause severe illness, the possibility of a widespread increase in birth defects – along with the fear that Guillain Barrè paralysis could be evoked by the virus – was the real cause of alarm.

«After a review of the evidence, the Committee advised that the recent cluster of microcephaly cases and other neurological disorders reported in Brazil, following a similar cluster in French Polynesia in 2014, constitutes an “extraordinary event” and a public health threat to other parts of the world» declared Margaret Chan on February 1^st, clarifying that the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) does not regard Zika directly, but the rapidly growing number of cases of microcephaly and neurological disorders recorded in Brazil. According to the WHO experts, the temporal and spatial association between these records and the epidemic is a strong reason for suspect, but at the moment nobody can either confirm nor deny that a real increase in microcephaly cases exists and that it is caused by the virus.

Some experts raise doubts

Those who raise doubts have their good reasons to do this. First of all, microcephaly is not a specific disease, but only a sign that something went wrong in the development of brain and skull. This can be caused by several, different factors. The definition itself is tautological: we talk about microcephaly when the circumference of the baby’s skull is less than the third percentile. In other words, in a population of 100 children, only 3 should have a value equal or lower than this. From this, one can easily deduce that in each country approximately 3% of newborns would present such an anomaly.

Out of about 3 millions babies born in Brazil each year, then, the number of microcephalic babies at birth should be around 90,000: much more than the 3,500-4,000 cases cited by Brazilian authorities as possible consequences of the Zika infection.

Since microcephaly usually does not have serious consequences, even on the neurological development, this birth defect is underreported in all the registries of malformations, all over the world. The baseline prevalence on which the 20-fold increase is calculated could therefore be considered unreliable, in Brazil as it would probably be in Europe and in the United States. Since a possible association with Zika infection was suggested, on the contrary, surveillance has been improving, and all cases are currently being reported. Experts call this a “confirmation bias”.

In addition to this, a concurrent infection of the mother by Zika during pregnancy is not a proof of guilt, given the widespread diffusion of the epidemic in the last months. It would be like associating a birth defect with a cold in pregnancy: such a common case that could have no meaning at all.

A precautionary choice

Much more worrying than these epidemiological facts were findings suggesting a viral transmission from mother to foetus: Zika virus was found in the amniotic fluid of some women and in the brain tissue of two babies dead at birth because of severe microcephaly. Such evidence cannot be overlooked, because it shows that virus can pass the placental barrier, but again it does not represent a proof that the virus is the real, or only, cause of the birth defect. A hypothesis about the concurrent action of dengue and Zika viruses has been raised, for example, among others.

In the Zika family there are not other viruses commonly causing malformations, such as rubella, but some other viruses are causing encephalitis. Even if there is no smoking gun, then, caution is due. The real issue at stake could be the health of hundreds of thousands of children who are going to be born in Latin America in the following months, but the threat could reach many other temperate areas, if the infection will keep on running as it is doing now.

A global effort to stop it is therefore needed, especially by helping afflicted countries in their fight against mosquitos, by recommending people further care in protecting themselves from mosquitoes’ bites, by warning women who are going to start a pregnancy, either to postpone it or to avoid moving to involved areas, if they are already pregnant and they can.

WHO is right in not advising generally against travels, because such a recommendation would make even worse the situation of afflicted countries, especially in view of 2016 Brazil Olympic Games. The actual risk of Zika, in fact, except for pregnancy, is much lower than that of many other diseases, such as A(H1N1) swine flu, which is causing hundreds of deaths all over the world, Brazil included.

The real risk is different from what we perceive

Despite evidence, public perception of risk related to Zika is high. Should we blame media for this? Not only. The science of risk communication teaches that we all perceive a threat as bigger or smaller because of several factors that have nothing to do with the real thing. In this case, our perception of risk is inflated by the exotic origin of the danger and by the fact that it addresses mainly weak targets, such as newborns. The uncertainty around the risk of microcephaly, instead of reducing our anxiety, amplifies it, making it bigger than flu that, even if much more severe, is very familiar to everybody since infancy.

To communicate such an uncertainty at the beginning of an epidemic is always a hard task. Authorities are hardly trying to do it: in every speech, document and press release they highlight that scientific evidence of a linkage between Zika virus and microcephaly is still lacking, and that every recommendation about this is given “out of an abundance of caution”, as the CDC wrote. But this is not enough. We all should hope that a causal association between such a widespread factor as Zika virus and birth defects will be soon denied. But, if this happens, instead of celebrating, the WHO might undergo suspects, as during 2009 swine pandemic, that it declared the alarm in order to favour big pharma, pushing it to search for a vaccine. Such conspiracy theories are already circulating on the web.

On the other hand, if the international agency had taken time, waiting for further evidence, it would have been accused of ignoring the lessons coming from ebola epidemic in Western Africa, where the delay of the international intervention cost thousands of deaths and had a terrible impact on socioeconomic life in the affected countries. Both the choice of intervening, in one case, and of procrastinating, in the other, were deemed big mistakes that discredited the WHO and undermined public trust in health authorities.

In this lose-lose game, WHO has decided to bet on caution, instead of running the risk of being accused of a negligence that, in the worst scenario, would have had a terrible impact: if Zika will keep on spreading in the following months, and the association with birth defects will be confirmed, the stakes are a much bigger “thalidomide case”, which could sign the current generation, especially in low and middle income countries. Even if this scenario is not very likely, its consequences are too serious to be overlooked.

On the other hand, an overestimate of the epidemic impact could bring a heavy burden as well. The first one is easy to imagine, and it is the economic crisis that could follow in countries, such as the Caribbean ones, whose GNP is mainly based on tourism.

TELL ME was an EU-funded project on communication during epidemics that showed how “exotic” outbreaks can spark stigma against people and goods coming from the affected areas, or even only related to them in a very remote way. Another EU-funded project called ASSET, which aims to bring Science-in Society issues into the public debate on epidemics, highlights that Zika is mainly threatening female gender and pregnancy, themes often neglected in research on infectious diseases.

Finally, each epidemic carries ethical aspects, as well. They are usually related to personal freedom, such as the issue of quarantine, but, in this case, the impact of a false alarm could be even bigger: recommendations of postponing pregnancies are given in countries where birth control is very far away and abortion is legally admitted in very limited cases. Even if countries such as Columbia have recently widened indications for legal abortion to Zika infection, the real possibilities of access remain low. If we had a spike in clandestine abortions, possibly made in very bad conditions, the number of these victims could easily exceed those caused by Zika.

Roberta Villa

On behalf of ASSET project

The efficacy of mandatory vaccinations. An ASSET analysis

ASSET Project — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 11:12:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

The recent case of the French parents who risked a jail sentence for refusing to vaccinate their children reignited the intense debate over mandatory vaccinations, whose efficacy as an instrument to maintain high level of vaccine coverage has been questioned. A study performed by experts from the ASSET project found no evidence of a relationship between mandatory vaccinations and rates of childhood immunization in European countries.

The authors of the research gathered data on all the countries within the European Economic Area; information on policies of mandatory or recommended vaccinations came from the VENICE project while those on childhood immunisation coverage were obtained from UNICEF. The analysis focused on three relevant vaccinations, on which different policies have been adopted in different countries: polio (Pol3), measles (MCV1) and pertussis containing vaccines (DTP3).

From 2007 to 2013, the enforcement of mandatory vaccinations does not appear to be relevant in determining childhood immunisation rate in the analysed countries. Those where a vaccination is mandatory do not usually reach better coverage than neighbour or similar countries where there is no legal obligation.

The study did not take into account the differences that exist on local legislations about how to enforce the obligation. Moreover, it lacks of information on possible changes in national vaccination policies, such as a switch from recommendation to compulsoriness. However, it seems to suggest that making vaccines mandatory does not necessarily increase vaccine coverage and that other factors – such as, for instance, difficulties of healthcare systems in reaching all children – could be involved.

Oil, cats and social networks: lessons for health authorities

ASSET Project — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 11:17:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Institutions, public agencies and authorities can tackle different kinds of crisis by using social media. In the last few months, this has been done successfully in very diverse cases, both defending the reputation of a big oil company from a journalistic inquiry, and managing the response to a terror attack within a city. Even if the type and range of crisis is hugely different, the efficacy of a prompt and wise use of social network gives clues that could be useful when dealing with infectious threats as well.

ENI (Ente Nazionale idrocarburi) is an Italian big oil company that, in December 2015, got involved in a journalistic inquiry by the TV show Report, which raised suspects about the concession of Opl245, an oil bloc in southern Nigeria.

The oil company did not accept to release interviews during the preparation of the TV show. However, they intervened on Twitter during the broadcasting, replying to each argument, providing data and resources, and redirecting followers to a dedicated page on their website.

With more than 9,000 tweets, more than 3,800 unique users and a potential public of almost 10 million followers, ENI intervention has become a touchstone in terms of crisis communication and online reputation defence. The company managed to oversee the debate on social media, thus taking the TV show’s editorial staff by surprise; only later in the evening, they released an official response.

Regardless of the content of the debate, this example of crisis management by a private company highlighted the importance of influencers – people with a high amount of followers, who may create engagement on some specific topic – when sharing data through social media. In fact, tweet analysis revealed that Report was supported especially by “common” users, while ENI managed to gather a consensus mainly built on Twitter influencers, first among them Marco Bardazzi, head of ENI communication staff, who personally stepped into the discussion. As a result, attention shifted from the issue under inquiry to the ENI-Report diatribe.

Classic rules about conflicting positions were overturned; information reached the public from two different sources, television and social media, and the network of influencers involved became crucial to determine the fate of the discussion.

Such an event thus reinforced the idea that Twitter may be a powerful tool to manage crisis in real time. The past year offered us other relevant examples of that.

Managing public security on Twitter

On November 13^th, Paris suffered a violent terror attack. In that situation, Facebook and Twitter quickly offered some dedicated tools to facilitate communication during the emergency. The Safety Check tool allowed Facebook users that were in the city to inform their contacts that they were safe. The day after, Facebook offered the possibility to include the colours of the French flag into the profile picture to display solidarity (an act that raised some controversies as many users wondered why a similar initiative was not undertaken few days before, following an attack in Beirut that killed 43 persons. Mark Zuckerberg personally answered to this polemics, always on Facebook).

Twitter reacted by dedicating Moment – a collection of the more important news selected by an internal team – to all the information coming from Paris. Citizens gave their contribution as well, spreading more than one million tweets with some hashtag - #PorteOuverte, #StrandedInUS, #RechercheParis – to help people finding refuge during the shootout or sharing information about missing persons. Something similar had also occurred on January 7^th, again in Paris, following the attack at Charlie Hebdo, when information shared on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were in some cases so accurate that they became an issue for the secrecy of ongoing investigations.

An issue that Belgian police did not forget when, in November, launched a great anti-terror operation in Bruxelles, culminated in the arrest of 16 persons suspected to be connected to those responsible for the attack in Paris.

In order to avoid information leaks and security breach, Belgian police asked on Twitter not to publish any information on the ongoing operation. Citizens’ response was singular and exceptional: they literally flooded the social media with pictures of cats linked to the operation but without any details, using the hashtag #BrusselsLockDown. As revealed by an Italian agency, this hashtag appeared in more than 196,000 tweets between 21^st and 23^rd November, reaching 282 million followers. By doing this, citizens not only recognized the importance of the situation and cooperated to protect their city, but also soothed the tension caused by fear. A behaviour acknowledged by the police, which published a tweet with a picture showing a bowl full of kibbles with its logo on it.

The search for key influencers

All these examples clearly show why social media, and Twitter in particular, may became extremely useful tools for crisis management in real time. For this reason, ASSET started to monitor public discourses on Twitter about the project’s main topics – i.e. infectious outbreaks, emerging viruses, influenza, vaccines – using a new algorithm that will make the identification of influencers’ networks easier.

Raising awareness on gender issues in epidemics and pandemics

ASSET Project — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:11:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

The consideration of sex and gender are not the most obvious issues that come to mind when discussing epidemics and pandemics. However, sex and gender have an important impact on these issues, since barriers to pandemic preparedness and risk behaviour can often be better understood when viewed from a sex and gender perspective.

Both gender and sex have an impact on experiences and behaviours relating to pandemics, epidemics and vaccination. The difference between sex and gender can be confusing, and the two words are often incorrectly used interchangeably.

Sex refers to the organs you are born with, and the chromosome makeup that determines whether you are male of female. This is a biological fact, defined by XY or XX chromosomes.

The WHO describes gender as the socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men. Gender thus refers to the norms that come with being of a particular sex, where for example those of the female gender are expected to have certain characteristics, behaviours, and roles.

The chief deliverable of ASSET Task 7.9 is to create a Gender Platform informing about these issues. The Gender Issue Platform will be an area of the ASSET website dedicated to disseminating and promoting gender-specific and women-centred research on pandemics.

In particular, it aims to disseminate information on influenza pandemic related risks, notably for pregnant women and infants; preventive measures; antiviral drugs; vaccines and vaccination; and make information available to women, in order to enable them to make informed and responsible decisions for themselves, and also as carers of children and ageing relatives.

Central to the task as well is the issue of promoting gender awareness in pandemic related research and pandemic preparedness. The Gender Issue Platform will also advocate for increasing European support for preventive and appropriate biomedical, behavioural, epidemiological, public health and health service research. It will also promote policy on women’s issues in pandemics, and the impact of gender and age inequalities with respect to infectious outbreaks.

Below is a short summary of issues where gender and sex affect pandemics, epidemics and vaccination:

Sex differences in influenza and vaccination
Biologically, females and males differ in their immunological responses to seasonal influenza virus vaccines. Women have higher antibody responses to influenza vaccinations – the antibody response of a woman to half a dose of influenza vaccine is equivalent to the antibody response of a man to the full dose.

Pregnancy
Pregnant women are especially at risk during a pandemic/epidemic, due to unique factors connected to pregnancy.

Health care workers and Carers
These groups tends to be predominantly female, and there is little consensus or evidence-based data on how to target behaviours and the low vaccination rates of HCW, and how to reach out to carers.

Hard to reach groups
Hard to reach groups may have adverse health outcomes, and the complex interplay of gender and social and economic marginalisation makes this a particular issue for women.

Older women
Older women’s vaccination behaviour is not fully understood. Also, women in general, and older women in particular, are underrepresented in clinical trials and research, thereby hindering any development of sex-specific treatments or policy guidelines.

Distrust of vaccinations
Considering demographic, ethnic and social differences, including gender, allows for a more effective and targeted communication against distrust of vaccination.

The Gender Issue Platform will play a role as a concrete infrastructure by raising awareness of the above issues and more. It will be hosted in a dedicated area within the ASSET website, with a permanent link on the homepage. The Gender Area will include four different sections with different contents:

Background information (documents, papers, leaflets, i.e. whatever could help to understand how relevant the gender issue is in pandemic and epidemic threats, notably as far as vaccination is concerned);
Events (past, present and future initiatives related to gender issue, organized both by EIWH and by other public/private, local/global organizations);
Features (articles, video, infographics, data visualizations to show the gap and possible remedies);
Policy briefs (past and eventually produced).

Genome as a mosaic

Vittorio Sgaramella — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 08:34:00 +0100

Different genomes (DNA) in cells of individuals produce genomic mosaicism¹. Is this heresy, offending the central dogma of molecular biology². Or fact, demanding quantitation? A recent paper starts bluntly with our title³.

The DNA of each somatic cell of individuals derives from parental gametes to a cell (zygote) that develops through serial replications and partitions into 2,4,8… billion new somatic cells; in the process DNA accumulates errors and damages, recombines, transposes, incorporates foreign genes and DNA-copies of numerous RNA. Hence throughout an individual’s life the DNA of its cells diverge, probably less within than between individuals. Mature neurons don’t divide: this spares duplication errors, but not the rest. In post-mortem sorted neurons Lodato et al³ find thousands of single nucleotide variants⁴, less than in UV-exposed skin, but more than in heart. Remarkably transcription alters the nontemplate strand in neurons, the template one in germ cells, inducing a use-and-lose¹ effect, sterilely reminiscent of Lamarck’s (and Darwin’s!) use-and-disuse^4,5.

Genes&genomes are ill-defined⁶: one gene determines height in pea plants, as discovered by Mendel⁷; hundreds favor it in humans, as reported recently⁸: still height is largely inheritable. Nowadays genes are considered Read-Write (RW) systems, rather than Read-Only-Memory (ROM)⁹. Individual’s genomes vary and occasionally disappear (erythrocytes).

Genetic information is not only DNA¹⁰: zygotic genomes shed paternal decorations, recruit maternal proteins and RNA, and originate compositionally elusive (epi)genomes¹¹, recalling Flemming’s chromatin, or even Miescher’s nuclein⁷. Chromatin includes DNA, RNA, proteins: all switch nature and partners¹². Still we launch projects (cloning¹³, serial Human Genome Projects¹⁴, stemness regeneration¹⁵, genome editing¹⁶, etc.) based on constant individual genomes. Trying to spell life as As,Cs,Gs,Ts borders hubris, nourishes business, and mixes Prometheus and Midas¹⁷. Genomic mosaicism survives because it bridges nature and nurture¹⁸ and increases the evo-devo versatility of genomes without increasing redundancy¹². We shall not cease from exploration¹⁹: space-time variations in individual DNA are *not known because not looked for…*¹⁹. Another mad pursuit² challenging dogmas and shifting paradigms²⁰.

1. Frank S. A. PNAS, 107, 1725, 2010
2. Crick F. C. What mad pursuit. Basic Books, 1988 (the title is from J. Keats’, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
3. Lodato M. A. et al. Science 350, 94, 2015
4. Chaisson M. J. P. et al. Nature 517, 608, 2015
5. Balter M. Science 288, 38, 2000
6. Johannsen W. in Mayr E. The growth of biological thought. Harvard University Press, 1982, chapter 15; Singer M. & Berg P. Genes&Genomes. University Science Books/Blackwell, 1991
7. Portugal F.H. & Cohen J.S. A century of DNA. MIT Press, 1977
8. Allen H. L. et al. Nature 467, 832, 2010
9. Shapiro J. A. Evolution: a view from the 21 century. FTP, 2009
10. Waddington C. H. Nature 150, 563, 1942
11. Sgaramella V. Science 329, 32, 2010
12. Sgaramella V. Cytogen. Genome Res. 139, 215, 2013
13. Sgaramella V. & Zinder N. Science 279, 635, 1998
14. Dulbecco R. Science 231, 1055, 1986
15. Takahashi K. & Yamanaka S. Cell 126, 663, 2006
16. Yang L. et al. Science 350, 1101, 2015; Jiang F. et al. Science 348, 1477, 2015
17. Wilkins M. in Judson F. H. The Eighth Day of Creation. Touchstone 1979, p. 102
18. McClintock B. Science 226, 792, 1984
19. Eliot T. S. Four quartets: Little Gidding V, 1943
20. Kuhn T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962

Some clarifications on red meat and cancer

Paolo Vineis — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 10:17:00 +0100

The evaluation on the carcinogenicity of red meat by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – and not by WHO as many media reported – has given rise to a range of misunderstandings and is an example of how scientific communication on topics with a major public impact may prove extremely difficult. As coordinator of the epidemiology Working Group that classified the consumption of red meat, I followed the process from the beginning, about a year ago, and I may be able to shed some light on it. All the information was included in the IARC press release but apparently journalists do not always read releases from top to bottom.

Many confused the ‘strength of evidence’ with the likelihood of developing cancer as the result of eating red meat. Processed meats – basically packaged meats containing nitrites – have been classified as group 1 (carcinogenic to humans). This was done on the basis of strong evidence a group of international experts deemed sufficient, following a careful evaluation of 800 scientific publications that started a year ago. It should be noted that the evaluation was carried out by a group of independent experts who followed IARC consolidated and well tested methodologies: the evaluation is neither a WHO nor an IARC decision but the result of the work of the group of independent scientists convened by IARC.
As for individual risk, eating more than 50 g of processed red meat a day raises the risk of developing colon cancer in a lifetime to about 6 percent as compared to 5 percent in those who eat little or no processed red meat. A very modest increase if compared say to the risk caused by smoking which increases the risk of developing lung cancer 25-fold (1 percent in the life of non-smokers as compared to 25 percent in the heavy smokers). Most people mistook the strength of evidence for the strength of an increased risk. Another misunderstanding is the belief that there is an ideal threshold below which there are no risks: there is a direct relationship between amounts eaten and the risk of cancer, which is the more you eat the greater the risk. For those who wish to have further information, all this is clearly explained in the website of Cancer Research UK.
On the basis of the above it is meaningless to say that meat consumption is as carcinogenic as Plutonium. They are in the same group, Group 1, because using standard criteria the working group convened by IARC concluded that evidence for each of these exposures was strong. In the case of meat, already in 1997 the World Cancer Research Fund and later the American Cancer Society and Cancer Research UK had already reached those conclusions. What the IARC Working Group did was to carry out the most rigorous assessment so far, as the enormous amount of work proves. All the institutions and agencies I mentioned stop at the point in which they conclude that there is strong evidence and a relationship between the quantity consumed and risk. However, they do not issue nutritional guidelines concerning the nutritional value of meat as a whole.
I believe it is impossible to appreciate the implications of the above unless one has a basic understanding of what cancer is and of how it develops. Cancer is a multistage and multi-factorial disease given it develops through stages. In any population there are some individuals who may be especially predisposed to developing cancer for a number of reasons – inherited genetic variations, mutations induced by other carcinogenic substances and so on. In other words, a small number of people in any given population may lack the activation of just the last stage or hit to complete the carcinogenic process - even at low exposure doses. A larger number of individuals may lack the activation of two stages and so on. Luckier individuals have no activated stage, but they are probably a lucky few. How many stages are required? We don’t know exactly but it could be anywhere between 5 and 6 – this is in fact more of an educated guess. In this respect, dose and risk are related (dose definitely counts); however, the comparisons like the one some people have made with botulin or other forms of acute toxicity do not hold, because these are ‘one hit’ toxicants (the activation of one stage is sufficient) and a notion of threshold applies to them. Multi-factorial diseases require the combination of several exposures, which increase risk. For instance, in the case of heart attacks, obese hypertensive males with high cholesterol and glycaemia who are strong smokers experience the highest risk. If no stage has previously been activated, then even high doses of nitrosamines present in processed meats (sausages, cured meats and the like) may have no effect in a single shot. However, it is possible that they lead to mutations that in combination with those due to other exposures will eventually lead to the development of colon cancer. In this case, probability is a notion that implies the biological model typical of cancer. High doses of arsenic inactivate enzymes that are essential for cell life: a high dose is necessary to generate an intoxication and there is a threshold; in fact, we are all exposed to very low doses of arsenic without suffering any signs of acute intoxication. Even drinking 10 litres of water all in one go may prove fatal. The development of cancer, or carcinogenesis as it is known, works in a different way and there are real and complex issues behind the understanding of carcinogenesis; it is not, as the press would like us to believe, the whim of a scientist or of an international agency.
The last point is an answer to a recent article by Guyatt, which was published in the Financial Times – and one wonders why this journal was chosen to write about public health. The writer suggests we failed to consider two Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) in our assessment. RCTs are considered the most reliable scientific procedure to establish a causal relationship and for instance they are used with drug trials. In fact, we did consider them in the Working Group but then disregarded them for a number of very valid reasons: one was called Women’s Health Initiative, and focussed on complex nutritional styles and not just on the reduction of meat consumption. It is therefore impossible to tell the difference between the effect the reduction of meat had from the impact of other features of the diets the women underwent. The other publication was based on a Polyp Prevention Trial that led to a 52 percent reduction of colon cancer risk among women following the recommendations of the American Cancer Society, which include lower meat consumption. The aim of this second RTC was to prevent the recurrence of polyps in high risk people. In this case the meat reduction was so small – a few grams a day of processed meat – that the impact cannot be measured as such, independently of other dietary changes.

Women and Climate Finance

Chiara Soletti — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 08:40:00 +0100

The twenty-first UN Conference of the Parties on climate change will address the issue of gender inequality also with respect to access to financial resources.

The HEURA (Household Energy and Universal Rural Access) project, a ten-year funding program for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions promoted by the World Bank, was concluded in Mali in June 2012. The project aimed to increase access to energy in rural areas and, ultimately, to stimulate economic growth and remove barriers to the use of renewable energy. The main beneficiaries of the project were women, who played a key role in the success of the initiative.

One of the topics on the agenda of the COP21 session to be held in Paris is the improvement of the financing mechanism for all programs that aim to combat climate change within an area generally referred to as Climate Finance. At present, the capital flows channelled into climate action have a number of origins and are coordinated in a rather confused manner. This raises the question of the effectiveness of the system since the communities that are most vulnerable with respect to climate change are rarely involved in the management of financial resources and a recognized difficulty to access the system of funding often prevents the awarding of funds to the countries most in need. A step towards a fairer system was made in 2010 during the COP16 session with the creation of the Green Climate Fund, an operational entity of the financing system of the UNCCCP (Convention on Climate Change of the United Nations), which was supposed to ensure greater support for environmental projects, programs and policies in developing countries. Amongst other things, it was hoped that the GCF would address the failure to introduce a gender perspective in a field as important as that of accessing assets and financial resources for the empowerment of women in response to climate change. Unfortunately, the GCF did not venture beyond a general encouragement to consider gender issues in relation to climate change and did not provide for any substantial action for their integration in the Climate Finance system.

However, to include a gender perspective in this area would be a determining factor in increasing the chances of success of any initiative within the sphere of climate issues. The HEURA project is an example of this. Women living in the rural areas of Mali are the main consumers of the country’s firewood and as the sole subjects responsible for the care of their families and households they are heavily dependent on such natural energy resources. The World Bank project has adopted renewable energy technology to provide access to electricity and increase the use of telecommunications. Moreover, through a particular micro-credit program women have been able to purchase highly energy-efficient stoves. The savings for each family have been significant, without considering the positive impact on the health of the population thanks to a drastic reduction in emissions. Access to electricity has also allowed for the use of machinery for the processing of agricultural resources, freeing women from heavy burdens. This has allowed them to engage in alternative activities, such as the extraction of oil from agricultural crops for the production of soap, which may be sold in the local market and from which a personal gain may be ensured. The project has led to social and economic development in the communities and has definitely enhanced the quality of life in rural areas, especially for women.

The World Bank is one of the actors on the international stage that view the gender approach as a necessary factor leading to a more effective use of available financial resources. It is evident that the gender perspective should be integrated into financial aspects relating to the climate at every level and that the role of women can no longer be ignored. In this regard, the recent publication of the new Gender Policy and Action Plan of the Green Climate Fund has been very encouraging. It would appear that the dossier will lead to major advances with respect to action so far taken by the financial facility.

We trust that the action of the COP21 session will move in this direction and that this time the various declarations will be followed up by concrete and possibly binding commitments.

Lifepath: how we will use biomarker research

Paolo Vineis — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 09:38:00 +0100

Quality of life and life expectancy are not the same for all individuals. Dramatic differentials in these traits, as well as in many other health features, represent one of the biggest challenges for our society. Social and economic factors play a major role in determining these differences, as it has been proved that people from higher socio-economic groups are more likely to live longer and in better health conditions. Such an issue may only be faced by developing future health policies and strategies that take into account the close relationship between health and wellbeing on the one hand, and socio-economic conditions on the other. And this is one of the main objectives pursued by Lifepath project.

Biological pathways linking determinants to healthy ageing

What is missing in linking overarching determinants like socio-economic status (SES) to health and poor ageing is an understanding of the intermediate mechanisms and biological pathways that relate low SES with deterioration of organic parameters. For example, research on immune markers in the Whitehall II study has shown that glucocorticoids and inflammation may in part explain how the body mediates the effects of low SES thus leading to disease, and this is partly independent from the most common and well-known risk factors like smoking. More generally, recent studies have shown that SES can influence the global physiological dysregulation across the life-course, measured using a measure of biological multisystem wastage defined as allostatic load.

The approach based on intermediate biomarkers is more powerful than the one based on traditional risk factors alone because (a) it may explain subtle chronic effects acting throughout the life-course (like chronic stress) that are not easily captured by questionnaire-based epidemiology; (b) it allows to trace signals that start in early life down to health effects in later life; (c) it provides an approach to the discovery of new pathways and causes of disease, particularly through the new omic technologies. By analysing intermediate biomarkers potentially involved in various diseases, this approach is likely to reveal some common – and currently unknown – roots of many non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like multi-morbidity, thus improving our ability to implement successful interventions, with a wide range of actions.

Epigenetics and human social genomics

Recently, evidence has accumulated on the key role of epigenetic modifications induced by the experience of psychosocial adversity in initiating physiological dysregulations. More specifically, human and animal studies have shown that SES influences DNA methylation and gene expression, particularly across genomic regions regulating immune function. A pivotal study in macaques detected altered levels of expression and methylation in inflammatory genes (in particular NFATC1, IL8RB – CXCR2 in humans – and PTGS2) in relation to changes in hierarchical status. To date, the few studies that have addressed this issue in humans reported associations between SES in early and adult life and DNA methylation of genes regulating the immune function. However, these studies were usually based on small samples and subject to methodological limitations. In particular, it remains to be established to what extent SES has an impact on DNA methylation independently of unhealthy lifestyles – thus directly altering gene regulation – and which are the features of low SES directly influencing cellular activity and its regulation.

To encompass the overall impact of social adversities on biology, the concept of human social genomics has been put forward. A core element is the modulation of transcription factors by environmental and social circumstances, through the so-called conserved transcription response to adversity (CTRA). The latter is represented by the pattern of responses (largely inflammatory and immunological) that have developed during evolution to cope with stressful environments, and that implicate networks of transcription factors in their mechanisms. Although such patterns were originally developed to respond to microbial and traumatic sources of stress, they have evolved into generalized responses to environmental pressure, including psychological stress or sleep loss. These modulation patterns occur in the leukocytes, i.e. a cell type that is easily accessible in large population-based studies.* *

Biological pathways: omics and biomarkers in Lifepath

The research carried out by Lifepath is focused on cohorts that are extremely rich in biomarker measurements, most of which have been measured recently and still have to be analysed statistically. Some biomarkers are already available or will be measured with existing funds: methylome, inflammation markers and metabolomics. Most cohorts have C-Reactive Protein (CRP), and many have cytokines.

We will perform new methylome analyses for 2,500 new subjects and new transcriptomic analyses for about 600 subjects. Peripheral blood is a convenient source for epigenetic testing, but cellular heterogeneity can confound or mask the results, because epigenetic signatures differ from one cell subtype to another. Moreover, the composition of the blood cells can change under a plethora of pathophysiological conditions, and this can also be influenced by SES. The importance of measuring epigenetic patterns across specific cell subtypes also depends on disease status, and subtle differences are likely more important for multifactorial traits. For these reasons, we will perform first the methylome in two specific blood cell types in 500 Whitehall II subjects and then validate the findings in PBMC in cohorts with cell counts available. We will also enrich our biomarker stock by measuring IL6 and other cytokines in 6,600 additional subjects in Whitehall II and in Skipogh and Colaus, in which also the methylome and RNA sequencing will be measured (n=500).

Gene-environment interactions will be part of the project. Genotyping will be performed (or is already available) through other funds for 17,000 subjects from Airwave, 6,600 from Whitehall II, 1,100 from Skipogh and 6,000 from Colaus. The Cardiometabochip will be used in all of them except in Colaus. We will be able to relate genetic susceptibility to SES and to include genetic susceptibility in the life-course trajectories leading from poor SES to unhealthy ageing and to investigate how genetic susceptibility modulates the role of exposures and omic markers.

Paolo Vineis, Imperial College, London

Women and climate adaptation

Chiara Soletti — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 08:59:00 +0100

El Mouddaa is a Maroccan Berber village, where 350 people live at an altitude of 2,000 m in the mountains of the Toubkal National Park. Over the last twenty years, the community has been affected by climate change and has experienced increasing insecurity with respect to the availability of food. This has forced people to leave the country to find seasonal work. This particular state of need has increased the responsibilities delegated to women, moreover creating an opportunity for their emancipation and an increasing participation in community decisions.

During the COP21 session in Paris, to be held in early November 2015, the climate will be discussed also in these terms, considering current changes from angles differing from those typical of the customary stance.

One of the most specific points of view concerns women and their condition and focuses on motherhood and family life, the domestic economy, entrepreneurship and the representation of women in national and international governing bodies. The debate will thus also consider human rights and how efforts made to deal with climate change may be transformed into an opportunity to recognise and implement such rights.

The issue has a prominent place on the agenda of the United Nations, which has set up a permanent assembly, the Women and Gender Constituency, within the framework of the Treaty on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The issue revolves around the five basic topics of adaptation, mitigation, finance, technology and personal development as highlighted on these pages by media coverage in its lead-up to the Paris conference.

The situation of the Berber women at El Mouddaa forms part of one of the adaptation programs of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) which seek to reduce the social and economic costs of climate change. Higher temperatures and increasingly frequent floods have caused irreparable damage to the ecosystem the community previously relied upon.

It is a problem that in practical terms can be dealt with by planning the reforestation of the area, better management of natural resources and the adoption of preventive emergency-management protocols. Women have been trained and directly involved in the management of activities and their distancing from the male members of their society has helped to overcome a predictable cultural resistance. This has had important social consequences.

Women have managed to mobilize the whole community, teaching its younger members various adaptation techniques and asking elders to share their knowledge of the local territory. The results of a form of greater community cohesion were not long in coming; the food supply of the community has become more stable and there are good prospects with respect to a reduction in the need for male emigration.

The project is helping to reduce gender inequalities with a view to involving women in decision-making at both the local and national levels. The El Mouddaa experience shows how a gender approach and the inclusion of women and all vulnerable groups are essential factors for an effective and equitable process of adaptation to climate change.

Chiara Soletti, Italian Climate Network

Gender and climate change: what do women have to do with this issue?

Chiara Soletti — Tue, 03 Nov 2015 18:05:00 +0100

Although at first sight it may appear as a mere contrivance, the question immediately acquires a clearer and more precise outline if the concept proposed is considered with respect to developing countries, where women not only represent 43 percent of the agricultural workforce (with data ranging between 50 percent and 70 percent in sub-Saharan countries) but, for socio-cultural reasons are the members of their communities delegated to the preparation of daily food.

From the procurement of food to its transformation, women rely on natural resources available to them and this has obvious implications for the environment, from deforestation to air pollution. We should also consider that such activities and routines are carried out by millions or, rather, billions of individuals.

However, this is only the first step in an analysis concerning the many activities that, in the least developed countries, are the exclusive task of women. The responsibilities of women range from the preparation of food to the education of children. It is women who are mainly involved in agricultural work and subsistence-level livestock breeding, cultivating small plots of land close to villages. It is women who use locally available water resources and manage the various uses of water in the home, from those relating to the preparation of food to hygiene. Of course, mothers take care of children but their commitment goes far beyond the simple concept of survival. As educators, mothers may be seen as key agents of change as they convey and communicate elements of progress; to introduce a woman to the concept of a better approach to natural resources implies the initiation of a virtuous cycle of transmission of knowledge.

Women are a very important factor in social stability as they manage and supervise most of the aspects of day-to-day living despite various socio-cultural obstacles they have to contend with. In many societies, law or tradition does not allow women to own or inherit land and when they are granted access to it, only small plots of land of poor quality are reserved for them. They are often excluded from education or their participation in scholastic activities is discouraged as it is considered secondary with respect to the social roles of wives and mothers ascribed to them by society.

Although they represent almost half of the workforce involved in food-production processes, their role is not recognized. and their access to credit and technological support is restricted if not rendered impossible. By valorising the productive capacity of women with a view to attaining a level of sustainable agriculture, we would not only be working for the environmental future of the planet. We would be moving towards a situation where women would be able to make full use of their individual rights, opposing poverty and malnutrition. Moreover, when they become involved in decision-making processes relating to climate issues, it has been seen that women do make a difference. Thanks to their knowledge and experience in the management of natural resources, they are able to propose a viable response to environmental disasters with respect to both the safeguarding of the population and post-disaster reconstruction and the identification of new, immediately-required resources.

The recognition of these dynamics has led the United Nations to initiate a specific reflection on Gender and Climate Change within the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and, that is, on the role that women may have in adapting to ongoing climate change and in the mitigation of such phenomena with a medium/long-term perspective. With the creation in July 2011 of UN Women, the UN organization dedicated to gender equality, the aim of the United Nations is to promote and support the incorporation of a gender perspective in policies and national action plans on sustainable development and climate change.

The outcome of the international debate is a broad spectrum of actions. These range from the involvement of women in decision-making processes that may affect the climate at the local and global level to the financial, and the technological promotion of business initiatives for women (from agriculture to craftwork). Starting at the basic level of families, such initiatives would be capable of promoting social stability and, consequently, also environmental quality.

The whole discourse thus forms part of the broader issue of women’s empowerment. It is worth noting that an alteration of the latter term is not envisaged; it has been adopted “as-is” in international parlance. Its implications are thus enhanced, and the scope of the debate is extended, progressing from the sphere of human rights to the even broader debate on global environmental protection.

Chiara Soletti, Italian Climate Network

Vaccines: behind the incomprehension

ASSET Project — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 10:47:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

The alarming drop of vaccine coverage in Italy reported by the Istituto superiore di sanità and the rising scepticism towards the efficacy and safety of vaccinations is not due to parents being less informed than ten years ago. On the contrary, nowadays the resolution to take mindful health choices for their own children is a stronger drive for families to gather information. A drive that does not represent a lack of attention or a weaker desire to protect their kids. Attacking these families, making them feel guilty or sanctioning them are all approaches that could push them to radicalize their positions.

According to ASSET experts, the quarrel about vaccines is not only a matter of information that can be solved by just providing scientific evidences against groundless claims. In such a debate, the public is already overwhelmed by information. The voices of those who defend vaccines since early age as one of the greatest progresses in the history of humankind crosses with those who consider them a dangerous threat to children’s health driven by Big Pharma economic interests, without any chance to understand each other. Those on one side of the barricade provide data, graphs and evidences documented by several studies submitted to peer-review, while on the other side there are people who entrust opinions and claims by single individuals with great communicative skills, who appeal to emotions and fears.

“It is fundamental to reiterate those evidences that have been confirmed” clarifies Eva Benelli, journalist and expert of risk communication from Zadig, and member of ASSET. “It is true that the link between vaccines and autism comes from an undeniable fraud, that vaccines are the safest medication available, that they protect us from diseases that still represent a potential threat, that they not endanger a child’s immune system, and so on. But claiming these evidences is not enough. We need to understand the emotional and cognitive mechanisms behind parents’ uncertainty and hesitancy”.

To this regard, theories of risk communication have many lessons to teach. “For instance, the ‘natural’ risk related to a disease is often considered more acceptable than the ‘artificial’ risk due to vaccination. Even if the ‘natural’ risk is much more serious than the ‘artificial’ one” explains Benelli. “Another issue is that of cognitive mistakes, like when a cause-effect relationship is attributed to two events, one of which follow the other, as in the case of the appearance of some symptoms just after a vaccine. Which is something that may be due to a simple coincidence”.

It is thus necessary to listen to parents’ fears, to understand their doubts and share their desire to guarantee the best for their children, avoiding a condescending attitude and showing respect and comprehension, in order to help them realize how they could have been misled. By others or by themselves.

The anti-vaccine movement is the worst threat for public health, European doctors say

Luca Carra — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 16:16:00 +0100

Over the course of a week, doctors, epidemiologists and sociologists dealing with Public Health gathered in Milan for the 8^th European Public Health Conference (15-16 October 2015).

Among the very many events of the Conference’s Agenda, particularly important was the plenary session about vaccination in Europe. In many countries, the rates of vaccination are declining quickly, and this fact is perceived by public health authorities as one of the main threats for the health of the European population. The anti-vaccine movement is gaining momentum everywhere (particularly in Italy), fed by conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation, European health experts said.

As the world-known virologist Ilaria Capua stated during the plenary session devoted to Science & Policy: “The anti-vaccine movement and the antibiotic resistance in hospitals and in animal farming are the two main concerns for the European and the World health situation. As scientists and public health care providers, we have to convince policy-makers that the time has come to tackle these two threats, starting with a program of massive science education and dialogue with the population”. The Italian Minister of Health, Beatrice Lorenzin, stated that doctors and nurses must be at the forefront to defend vaccination, and the ones who refuse to do it should be punished in some way.

Another interesting issue discussed during the European conference was the national and regional experiences of public involvement in health decisions and legislation. In Wales (UK), the Minister of Health carried out a very ambitious National Conversation with different stakeholders and the population at large to shape the new Act on the Wellbeing of future generations, taking into account the health consequences of climate change, new rules for healthy food, the reduction of health inequalities and other similar topics.

Some other European regions like Andalusia (Spain), the Autonomous Province of Trento and the Veneto region (Italy), and Skâne (Sweden) detailed their experiences in tackling health inequities and in carrying out a participatory approach to public health during a special session of the conference organized by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“It is amazing to observe how the social conditions, urban planning, food quality, mobility and other aspects of our everyday life can affect our health conditions, from obesity to depression”, said Francesco Zambon, technical officer of the World Health Organization. “Health is not an issue for doctors alone, it involves every sector of policy and society, and it calls for our attention and commitment, from the common citizen to the prime minister”.

Health Inequalities are killing people on a grand scale
Social inequalities kill more people than road accidents and infectious diseases put together" said Sir Michael Marmot, the epidemiologist of University College, London, who 40 years ago began to study how social, economic and cultural differences among people affect life expectancy. Showing the map of the London tube line, Marmot argued that - going from the central stations to the more deprived zones of London - for every station we can calculate a loss of one year in life expectancy in the local population. The same trend emerged from the Whitehall Study among UK civil servants: the lower the socio-economic status of the public employees, the shorter their life.

The epigenetic link between inflammation and socioeconomic status

Michele Bellone — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 08:07:00 +0100

Health and wellbeing are complicated matters. The list of factors that may influence them is long, with social and economic circumstances being far from its bottom. It is well established that people from disadvantaged subgroups of the population are more prone to diseases and unhealthy ageing, especially now, under the ongoing economic crisis.

The burden of non-communicable diseases like cancer or cardiovascular diseases is becoming more and more relevant. Cancer cases are expected to rise from 14 million in 2012 to almost 22 million by 2030. However, our understanding of these health threats is changing significantly, with the rise of a new conceptual framework that could help us to develop new health strategies.

One of the main new concepts is that early-life exposures have long-term consequences. This is related to the representation of health as a trajectory, more than a static status. A dynamic conceptualization that better describe life and ageing as continuous processes, made up by two main stages: the build-up phase and the decline phase (Figure 1). The former begins at conception and ends at late adolescence, and is an extremely sensitive periods, both biologically and socially. Being exposed to low socioeconomic circumstances in this stage may negatively impact the maximum attained health. A maximum that is slowly eroded during the decline stage, starting in early adulthood. And again, socioeconomic status (SES) is a strong determinant of the rate of such decline.

Figure 1: The graph represents life course growth and decline in functioning according to the Strachan-Sheikh Model, with the “build-up” and the “decline” stages. Social exposures during the first stage can influence the proportion of optimum growth attained, (dotted line). Social exposures during the second stage can influence the rate at which functioning is lost (dashed line).

By combining biology, anthropology, social sciences, medicine and demography, scientists have begun to unravel the biological mechanisms underlying the influence of SES on health and ageing. A recent example comes from a paper published on the International Journal of Epidemiology by a research group led by Paolo Vineis and Silvia Stringhini. The researchers described the evidence they found of some biological embedding of socioeconomic status. They analysed a group of less than a thousand participants drawn from a large general Italian population cohort made up of about 520,000 individuals, integrating molecular analysis performed on blood samples with lifestyle and SES data, which were quantified by using specific indicators.

In particular, individuals’ lifestyle was assessed trough self-administered questionnaires that focus on some particular traits: smoking status, physical activity, diet, alcohol intake, age, sex and disease status. As for their socioeconomic status, two markers were combined to draw life-course socioeconomic trajectories: household’s highest occupational position and father’s occupational position. To investigate the biological underpinnings of these traits, the researchers focused their attention on a set of genes known to be involved in SES-related inflammation. Low socioeconomic status in humans has been associated with increased inflammatory activity, as well as with a higher cortisol production during the day and higher blood level of antibodies for several pathogens. Indeed, all clues pointing to a dampened immune response.

In the end, the results of the study suggested that low SES is associated with variations in epigenetics markers in peripheral blood cells, which may potentially exacerbate inflammatory response. According to the author, in the long term this could lead to the development of chronic diseases like breast or colon cancer.

The author of the study have recently joined forces with other research team in Europe and US to launch LIFEPATH, an EU-funded project whose aim is to investigate the biological pathways underlying social differences in healthy ageing. Health is socially and biologically constructed since the earliest moments of life. Thus, unravelling the dynamics behind this constant building up may be of great help to better take care of our health, not only as individuals but as an integrated community.

References

Strachan D, Sheikh A. A life course approach to respiratory and allergic diseases. In D. Kuh & Y. Ben-Shlomo. (Eds). A Life Course Approach to Chronic Disease Epidemiology, 2nd edition (2004: pp. 240-259). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vineis P, Kelly-Irving M, Rappaport S, Stringhini S. The biological embedding of social differences in ageing trajectories. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2015 Aug 7.

Stringhini S, Polidoro S, Sacerdote C, Kelly RS, van Veldhoven K, Agnoli C, Grioni S, Tumino R, Giurdanella MC, Panico S, Mattiello A, Palli D, Masala G, Gallo V, Castagné R, Paccaud F, Campanella G, Chadeau-Hyam M, Vineis P. Life-course socioeconomic status and DNA methylation of genes regulating inflammation. Int J Epidemiol. 2015 Aug;44(4):1320-30.

Bray F, Jemal A, Torre LA, Forman D, Vineis P. Long-term Realism and Cost-effectiveness: Primary Prevention in Combatting Cancer and Associated Inequalities Worldwide. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2015 Sep 30;107(12).

Health inequities in the European Region

Cristina Da Rold — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 09:47:00 +0100

Europe is on track to achieve the Health 2020 target to reduce premature mortality from cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes mellitus and chronic respiratory diseases by 1.5 percent annually until 2020. However, there are other challenges for the European Region, like those concerning health inequalities among countries.

Recently, WHO presented the Health Report 2015, published every three years, which aims to collect data from all the WHO databases concerning the main health topics. This edition has two goals: reporting on progress towards the Health 2020 targets in the Region so far, for instance on premature mortality linked to risk factors, life expectancy or the health coverage, and highlighting new frontiers in health information. Data are mainly taken from Health for All database, the Global Status of NCDs 2014 and the EU detailed Mortality database.

Measuring well-being to measure health

A crucial point of this publication, and in general of the WHO efforts, is to monitor health as best as possible, considering all the indicators that can describe the health situation of the Region. The problem is that collecting data may be a complex operation, especially when subjective concepts like well-being are involved.

In 1992, Geoffrey Rose showed, in his book “The strategy of preventive medicine”, a relationship between longevity and life satisfaction. Rose’s data exposed a paradox: yes, we live more, but at the same time we are less satisfied with our life.

Well-being is a key word of this report, and it has been included into the WHO definition of health since 1948. Between health and well-being there is a deep and mutual relationship, and trying to monitor and measure even these subjective concepts is fundamental for a holistic comprehension of the situation.

For this reason, life satisfaction is today one of the indicators WHO has planned to consider in its analysis for the next years. It will be combined with other more “objective” ones like social connection, the economic security and income, the natural and built environment and education.

Too many health inequities, but the sensibility across countries doubled

“Health is a political choice” was one of the slogans of the Regional Meeting of the WHO European Region, which took place in Vilnius last week. In 2013, Health2020 was not a concrete reality for all European countries but some significant steps have been taken in this direction since 2010. Between 2010 and 2013, the percentage of countries whose policies were aligned to Health2020 increased from 26 percent to 50 percent.

However, such good news does not mean that health inequalities among countries decreased in the same way. Data about school enrolment and unemployment – which are indicators for health inequalities – show deep inequality across the Region.

Europe is not equal about health because it is not socially equal: we cannot forget that social determinants of health (i.e the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age) are the fuel for health inequalities.

Life expectancy increased and premature mortality decreased, but not for all

The average annual rate of reduction of premature mortality from the four major NCDs over the first three years of observations (2010–2012) is 2 percent and the Region is, therefore, currently on track to achieve the goal. The main problem remains the lack of data: the number of countries in the Region for which data are available for 2012 is suboptimal: only 28 out of 53.

The two main causes of death in Europe are cancer and cardiovascular disease. Although the death rate for cancer has fallen gradually since mid-2000s, the proportion of overall premature mortality from this cause has increased as the death rate from cardiovascular disease has dropped faster. In 1998, cancer accounted for just over one third (37 percent) of premature mortality, and this has risen consistently to 43 percent in 2012.

On the other hand, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes mellitus account for the smallest share of premature deaths, at about 6 percent combined, a percentage unchanged over time.

The crucial point is represented – again – by inequalities among countries, in some cases very marked, and linked to the prevalence of the risk factors among the population.

Alcohol, tobacco, obesity: the levels are still too high

Although the prevalence of risk factors like tobacco use and alcohol intake is still high in most Europeans countries in comparison with other WHO regions, the footprint of these risk factors is becoming lighter year after year.

Between 2010 and 2012, the prevalence of tobacco use among adults decreased in 39 of the 41 countries for which WHO carries out the study. However, statistics show that only 11 countries in the Region are likely to meet the 30 percent reduction target of the global NCD monitoring framework by 2025. In 2012, the European Region had the highest regional average rate of tobacco use at 30 percent, although the rate varies considerably between countries. It also had the highest regional average rate of tobacco use among women.

Alcohol intake in the European Region is the highest in the world, resulting in a higher prevalence of alcohol dependence and alcohol-use disorders than in other WHO regions. Nevertheless, levels of alcohol consumption vary greatly between European countries, ranging from 0.32 to 14.37 litres per capita annually.

About overweight and obese people, the situation has worsened. In 2014, the prevalence of overweight persons – a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or above – in 51 countries in the European Region ranged from 44.9 percent to 66.9 percent, while the prevalence of obesity – a BMI of 30 or above – ranged from 13.6 percent to 29.5 percent. That means that in some countries 1 out of 3 of the inhabitants is obese. Its prevalence has tripled in many countries in the European Region since the 1980s.

The cost of non acting

As WHO has stressed many times also during the latest RC in Vilnius, in healthcare there is also a cost for non acting. A universal health coverage is fundamental to achieve the Health2020 goals for the reduction of mortality and health inequalities. But actions need investments and during the last years the total health expenditure as a proportion of GDP across the European Region did not increase. The regional average has been more or less stable, at around 8.3 percent, since the 2010 baseline, and it represents today one of the most impressive example of social inequality. It differs considerably between countries in the European Region, ranging from 2.0 percent to 12.4 percent in 2012.

Through an elimination of selected vaccine-preventable diseases

To conclude, health coverage also means immunization coverage. The second quantification for Health 2020 first target is the sustained elimination of selected vaccine-preventable diseases, for which the core indicator is the percentage of children vaccinated against measles, poliomyelitis and rubella. In general, there are good news: the average vaccination coverage for measles in the European Region increased in the last years, from 93.4 percent in 2010 to 94.6 percent in 2012, and the average vaccination coverage for polio was 94.7 percent. However – again – it is not true for all countries, as represented by the recent polio outbreak in Ukraine. More action is therefore needed to achieve the target of eliminating vaccine-preventable diseases, particularly focusing on closing immunity gaps in the population by improving subnational and second-dose coverage rates and by reaching specific population groups.

Women, science and leadership, a conversation with Ilaria Capua

redazione — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 08:23:00 +0100

It’s a question that has concerned Western society since the women’s liberation movement: is it really possible to be successful both at work and at home? When applied to women in the field of science, the question takes on various dimensions. We talked with Ilaria Capua, the Director of the Division of Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the Istituto Zooprofilattico delle Venezie, and Member of the Italian Parliament, about this challenge, the importance teaching women leadership skills and what the world learned from the Ebola outbreak.

Ms. Capua, you have received some great honors including the Scientific American 50 Award and Seed magazine named you among its Revolutionary Minds. You were also the first female recipient of the Penn Vet World Leadership Award. You have clearly broken the glass ceiling in the field of science. This is not easy as the number of women in the lab is low in the world’s leading economies. Based on your own experience, where is the missing link between women and science?

Governments, the European Commission, lots of universities and academic institutions are trying to convince girls to take on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) because it is proven that diversity is enriching. So on one hand we have this driver, and on the other we have rather unfortunate statements and the evidence that women are never in the higher levels of decision-making virtually anywhere, especially in science. So, the perspective I would like to give is that if the majority of students enrolled in biomedical sciences are girls and these girls are going to do well at university, and they are going to do their master’s degree and their Ph.D., then they are a cost. They are a cost to their families, to societies and to their countries. I think the results we are obtaining with reference to the return on that investment is really bad. If girls are the top students, we need to make sure they have a successful career in front of them, therefore my proposal to move this forward is that we should rethink STEM. We need girls in science, but we also need to train them in leadership. This is what is I think is missing. And we need to take into account both the economics and motherhood. What happens is when young graduates get to a certain age and their biological clock starts ticking, they start asking, “What will I do if I go for a high position and I won’t be able to give to my family?” We need to show them that it is possible to be a career woman and have a normal family. I think it is something that society should really take on as a challenge. This might sound provocative, but what is the point of making girls study if then they are going to end up being lab technicians?

You talked about the importance of teaching women leadership skills at The Aspen Forum at Expo during a conference on “The role of nutrition in future health: the gender challenge”. It is clearly an issue that is dear to your heart.

One thing I really want to do in the next segment of my life is make sure there are places where women can get appropriate leadership training in global health. I don’t see why of all the women that come out of medical schools or veterinarian schools, very few or none have the ambition of becoming chancellor or dean, or the director general of FAO, or brain surgeons, or heart surgeons. I think the talent is there, the academic performance is there. There is another aspect that is key: being able to develop the leadership that is in you and being able to fight your shyness. The ideas that you have about your own life count here. A young woman might think, “I want to grow up and be a doctor, because I want to help women have babies”, rather than thinking outside the box, and being able to say, “I want to I want to help women have babies, but if I become the chief executive of Oxfam I can actually help women in great difficulty to have more babies.” Giving the insight and the opportunity to think that there is a world outside that needs to be conquered and women should have a space in that world is crucial. I think it is the responsibility of women to do this, as they need to do a lot of work on themselves, but it is also the responsibility of women who have had positions of leadership to show them the way.

Let’s bring motherhood back into the discussion. You are a mother and you are a leader. What is the key to balance?

Women don’t think with enough depth that, “I have the baby, that is what nature entitled us to do. But, if I don’t have the baby, you, the father, will not have a baby either.” And women need to be convinced that it is a shared responsibility and they need to fight for that - and it can be done. I have never met a woman who has had a successful career who says managing the kids was the most difficult thing she’s ever done. You manage kids. It can be done and it has to come from you, not from outside. If you are the main obstacle to your own success and your professional fulfillment, then it’s not going to work.

*How can we move young women into this line of thinking? You mentioned earlier that women have held leadership positions, like yourself, should lead the way.
*
I give leadership talks and motivational talks, and I really try to help - even on a one-to-one basis - girls who have potential, to feel more confident and to pull out and massage their leadership skills. In my lab, 70% of the staff I have are female and I try to help them and be by their side. I help them in moments of difficulty and they know that my door is open and that they can come and speak to me whenever they want. If they have family problems, even with their family of origin. In Italy parents have expectations in reference to their daughters: you go to school, you study, but then you should have kids before you are 30 possibly. So, there are conflicts at times and I really try and give a personal effort.

Another challenge for girls in science is stereotypes.

Absolutely. A scientist is accepted if she is not very good looking, not very charming and rather dull. And if you are a scientist like that, it’s ok. A scientist who is a good communicator, who wants to challenge things that are beyond science itself, who is beyond stereotypes, finds a lot of difficulties and a lot of hardships.

You clearly overcame those stereotypes as you are especially well-known for your work in virology. You must have followed the 2014 Ebola outbreak very closely. In the aftermath, we realized that the effects were especially devastating for women. Could you talk to us about what the world learned from this experience?

Ebola told the world that we’re on one small planet. In a nutshell, that we can’t continue disregarding what happens on the other side of the planet. This is the history of diseases. We, white Europeans, infected the Americas with measles, for example. More contact with people causes disease outbreaks. The measles epidemic was really devastating for some populations, but it took quite a long while to develop because we traveled by boat. That has changed. As for the impact on women, one of the first cases developed when a pregnant woman in a remote village butchered an animal that her husband had hunted in the forest. She came in contact with the blood and contracted Ebola, without knowing it, and she died. In her community, you cannot bury women that are pregnant. So, she had a postmortem caesarian section and they infected all the people working in the ward, all of the obstetricians, who are all mobile because they travel to all of the different villages. Had that woman known that there was the risk of Ebola by butchering that animal and that she should have washed her hands, and that she should have taken precautions, then probably all of this would not have happened. So, women have a crucial role because they take care of children and they prepare food. In reference to emerging diseases, the household and the kitchen are crucial to how these diseases explode.

So, educating women in the developing world can be a lifesaver. You also stressed this at The Aspen Forum at Expo.

Investing in women in rural communities could have enormous benefits with very high returns on investments in health. For example, rabies is a disease that kills approximately 55,000 people a year (mainly children), much more than Ebola, and it’s a preventable disease. Since it’s linked to the bite of dogs, which is a problem in developing countries, we need to teach women that a wound of a dog needs immediate attention and that facilitating the vaccination of dogs can actually zero the mortality caused by rabies. It’s not going to be the men who move this forward, but the women who are in the village and who look after the well-being of the community. Similarly, teaching women to wash their hands, and women teaching children to wash their hands, can dramatically reduce the incident of gastrointestinal diseases and other infections – which, when not managed in certain parts of the world, can kill.

This article is reproduced with permission from Aspenia Online. The article was first published on 16/7/2015.

“Citizen science”: from Science-in-society to Society-in-science

ASSET Project — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 11:38:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Science is getting out of laboratories and reaching the general public. That is, we are moving from the only goal of bringing Science-in-society, adding that of bringing Society-in-science: for years researchers have been blamed for living in their ivory towers, and asked to learn how to talk to common people, explaining their work and influencing policies and behaviours; now common people are stepping into science, giving their own support to a common cause.

It is called “citizen science”. The phrase was coined recently, as recent is the situation that it describes, unthinkable until some years ago, in the pre-internet era. According to the Green Paper on Citizen Science, published by the Socientize European project in 2013, the term refers to “the general public engagement in scientific research activities when citizens actively contribute to science either with their intellectual effort or surrounding knowledge or with their tools and resources”. This is a wider definition than that given by Oxford dictionary in 2014, where citizen science is defined just as “scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions”.

In the European vision, that is ASSET’s as well, it is not only a matter of providing (often free) work, but of mutual learning, competence sharing, bringing new fresh ideas.

In the real world, anyway, the first approach, at the moment, is still prevailing. In some cases citizens are asked to cooperate to different projects gathering data: for instance, mountain climbers can provide information on glacier extension and smartphone apps are available for monitoring birds or marine wildlife.

Many platforms in Europe monitor flu and influenza-like-illness by citizens’ contribution: the model was born in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2003 (De GroteGriepmeting) and was followed by many other countries: Portugal (Gripenet), Italy (influweb), UK (Flusurvey), Sweden (Influensakoll), France (Grippenet), Spain (Gripenet), Ireland (Flusurvey) and Denmark (Influmeter). Since 2009, the national platforms are part of the integrated EU funded project Epiwork and connected in Influenzanet. Currently, 38.385 volunteers from 10 participating countries are contribuiting to it.

New technologies allow anyone to have access to protocols and to send their data everywhere quickly and easily. They also introduced “gamification”, that is transforming some kind of analysis and research work into videogames that can be played by anyone, giving scientists free information and solution. Apart from participation issues, this is very welcome in a time of limited resources.

The second step, involving knowledge, more than work sharing, is much harder to achieve.

New ideas are often gathered through contests mainly addressed to young people. Three British 13 and 14-year-olds have recently won the Teen tech award suggesting condoms that change their colours when getting in touch with infectious agents responsible for the most common sexually transmitted disease. An Italian young student is a finalist at the Google Science Fair, having created a genetic algorithm that could drive the research towards new drugs for ebola.

Other public and private projects are trying to connect different areas of knowledge, taking advantage of the web and notably of new social media to let ideas circulate. In every continent the Wave project is exploring the major currents of what is seen as a wave of collective ingenuity, sweeping across the world. An itinerant photographic exhibition, associated to many open events and meetings, is deepening the issues of co-creation, the sharing economy, the maker movement, the inclusive economy, and the circular economy.

Next step will be helping general public to enter the control room and take part to decisions about science: some charities and institutions are already asking givers to indicate the branch where they prefer money would be used; patients’ association are lobbying to get funding on neglected research areas; social media help people to raise their voice, some time even in controversial ways.

Initiatives such as citizens’ consultation scheduled in ASSET project will give the general public the chance to have their say about pandemic issues, but after being adequately informed.

At the end of the day, this is the point: a correct, transparent and complete information is the only way to achieve a truly free participation.

How the public perceives Ebola

ASSET Project — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 12:01:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Communication is not merely a matter of passing information from one person to another. Just as important as the message itself is how the message is formulated, and who are the parties involved. This is particularly true in case of an infectious diseases outbreak, when proper risk communication can really make the difference in terms of number of lives saved.

This was one of the core topics discussed by Anat Gesser-Edelsburg – researcher at the School of Public Health of the University of Haifa and member of the ASSET consortium – during the Targeting Ebola World Congress 2015, held in Paris on May 28-29. At this international conference, she presented the results of studies she has been working on with her colleagues in Haifa on the public’s knowledge of Ebola and risk perception about Ebola.

The main question driving their research was: “What does the public know about Ebola?”. A question that stemmed from the communication chaos that emerged during the Ebola crisis in West Africa, which was a consequence of a lack of an established communication preparedness.

To answer this question, Gesser-Edelsburg and colleagues used online surveys to understand what the Israeli healthcare professionals and general public knew about the epidemic raging in West Africa. Their findings, which were published in the American Journal of Infection Control, clearly show that Israelis were knowledgeable about Ebola – more so than the authorities assumed. In addition, the findings showed that they had specific expectations from their health authorities. They demanded more updates on the disease and on topics of uncertainty, and almost half of those surveyed considered the information provided by the Israeli Ministry of Health insufficient.

Gesser-Edelsburg also analysed issues of risk communication, uncertainty and the public’s knowledge in a different context, namely in the United States, which, unlike Israel, did report several cases of Ebola infection. This study provided an analysis of the debate over the Kaci Hickox quarantine, and how it was presented in the media.

In such a context, language and terminology are crucial since they affect the decision‐making process of social judgments and actions. A good example discussed by Gesser-Edelsburg is the choice of terms used – outbreak or epidemic – to describe the Ebola crisis in online newspapers. The former was far more widespread in online articles until September 16, 2014, when Barack Obama explicitly referred to Ebola as an epidemic. After that date, the term “epidemic” became more frequent. The choice of one term over another is highly relevant for it can create different conceptualizations of the disease, thereby influencing the risk signature.

Using proper terminology, finding ways to address uncertainty and empowering the public to make fact‐based decisions about health, are key challenges faced by public institutions when dealing with health crises like infectious diseases outbreaks and epidemics.

How social inequalities influence healthy ageing

redazione — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 11:41:00 +0100

Researchers in 10 countries have begun a major new project studying the link between socioeconomic status and healthy ageing. The Lifepath project, involving 15 institutions in Europe, the US and Australia, has been supported by a six million euro grant from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.

A large number of previous studies have shown that health outcomes in later life are strongly influenced by wealth and social status. Traditional risk factors such as diet and smoking only account for a proportion of this link. The rest might be explained e.g. by psychosocial factors such as stress, but the mechanisms involved are not well understood.

The research consortium aims to learn more about the biological pathways behind this link, with the ultimate goal of reducing the impact of poverty on health. Part of the project will investigate possible effects of the economic downturn on biological changes related to ageing in population cohorts in Ireland and Portugal.

Professor Paolo Vineis from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, who leads the consortium, said: “We know that it’s possible to remain healthy into old age, and this is much more likely among people with high socioeconomic status. We want to better understand why, so we can make healthy ageing a reality for everyone, not just the wealthiest parts of society.”

The four-year research programme will investigate links between socioeconomic factors, such as education, income and achievements, and age-related health outcomes, such as cancer, heart disease, cognitive impairments and frailty. It will also use molecular techniques to analyse blood samples from existing population studies to uncover biological changes associated with poverty.

The project will include an evaluation of the health impact of experimental programmes that gave cash to families with low incomes in the United States to encourage positive behaviours such as taking children to the doctor or keeping them in school. For example, Opportunity NYC, which ran from 2007 to 2010, randomly assigned some families to receive cash rewards and others not, so the outcomes for the two groups can be compared.

Previous studies have suggested that the negative impacts of poverty may be mediated in part by higher levels of inflammation in the body. Steve Horvath at UCLA proposed that a type of DNA modification called methylation can act as a biological clock revealing a person’s age. Preliminary findings from the Lifepath consortium show that people with lower socioeconomic status have an older biological age as indicated by their levels of DNA methylation.

The consortium, which includes scientists, economists and policy experts, hope to amass evidence to inform efforts to reduce health inequality. “There are competing views of how to address these problems,” said Professor Vineis. “For example, some people advocate investment in health education, while others think money should be given directly to people on low incomes. These are open questions, and we hope this project will help to identify the best approaches.”

Source: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummar…

Air pollution shortens the life expectancy of Italians

redazione — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 15:26:00 +0100

In Italy 30,000 people die every year because of air pollution caused by fine particulate matter (PM2.5) only – which corresponds to 7% of all deaths (excluding accidents). In terms of life expectancy this means that, on average, air pollution shortens the life of every Italian citizen by 10 months; 14 months for those living in Northern Italy; 6.6 months for those living in Central Italy and 5.7 for the inhabitants of Southern Italy and the islands of the country. Northern Italy is the most affected area. Respecting laws would save 11,000 lives every year.

These are the most important findings of the “Progetto VIIAS” – VIIAS project (the Italian acronym stands for: “Integrated Evaluation of the Impact of Air Pollution on the Environment and Health”), coordinated by the Department of Epidemiology of the Lazio Region Health Service within the initiatives of the Centro Controllo Malattie (CCM), the Centre for Disease Control of the Italian Ministry of Health. The results will be presented on 4^th June 2015 at the Auditorium of the Ministry (via Giorgio Ribotta, 5 – Rome). The meeting will take place only few days after the resolution on air pollution adopted by the 68^th World Health Assembly, a resolution that reiterates the negative impact of pollution on health and that calls upon all Governments to act on the issue with immediate and urgent measures.

The VIIAS project is the very first, tangible, answer to this warning.

Besides providing a detailed map of the environmental and health impact of air pollution, it actually stresses how proper policies could help gains for the reduction of disease and mortality rates, decreasing inequalities on the territory and saving public resources. Also, the analysis put together by the VIIAS project enables us also to perceive clearly how the nature of air pollution has changed over the past ten years, by identifying biomass combustion for heating and diesel exhaust fumes as the two main culprits prevention should focus on.

The new map of pollution in Italy

Using sophisticated statistical methods of modelling the concentration of pollutants on the whole national territory, the VIIAS project has estimated both the exposure risk for the Italian population and the total mortality rate – as well as the mortality rate connected to respiratory disease; cardiovascular disease and lung cancer in Italy and in each and every Italian Region.

The picture emerging from the study provides worrying numbers: 29% of the Italian population lives in areas where the concentration of pollutants is constantly higher than the legal limit. In addition, there are considerable inequalities in the health impact on the Italian territory. As one may expect, pollution affects mostly the Northern part of the country (65% of the total) where there is a high concentration of urban areas with congested traffic and busy industrial belts. Biomass combustion (mainly wood and pellet) is also responsible for a higher mortality and morbidity rates caused by fine particulate matter.

The reckonings carried out during the project show clearly the evolution of the effects of pollution on health throughout time. In 2005 the number of deaths linked to pollution was distributed as follows: 34,552 due to PM2.5; 23,387 due to NO2 and 1,707 due to O3. However, 2010 marked a great decrease for the numbers related to PM2.5 (21,524) and NO2 (11,993) especially in view of less emissions in connection with the economic recession.

Whereas, in 2020, despite the technological improvements and the policies implemented, seemingly the situation will be far from better if compared to 2010 (28,595 deaths because of PM 2.5; 10,117 because of NO2).

Improving is possible but it is a complex challenge

For 2020, the VIIAS project contemplates two alternative scenarios:

1. The full compliance of Italy with all the laws, limits and regulations set at the national and European level.

2. An even reduction by 20% of the concentration of pollutants on the national territory.

Both scenarios would translate into many lives saved: 11,000 for PM2.5 and 14,000 for NO2 for scenario number 1 and 16,000 for PM2.5 and 18,000 for NO2 for scenario number 2 – always in comparison with the 2005 values.

This perspective shows how the full compliance with the legal limits set by the current laws and, moreover, the further reduction by 20% of the average yearly concentration would be incredibly beneficial for public health. And for the Economy in turn: official WHO statistics show that 10,000 deaths less a year equal to more or less 30 billion euros saved.

Health in all policies

However, this is a very complex challenge. The VIIAS study has in fact proved how the considerable reduction in emissions happened over the past ten years has not led to a proportional decrease in the level of exposure – especially in those areas of the Country (e.g. the Po valley) whose geographical and weather conditions are particularly complicated.

Thus, it is of paramount importance to design an effective plan for the air quality at the national level in coordination with the regional planning – placing Health at the centre of all policies, in agreement with what WHO has been advocating for a long time now. New measures are a must to mitigate the growing impact of the biomass combustion: biomasses are surely useful to counteract climate change but are also incredibly damaging in terms of pollution created by particulate.

The commitment to sustainable mobility (pedestrian, bicycle, eco-friendly public transportation systems) is a priority - with a reduction of diesel fuelled vehicles, which are responsible for the 91% of all nitrogen dioxide emissions and for a high percentage of particulate in the transport sector. The emissions coming from the agriculture (ammonia) should be carefully monitored and limited too. In addition, focused forestation interventions in urban zones could mitigate the effects of pollution in metropolitan areas.

The VIIAS project is coordinated by the Department of Epidemiology of the Lazio Region Health Service and is the result of an extensive collaboration involving Italian Universities and Research centres (e.g. ENEA, ISPRA, the ARPA of Piedmont, Emilia Romagna and Lazio; the statistics dept. of the University of Florence, the University of Urbino and the Dept. of Environmental Biology of the La Sapienza University in Rome). On the www.viias.it website – updated by the project’s partner Zadig all the relevant data and materials / resources are available.

A halt to animal testing would translate into a damaging halt to biomedical research

Silvio Garattini — Tue, 05 May 2015 21:57:00 +0100

Today, during the press conference held at the Italian Senate, the Gruppo 2003 for scientific research made a statement through its spokeperson, Dr Silvio Garattini.

The statement stressed that animal testing is still an irreplaceable must. Together with the Italian Senator, Hon. Elena Cattaneo and a number of other researchets, the Gruppo 2003 for scientific research found itself in the position to defend for the umpteenth time the rational values of Science from an animal rights initiative trying to impose a ban on animal testing.

Today, the Gruppo 2003 for scientific research reiterated the many reasons why animal testing is still crucial and beneficial to create new drugs and therapies. Severe conditions like HIV, Hepatitis C and many others which were fatal in the past have become either chronic (HIV) or curable (Hepatitis C) thanks to animal testing.

Dr Garattini stated: “By all means, it is not true that studying animals you cannot come up with findings that can be then applied to humans too. And, again, it is not true that alternative methods can substitute animal testing. The complexity of biological systems call for trials conducted using animal species.Creating further stumbling blocks to experiments on animals in Italy would translate into a widening gap between our Country and Europe - weakening the competitive potential of our biomedical research sector and its fundamental role”.

We side with all the associations and researchers that have taken part in the press conference today calling upon the Italian Government and all political parties that truly care about Italy to support and facilitate policies with real vision - in line with European standards and with those Countries that are advanced in the field of scientific research.

For more information please log onto: www.gruppo2003.org www.scienceonthenet.eu www.scienzainrete.it

The role of ethic in pandemic preparedness

ASSET Project — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 13:00:00 +0100

Article published on the ASSET website

Undoubtedly, epidemics and pandemics are good examples of extraordinary circumstances that may require extraordinary measures. Such exceptionality, however, should not provide an alibi for pandemic planners and policy makers to ignore fundamental human rights. This is why ethics should always be a key element to be considered when planning a proper response to such global health threats. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the last and relevant example of the ethical implications of public health management during an epidemic, due to the many reported cases of stigmatisation and discrimination against the most vulnerable groups of society.

This consideration is at the core of the report produced by ASSET experts, Ethics, law and fundamental rights, whose purpose is to identify, present and discuss ethical and fundamental rights issues or considerations that arise as a result of contextual or situational factors in the event of a major infectious disease outbreak, notably an influenza pandemic. The report draws on existing evidence from the scientific literature, international agencies’ technical reports and policy documents to offer an insight on ethics-related issues and generic approaches

As a first step, ASSET experts analysed the international policy landscape on what constitutes fundamental human rights, both at EU and world level. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU) is the primary legal instrument in Europe that recognises the various personal, civil, political, economic and social rights of EU citizens. It is based on seven main principles: dignity, freedoms, equality, solidarity, citizen’s rights, justice and general provisions. However, these principles are not always specific or relevant to public health emergencies. The authors of the report thus analysed the main documents that focused on those fundamental rights from a medical perspective: the WMA Declaration of Lisbon on the Rights of the Patient (signed in 1981), the WHO International Health Regulations (released in 2005) and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (adopted by acclamation by the General Conference of UNESCO in 2005).

Once such basis were established, the ASSET experts delved further into the ethical issues and considerations that are pertinent in different phases of pandemic event. Conflicting interests, contextual parameters and critical questions that arise in the course of an outbreak, necessitates the identification and analysis of the various ethical considerations and implications at different phases of a pandemic.

Procedural (how to make decisions) and substantive (what decisions to make) values are discussed. The former ones include recommendations like accountable and evidence-based decision-making, participation, flexibility, impartiality, non-discrimination, inclusiveness. Among the substantive values that are critical in pandemic preparedness planning there are: individual liberty, privacy, reciprocity, equity, trust and solidarity. Restriction of personal freedom, duty to provide care, priority setting and resources allocation, and international cooperation and governance are the main issues with ethical implications that may occur in the context of a pandemic event. The report discussed them one by one, providing some recommendations to overcome related ethical considerations for each of them. In the end, the report presents separately two other issues with implications for pandemic preparedness and response: stigmatisation and vulnerability.

Due to the element of uncertainty and timeliness of actions during a public health emergency, some decisions and measures may come into tension with well-established ethical principles and societal norms, even if these decisions and measures are in accordance with the national or international policies and regulations. Policy and decision makers should take into account ethical considerations to inform and colour all aspects of pandemic planning for preparedness and response. National governments and local authorities should strive to cultivate a culture of ethics, which could be structured on the basis of one of the driving concepts of the ASSET project supports: the promotion of a bottom-up, participatory and inclusive mechanism with a primary focus on restoring and reinventing trust among scientists, researchers, policy makers and the general public.

Such an approach would inject ethical considerations in the decision-making process, on issues such as the restriction of personal freedoms, the duty to provide care, priority-setting and resource allocation, and international cooperation. The ASSET project can certainly provide this platform and build a collective mechanism (a community of practice) in which fundamental rights issues and ethical considerations in public health emergencies could become issues for open deliberation with all relevant actors from society, whether at local or international level.

Molecular machines, an already written future

Giulia Annovi — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 11:12:00 +0100

In a world in which chemists assemble devices and machines billion times smaller than the usual ones, it is possible to develop systems similar to those created by nature within cells. The intricate arrangement of cellular organelles and enzymatic systems, muscle contraction, intracellular transport and ATP synthesis are examples of biological motors. For chemists this is a real challenge; to design active nanostructures that can operate as molecular machines, to increase our understanding of biological nanomotors and to construct a new generation of devices capable, for example, to actively affect cell mechanisms.

The field of molecular machines based on mechanically interlocked compounds started about twenty years ago. The major difficulty in operating molecular machines lies not in achieving motion at the molecular level but in making it controlled and directional, such that it can be exploited to carry out a task. At ambient temperature, random thermal Brownian motion makes molecules to move incessantly and an external energy input has to be used to control such movements. Molecules can be set in motion using various types of inputs, mostly photonic, electrochemical or chemical. The majority of molecular machines switch between two molecular shapes, and their operation is based upon the repetition of the switching cycle. Mechanical molecular switches can have application in triggering special functions and properties in different materials.

The most popular kind of artificial molecular machine is based on rotaxanes, consisting of one (or more) rings that can move from one binding site to another along a shaft. These molecular shuttles can be operated through different principles: for instance, redox chemistry, pH changes or light. Elongation and contraction movements, mimicking those that occur during muscle contraction, have been realized by interlocking two rotaxanes together and exploiting their shuttling functions. Finally, there are also machines able to perform a composite movement: a rotary motion of one part is coupled to linear motion of another part.

An Italian team provides new insights in molecular machines creations

A team of researchers at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Bologna has developed a new system, a molecular pump driven by light, recently published in Nature Nanotechnology. Leap (Light energy automatic pump) can allow the direct conversion of light energy into mechanical work by operating away from thermal equilibrium. Light has several advantages as an energy source: it can be rapidly switched on and off, it can cause clean transformations, it is adjustable (by regulating its color, intensity and polarization), and – if sunlight is used – it is a renewable energy input. “All the phases of the work – design, synthesis, characterization and movement analysis – have been carried out in my research team,” Alberto Credi commented.

With the system invented by Credi’s group, the pump assembly occurs without the need of human intervention and, upon exposure to sunlight, it can exploit the energy source in a continuous and autonomous manner. Leap is composed by a ring that threads a string. When a photon of light arrives, it causes a profound structural change, blocking the backward motion of the ring and, at the same time, triggering the expulsion of the ring in the forward direction. Then, another photon regenerates the original structure and the cycle can begin again.

Leap is currently at the proof of principle stage. “The next challenge will be the insertion of the molecular machine into a membrane, in order to use it for displacing molecules between two distinct compartments,” Credi explained. The Leap pump may be used in future to exploit the energy of sunlight: in fact, the accumulation of molecules in a delimited compartment constitutes a stock of chemical energy, similarly to what occurs during photosynthesis.

Europe and the (molecular) machines for the future

The integration of molecular machines within membranes is an attractive subject for European research. The European Research Council (ERC) has invested on the development of molecular devices that can operate across lipid membranes. Mirroring the operation of biological molecules and driven by gradients of chemical potential, artificial molecular complexes could activate mechanisms for cellular repair. For example, the project TRANSPORET, hosted in the Edinburgh University, which will end in 2018.

Or the NANOMECH project, which has been granted by the ERC to understand how much force molecular machines can generate and what are the limits of their speed and efficiency. Understanding the limits of these systems is indeed crucial for improving their effectiveness.

In order to promote the collaborations necessary to achieve the integration of knowledge about the static and dynamic aspects of (bio)molecular devices, COST gives the financial support of about 130,000 euros per year for a four-year period. Supported by the EU RTD Framework Programme, COST is an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, which promotes the coordination of nationally funded research at European level. As for the future perspectives in molecular devices, major challenges remain the directional movement along specified trajectories and the creation of systems that can transport cargo. The integration of artificial nanodevices in our life is a distant objective but, as research proceeds, it seems to be more and more realistic.

The epistemic consequences of bibliometrics-based evaluation

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 11:28:00 +0100

Until a few years ago, most Italian scientists had hardly heard of things like the impact factor of a journal or the h-index of a researcher; nowadays these seem to be their everyday concern. What are they about? They are some of the parameters introduced with the aim of quantitatively assessing the outcome of scientific research, giving rise to a new discipline called scientometrics, and in particular bibliometrics for what concerns the scientific publications.

Bibliometric parameters are more and more influencing career progression and fund assignment of researchers and research centres. The increasing importance of the bibliometrics-based evaluative system seems to have effectively induced severe changes in the habits of the Italian researchers. With respect to other countries, where bibliometrics-based evaluation is a well-established practice, in Italy it was introduced only recently and acquired an enormous weight in a relatively short period of time, even if with some remarkable differences between hard sciences and humanities.

But what are the results of such bibliometrics-based evaluation? Did it contribute to a more effective and efficient science? Did it have unexpected negative consequences? The debate on this topic is ongoing in many countries, including Italy. We decided to investigate a specific issue of this broad debate. Being the scientific publication the main instrument for scientists to communicate their results, bibliometrics may seem to regard only the communicational aspects of scientific activity. Nevertheless, the moments of communicating and achieving results are strongly connected: even Galileo wondered if the ‘readiness of saying’ (‘prontezza del dire’) of an individual might address towards a certain solution of a scientific dispute. Besides the effects of the communication practices on the dissemination of scientific results, an even more interesting question is the influence of these communication practices on the entire process that leads to these results, thus having an impact on the ‘epistemic’ status of the disciplines. As the Italian researchers only recently entered in such an evaluative system, they may represent a field of observations of on-going changes already settled in other countries.

We interviewed a multi-disciplinary panel of Italian scientists, composed by 12 people, roughly uniformly distributed in an age range from 40 to 65 in order to include only experienced scientists, at different stages of their career but with a solid curriculum. Among the 12 researchers, there were 6 men and 6 women, working in the following disciplines: physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, neuroscience, economics, cognitive science, engineering, sociology and philosophy. We included both scientists doing strictly discipline-focused research and scientists working in the boundaries between disciplines.

As we will show in the following, a drastic change of researchers’ attitude due to the introduction of bibliometrics-based evaluation clearly came out from most of the interviewees. This change not only affects the structure of scientific literature, but also deeply rules the processes of the scientific production and the way every single researcher looks at her/his actions. In other words, the moment of communicating the results fully enters in the scientific fact. In the following, we summarize some of the interesting results emerged from our research.

Firstly, many of the interviewees stated that the bibliometrics-based evaluation criteria changed the way in which scientists choose the topic of their research. Namely, there is a tendency to work on topics that are more suitable to produce good publications. According to our interviewees, this can happen in a variety of forms, among which:

– choosing a fashionable theme, namely a theme that for some reasons is considered particularly interesting at the moment;

– placing the article in the tail of an important discovery. When a topical paper has been published, many researchers publish minor results on the same topic, drawing a high attention. As declared by an interviewee, “once a discovery has come out, many people jump on the bandwagon”;

– choosing short empirical papers rather than books or long essays on theoretical and argumentative subjects. This may particularly affect the subjects of the socio-economic area.

Another negative consequence of the publishing-oriented research is the hurry. The interviewees stated that this affects not only the moment in which the research is conducted, but also the initial stage of focusing the topic and identifying the relevant research questions.

A further consequence is that, according to our interviewees, interdisciplinary topics are hindered, despite the growing acknowledgement by the scientific community of the importance of inter- and trans-disciplinary research for achieving relevant scientific advancements. Related to this issue, the interviewees also noted that bibliometric evaluative systems encourage researchers not to change topic during their career, despite the fact that, like interdisciplinarity, also the interplay of different research interests has been seen as one of the most important sources of creativity in science.

Another interesting epistemic consequence of the bibliometrics-based evaluation system is that the repetition of experiments, which is considered a pillar of the scientific method, is not encouraged. Our interviewees observe that replicating an experiment is strongly discouraged by journals editorial criteria, according to which only new results are interesting. Simple repetitions of previous experiments are not accepted for an article.

As a general remark, from all the interviews it emerges the existence of a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ the time the quantitative indicators started to influence their daily scientific activity. All of people in our panel developed their careers in a system that did not give as much importance to bibliometric indicators (with differences depending on the discipline and on the age).

Summing up, we can argue that the bibliometrics-based evaluation has an extremely strong normative function on scientific practices, which deeply impact the epistemic status of the disciplines. This artificially enhances the tendency towards a speed and competition based framework that at the same time is far from being exempt from gatekeeping strategies and is often source of further imbalances in accessing resources. This approach has consequences on major nodes in the production of knowledge as setting the questions, organizing the dissemination practices, replicating the results and fragmenting the heritage. It came out as well that the validation of the bibliometrics-based evaluative practices relies on the wide acceptance and diffusion within the scientific community, so that bibliometrics-based evaluation is substantially self-sustained through its broad application. It is just in this mechanistic application that the instrument becomes a target shadowing its limitations and also losing its possible benefits and the informative potential. This must be carefully handled as one of the tools of the scientific policies with an attention for the social accountability of science, but not the only one neither the main one.

Our claim is that, in order to be useful, effective and harmless, a regulatory instrument should assure the widest variety of individual and collective behaviours that have characterized the development of the scientific knowledge. According to the conclusions of our interviewees, bibliometric instruments must be accompanied by the awareness of their power and limits by the scientists who use them. Our work aims to be a step towards the development of a discussion that should go beyond the strictly evaluative aspects and frame these instruments in a more general epistemological debate.

T. Castellani, E. Pontecorvo, A. Valente, Epistemological Consequences of Bibliometrics: Insights from the Scientific Community, Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective vol. 3 no. 11, 2014

This research has been supported by the ScienceOnTheNet project of the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research.

Expo 2015: the link between health and food

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 10:10:00 +0100

“Feeding the world, energy for the future”: the motto of the upcoming Expo Milano 2015 directly explains the core issues of this big event. But it hides another global issue – health seems to be the unsaid common thread.

Generally speaking, the topic of nutrition, in Expo Milan 2015 and in its main scientific project, called Laboratorio Expo, is meant as the framework that includes three sub-topics: food, sustainable development and social security. But, in a larger picture, another common thread is health, which can be considered the basics and the goal for nutrition, at the same time.

Nutrition and health have a wide, complex relationship. First of all, in terms of nutritional epidemic problems: eight hundred million people are suffering from chronic hunger, two billions of people from malnutrition and one billion and a half from obesity. Anyway, the nutritional problem does not deal only with food. Another interesting approach is the one about sustainability and social issues. For example, most of the health problems regarding women in the developing countries are linked with food – nutrition before and after pregnancy but also a nourishing nutrition in general.

Commonly, health problems are also social problems: since some years, a particular attention has been put on household air pollution, mainly from open fire or stoves fuelled by biomass. Illnesses related to this kind of pollution are directly linked with women rights and their social status. In many developing countries, women are confined in small places with a continuing running stove without air filters and they unintentionally expose their children to household air pollution. Over four million people die prematurely from illness linked with household air pollution and more than 50 percent of the death among children under five are caused by particulate matter soot (often pneumonia).

In order to fight against these health problems, many specialists say that the connection and cooperation between public health services and private or NGOs sector must be strengthened. The role of the public sector and health care NGOs is particularly relevant in both developed and developing countries, as the public funds for health are reducing worldwide: in five years they have been reduced by 0.4 percent on the total World GDP, from 6.4 percent to 6 percent. Moreover, public sector can provide the wide and general view, namely policies, and NGOSs their knowledge about local environment and societal needs.

Given these figures, it is absolutely clear that health is one of the main issues to be discussed during the upcoming Expo Milano 2015. There are many events, past and upcoming, that had seen health in the core of the debate. Most of them are supported and sponsored by the European Commission and Laboratorio Expo. Two of them will take place in few months. On May 13^th, 2015 the European Commission (EC) Pavilion at the Expo will host a debate on Healthy diet for a healthy life managed by JPI HDHL together with JPI FACCE, with the goal of discussing on how to face “the impact of climate change on providing our future population with a sustainable food supply that has the nutritional requirements to ensure a healthy population”.

Two days later, on May 15^th, the EC Pavilion will host the final conference of EURODISH, a 3 years Seventh Framework program that explored the ways to strengthen European research for public health nutrition strategies across Europe. More events will be revealed in the next months.

Giacomo Destro is currently working as science communicator at Laboratorio Expo, mainly focusing on multimedia and new media outputs.

Europe and Africa: cooperation for health

Simone Petralia — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 09:41:00 +0100

Healthcare is a crucial issue for Africa: every year, according to data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), hundreds of thousands of people in the African continent die due to infectious diseases. The registered cases of yellow fever are 200,000 annually, with a mortality rate of around 50 percent, in Sub-Saharan Africa 25 million people are HIV-positive (more than 10 percent of them are children) and in West Africa, in addition to the outbreak of Ebola that caused nearly 8,000 deaths in 2014, an equally devastating cholera epidemic is ongoing. Not to mention historical diseases that cause many victims, such as tuberculosis and malaria. That is the scenario, certainly not encouraging. In recent years, however, something has changed. The scientific collaboration between Europe and Africa in the field of healthcare research was intensified, particularly thanks to the projects promoted by the European Union. One of the most important is ECDTP.

ECDTP Program (European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership) was founded in 2003 with the aim to combat and defeat the infectious diseases (AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria) in particular regions of Sub-Saharan Africa through the development of accurate clinical trials and the creation of new drugs and vaccines. Thanks to EDCTP, 241 projects were financially supported between 2003 and 2013. Within those projects were conducted 88 clinical trials: 31 on AIDS, 25 on tuberculosis and 32 on malaria. ECDTP2, the second ECDTP program, which began in 2014 and will develop over a decade, has been included in Horizon 2020. The European Union will contribute with 683 million euro, while other 1.5 billion will come by individual European countries. In total, the project involved 11 African countries and 13 European countries. EDCTP2 represents an important milestone in the cooperation in medical research at par between Europe and Africa.

In particular, as regards Ebola currently there are not vaccines licensed. However, there are many vaccines ready to be developed. IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative) launched Ebola+, a program to find quick solutions to Ebola and diseases linked to it, such as LHF (Lassa hemorrhagic fever) and MVD (Marburg virus disease). The program involves collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, experts from universities and small biotech companies. The initial budget is 280 million euro and will result in projects involving the production, transportation and storage of vaccines and the development of rapid diagnostic tests. The first projects are expected in early 2015 and the first one will generate the data needed to evaluate the safety of the vaccines ready for development and the level of protection that vaccines offer against the disease. Thanks to Ebola+, it will be possible to create a platform that can quickly produce enough vaccine to carry and store in a safe manner, in accordance with the requirements of quality and strict security, since currently the main problem is that few manufacturers can respect the rating required for safe production of vaccines.

In recent years, investments in the health sector in Africa have grown at an impressive pace, and it is expected that only in Sub-Saharan Africa they will reach 35 billion dollars by 2016. During 2015, the partnership between Africa and Europe will know another important opportunity for growth. On 26 and 27 February 2015, the third edition of the Africa Healthcare Summit – which is the most important European event related to the healthcare in Africa – was held in London. The summit involved delegations from ministries of health and finance in Africa, health professionals, hospital directors and investors, and international experts in the health sector. The purpose of the summit was to take stock on the development of projects related to health African so far and assess the prospects on future investments.

Intimate partner violence against migrant women

Cristina Da Rold — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 09:48:00 +0100

In the European Region, one in four women has been a victim of physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in her lifetime, and one in ten has experienced non-partner violence. Violence between partners is endemic and widespread, but for immigrant women it is even worse, especially because of the conditions in which they often live in the host country.

In Spain, for instance, a cross-sectional study published in 2012 showed an intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence of 27.9 percent in migrants, compared to 14.3 percent in Spanish women. But it is certainly not the only example. 43 percent of Roma women experienced physical violence and 36 percent suffered from psychological violence. At the same time, official data on IPV among ethnic minority women are often lacking, due to huge barriers that preclude immigrant women to report episodes of gender inequality.

This is a widespread issue, as underlined by Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General, during the International Migrants Day, on 18^th December: “Women and children, always the most vulnerable among the vulnerable people, suffer most […] all migrants should have access to essential health services”.

In this sense, institutions have the most important power. Firstly, concerning the monitoring of this problem at national level, secondly because it is important to pass the message that violence against women is preventable. The most recent report concerning this issue has been published in 2014 by WHO and it titled Preventing and addressing intimate partner violence against migrant and ethnic minority women: the role of the health sector. The report aims to provide input into the role of the health sector in preventing and addressing IPV among migrant women and those of ethnic minorities.

This last publication is a policy brief, so its crucial point is to describe the problem in order to find a solution, through a series of recommendations for health policy and health systems, health facilities and health service providers. Because IPV can be prevented only if all institutions – meaning Governments, NGOs, but also associations – collaborate.

An interesting map concerning the active surveys on violence against women comes from another WHO report, published in December 2014, called Global status report on violence prevention in 2014 and focuses on all kind of violence throughout the World. Data on partner violence reveal that the majority of countries around the world has some form of monitoring concerning this topic, even for instance some of the poorest countries worldwide, where fundamental human rights are not guaranteed. The problem is that it does not seem a good indicator for the real IPV situation. In fact, according to WHO data, in 2010 lifetime IPV was, for instance, at 16.3 percent in East Asia and 65.64 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Monitoring is just the first step. Institutions must then coordinate themselves and act. One of the first paths is to improve the accessibility of migrant women to the health system.

As the report shows, the underuse of health services among women experiencing IPV is mainly related to a lack of knowledge about national women’s support programmes in the host country. Moreover, language and cultural differences could also create misunderstanding between these women and the health staff, which often is not able to provide the right degree of confidence. In other words: the importance of communication among the stakeholders and between migrants and the health care providers.

Actually, an effective answer requires a multi-level approach. There are three different levels on which Institution can act: at the health policy and health system levels, at the health facility level and finally at the health provider level. Let’s start with the first, whose main points are to promote social participation in the organization of the whole health policy and the coordination between the health system and other sectors, to identify specific objectives and indicators for monitoring, and to evaluate the national scenario.

At the health facility level, the main recommendations concern barriers that keep migrant and ethnic minority women from accessing to health services. For OMS the best way to achieve this goal is by identifying relevant programme adaptations that respond to the health needs of these groups of people, by developing systems for organizational learning relating to intimate partner violence and by exploring opportunities for prevention activities within primary care.

Finally, the health provider level, which means working face to face with women who are in a very vulnerable condition. At this level, the most important thing is to create networks of health care professionals, in order to build a reference system for ethnic minority women. But there is another problem concerning IPT: health care providers often lack many cultural information about these ethnic groups, while at the same time migrants do not know many legal aspects, like the legal implications of health service work with regard to intimate partner violence. Moreover, is fundamental for health provider to become familiar with research literature on health provider bias and discrimination in medical decision-making.

To sum up, the WHO main message is that violence can be prevented, but it does not mean that this is an easy goal to achieve, especially in ethnic minority communities. However, there are some good practices already working in Europe, and the WHO report shows three of these case studies. The first is RIU VIOLETA (2010), a community-based intervention that aims to promote gender equality and prevent GBV especially in Roma and migrant communities. The intervention was supported by the Health Council of the Valencia autonomous community government and the Spanish Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality. Another example of good practice is a special toolkit developed in 2009 in UK to enable a better care of Asian women with physical and mental health consequences of living with domestic violence and abuse. Finally, between 2010 and 2011, a French NGO offered migrants people some professional training courses on violence against women and girls.

The WHO report on violence throughout the World

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 11:02:00 +0100

Homicide is the third leading cause of death globally for males aged 15-44 years. In general, there are 1.3 million people worldwide die each year from some form of violence, particularly among low-income people. A quarter of all adults report having been physically abused as children, one in five women reports having sexually abused as a child. One in three women has been a victim of physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner at some point in her lifetime. And one in 17 older adults reported abuses in the past month.

These are just some of the data contained within the Global status report on violence prevention in 2014, published in December 2014, the first WHO study that provides an accurate picture of the current situation concerning violence worldwide.

| Create infographics

|Create infographics

Violence is still widespread, but at the same time, just over half the countries are fully enforcing a set of twelve laws generally acknowledged to prevent violence. That is because there are many countries in the world that are still lacking an effective system of data collection for the monitoring of the main forms of violence, as armed violence, violence against women, children and elderly people. Furthermore, only half of all countries have services in place to protect and support victims of violence. The consequences of violence on physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health often last for the whole lifetime. Violence also contributes to leading causes of death such as cancer, heart disease and HIV/AIDS, because victims are at an increased risk of adopting behaviours such as smoking, alcohol and drug misuse, and unsafe sex.

The starting assumption of the WHO is that violence, even if it cannot obviously be eradicated from human being, it can at least be reduced through good practices. Violence is a significant public health problem in its own right, and a major risk factor for lifelong ill health and other social problems. A kind of combination that can lead to substantial economic costs. Moreover, violence is not synonymous of death, of course. Non-fatal acts of violence take a particular toll on women and children. One out of four children has been physically abused; one out of five girls has been sexually abused; and one out of three women has been a victim of physical or sexual intimate partner violence at some point in her lifetime.

How can we act?

According to the report, we can prevent violence through two main steps: with effective monitoring systems at national level and by precise rules, laws and initiatives to fight the culture of violence. “Violence is a multifaceted problem with biological, psychological, social and environmental roots” we read in the report.

First step: we need national surveys

The starting point – WHO writes – are always them: data. Trying to collect as much data as possible on violence, in order to better understand where and how stakeholders must act. But this kind of data are not simple to collect. We need efficient and comprehensive monitoring systems, which still do not exist in many countries. A prime example is the number of homicides in the world. Fully 60 percent of countries do not have usable data on homicide from civil registration or vital sources.

Nowadays, it is still impossible to construct a complete map of the surveillance activities currently active worldwide, since for many countries, the WHO has no data. In any case, even just looking at the available data, we realize that there are not many areas of the world that provide monitoring for all forms of violence identified by WHO, which means armed violence, violence against children, women or to elderly people. If the map that photographs violence against children is in fact quite coloured green, which means the presence of a surveillance system of this form of violence, things are not going so well about armed violence or, more generally, on interpersonal violence.

Interpersonal violence map

Armed violence map

Second step: we need national action plans

This means acting to correct information, educating children to non-violence in schools, trying to encourage dialogue between young people and adults. And from a more practical point of view, lowering for example the use of alcohol between adult individuals, monitor the possession of weapons, whether guns or knives, planning paths to promote gender equality. The report calls for a scaling up of violence prevention programmes in all countries; stronger legislation and enforcement of laws relevant for violence prevention; strengthened justice and security institutions to uphold the rule of law.

However, laws apart, the crucial point remains the presence of a concrete plan of action at the national level and also in this case data are few. They are only 133 countries in the world where you can do the assessments. However, based on the information in our possession, it remains clear that despite the WHO warnings, there are still many countries in the world where even today violence is not perceived as an enemy to fight.

Even in Europe.

|Create infographics

Using communication to fight epidemics

Cristina Da Rold — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 09:36:00 +0100

During epidemics, pandemics, natural or environmental disasters, the problem of communication is one of the primary issues to deal with, and scientists and stakeholders know this well. It is a two-sided issue: communicating risk without creating any alarms, and an effective communication between persons who manage emergencies.

In this sense, many steps forward have been realized and many others are being made. In any case, there is a huge awareness in Europe concerning the need of a better health risk communication. The changing paradigms of public communication during infectious outbreaks are the core of TELLME Project (Transparent communication in Epidemics: Learning Lessons from experience, delivering effective Messages, providing Evidence), a collaborative project co-funded by the European Union’s 7^th Framework Programme, which worked on these topics for three years. And on December 4-5, had its final conference hosted in Venice, with the intervention of national and European institutions that took part in the project.

The project

TELLME’s main purpose was to develop new protocols for health communication, based on scientific evidence, to be applied when there are infectious disease outbreaks. It combines public health, social sciences, behavioural sciences, political sciences, law, ethics, communication and media. The aim was to develop original communication strategies regarding complicated messages and advice based on uncertainties, also addressing vaccine-resistant groups. Just visiting the project website, we realize that a considerable amount of activities have been done during these three years. Let us try to summarize here the main points that emerged from interventions during the final conference held in Venice, thus representing the lesson taught by TELLME experts.

Risk communication is not synonymous with public relations

In this sense, Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, from the School of Public Health of the University of Haifa, presented a new communication model of epidemics, based on the interaction of all the stakeholders involved, including the end user. “We need a new universe of discourse,” said Gesser during her Venetian speech. This new scenario consists of the following key components: the public sphere, segmentation, mass media, social media, opinion leaders, scientific research and stakeholders, which means Government and institutional actors (policymakers), pharmaceutical industry and commerce, community-based public institutions and infrastructures, and civil society organizations.

Researchers suggest that risk communication requires a multi-layered approach that takes into consideration technological, cultural and social developments. “The purpose of this model is to avoid the communication chaos we found ourselves stuck into, in the past,” Gesser said. “For a long time we thought that communication was the equivalent of an injection of correct messages in public, while now it is being increasingly recognized that the public can no longer be regarded as an empty vessel to be filled, but must be involved and transformed into a communication partner. "

We must act on primary care staff

A good health risk communication do not involve just communication officers. It includes everyone, especially primary care staff. In this sense, TELLME experts have created two e-learning courses for primary care staff, both approved by the experts of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The first course offers a huge number of basic health information on infectious diseases such as influenza or SARS, along with several guidelines on how to talk about these issues with patients and citizens. The second course, specific to Ebola, has been reviewed by the National Institute for Infectious Diseases Spallanzani in Rome, and was credited for training courses by the Italian federation of associations of doctors and nurses (FNOMCeO and IPASVI).

Social media can help a good communication

As reported by Annet Gesser-Edelsburg and Alexander Talbott during the final conference, social media can fuel misinformation exponentially but, at the same time, they can also become a powerful vehicle for good practices. Especially if the online presence is built before the occurrence of an outbreak. Many healthcare professionals use social media to exchange clinical information, search for, discuss career opportunities, and engage in discussion on the latest health news and research. TELLME has taught us to invest also on these people. Twitter viral power, for instance, was highlighted in a scientific paper claiming that in the space of 30 minutes the rumour of riots in a Birmingham children’s hospital gained momentum through the process of re-tweeting a dramatic but erroneous tweet.

Vaccines are still a crucial point

Vaccination hesitancy and refusal is still diffused and represents a great risk in case of pandemics and epidemics. A study published on December 12^th by Anat Gesser-Edelsburg, Yaffa Shir-Raz and Manfred Green on the Journal of Risk Research is clear on this point. The authors examined vaccination hesitancy or refusal following the 2013 polio outbreak in Israel and highlighted the difficulty of framing the subject of vaccinations as a preventive measure, especially when the prevention is for society at large and not to protect the children themselves. It concludes that the public’s risk perception is based on a context-dependent analysis, which is something the communicating body must understand and respect.

As already emphasized during a previous conference by Barbara De Mei, from the Italian Institute of Health, the goal of a vaccination campaign should not be “how to convince people”, but “how to facilitate the access to vaccines”. Which means that communication must facilitate the mother’s choices. How? Through new communication models that had to be integrated with more traditional ones, in order to strengthen the communication skills of those engaged in the field of vaccination.

Ten golden rules of risk communication

TELLME experts have elaborated ten golden rules for proper and effective risk communication that summarize their results and observations:

Organisations cannot afford to simply be reactive; they must build a social media presence before a crisis, to create a sense of online community with the public and develop key followers.
Health risk communication is NOT a one-way message system. The aim is for an interactive two-way process for the exchange of information and opinions between individuals, groups and institutions.
Plans must be comprehensive and flexible in order to deal with the unpredictable and changing nature of a pandemic.
Timing is important. Early communications will help to avoid speculation and false reporting.
Outbreak communication needs to contain credibility, accountability, transparency and honesty.
Organisations must take a proactive stance in establishing an authoritative presence on social media sites to build a community presence before a crisis happens.
Monitoring social media and trending topics allows to ensure you have a stake in the conversation and can adapt to the changing information needs of the community.
Appealing to healthcare professionals is critical. They need to be targeted not only to pass messages on, but also to act as ‘vaccination ambassadors’; if social media is to be adopted as a serious crisis communications tool by them, organisations need to quantify and integrate the value of social media as a mean of spreading public health messages.
Online communities must be considered as a key resource. Social media appears to encourage pro-social behaviour, which means users share useful information with each other; thus contributing towards the collective body of information and knowledge.
The effectiveness of outbreak communications relies greatly on meeting the information needs of various key stakeholders, including risk groups such as pregnant women and the elderly.

How technology can extend our senses

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 09:31:00 +0100

Imagine that you are on the top of a mountain, looking at a beautiful panorama. Then imagine being able, thanks to modern technology, to read the names of the peaks you are watching, their altitude and the composition of their rocks. This ability is called augmented reality.

Actually, augmented reality is no longer a dream, but something concrete that we can have literally in our pockets. There are augmented reality apps for our mobile phones that enable us to digitally interact with historical monuments in our towns and villages. A glimpse of this can be seen with the famous Google Glass, which can give us traffic news, as well as updates on received messages. In other words, an enrichment of our sensory perception can be achieved through the augmentation of digital information, effectively extending our five senses. This is, and will be, a very powerful technology, and Italy is at the forefront of the research in this field.

Virtual Reality vs Augmented Reality

“There is a huge difference between what is called virtual reality and term augmented reality,” explains Stefano Messelodi, researcher at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler and among those who have taken part in the VENTURI Project, which focused on vision-enhanced augmented reality and ended in autumn 2014. “Virtual reality creates artificial environments that do not exist in reality and enables virtual subjects to move within them.” A good example of this research field is Euroversity, which is a tool designed to support the development of virtual world environments. “Augmented reality is another thing,” Messelodi continues. “It means the insertion of digital information into a real environment, and to ensure that this additional information is harmonized with the environment in which the user is located.” To sum up, augmented reality represents a natural enrichment and not an artificial substitution, thus deepening the environment around us.

The VENTURI Project

In 2011, the European Commission invested 3.6 million Euro in the VENTURI Project (immersiVe ENhancemenT of User-WoRld Interactions), coordinated by Fondazione Bruno Kessler, and this money paid off handsomely with a very positive final outcome during the final meeting of the project in Grenoble, France.

“A lot of the technologies developed inside VENTURI are ready to become consumer products, giving citizens the possibility to visualise historical content and observe social information through a three-dimensional mechanism,” Messelodi says. For instance, VENTURI developed a prototype mobile platform, equipped with advanced sensors, which was able to understand the context where the user was moving. Taking advantage of data available on the Internet and within the social networks, the system can also provide useful inter-personal information and social context, moment by moment, whilst on the go. This software technology exploits the power of modern mobile devices such as smartphones, smartwatches or head-mounted glasses to give a decisive boost to augmented reality applications right now.

The AR Tour of Grenoble is just one of the many possible exploitable outcomes coming from the project. The VENTURI team represented an international effort and included Fraunhofer HHI (Germany), ST-Microelectronics (Italy), metaio (Germany), e-Diam Sistemas (Spain), Sony Mobile (Sweden) and INRIA (France). The two-day final review of the project culminated with an ‘augmented’ walk through Grenoble city centre, together with representatives of the European Commission. Researchers presented various cutting edge technologies that are ready to become products, available soon on Android devices and downloadable by tourists. “We made a beautiful experience in Grenoble,” Messelodi concludes. “There are other cities, like Trento, Munich and Barcelona that are already interested in replicating this experience in their own centres”.

Germany: world champions also for funding research

Francesco Aiello — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 09:14:00 +0100

Surpassed only by the United States, China and Japan for R&D allocated funds, Germany has decided to raise the biddings and has pledged around 31.6 million dollar in the next 6 years to support specials research and higher education programmes. Germany, which celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, is the most populous nation in Europe and the most important economy of the Old Continent, with 100 billion dollars spent every year in research and development. The funds for special programmes have remained constant even during the global financial crisis. Between 2005 and 2010, despite the recession and the rebalancing of the public budget, the grants allocated to the State Research Institutes grew annually of 4.7 percent.

The promises of Angela Merkel during the last political campaign have become reality and will be approved on the 11^th of December. The political campaign itself, in 2013, marked a turning point. Whilst all parties disagreed on economy, foreign policy or welfare, they all agreed on one aspect: research and development. In their political programmes, the parties currently represented in the Parliament – among them the Green and the Left Party – definitely assumed a pro-science stance. All of them, for example, stated the importance of energetic research as a priority for supporting Germany planned transition – known as Energiewende – from a non-nuclear to a low carbon emission system by means of renewable energetic sources.

The decision of increasing funds is also a necessity due to the important growth in registrations in German Universities. Currently, there are 2.6 million students over 300 German Universities, five times higher than in the past; the percentage of students within the reference age group passed from 5 percent to almost 40 percent. The new plan allows funding for 26,000 dollars per year per student. It will increase also the budget of DFG (German Research Foundation), principal national agency for university research funding. On 2015, DFG will receive in total around 3 billion dollar (increase of 5 percent) from federal and state governments for the support of research in any field of science and humanistic disciplines.

This increase will allow the agency to allocate a greater number of grants; despite regular budget increases, in fact, the percentage of grants funded by DFG has decreased from 42.5 percent to 31.3 percent from 2010. “We are very satisfied” declares Horst Hippler, President of the German Dean Conference. “The agreement is an important step for guarantying financial stability to our universities”. The increase of funds will not only favour universities, in fact important non-academic research organizations – like Max Plank Society, Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz Association and Helmholtz Association – will register yearly increases of about 3 percent (against inflation rates less than 1 percent), until 2020. Since 2005, the total budget of these four research bodies, which administer a total of 254 research institutes and big centres, has passed from 5 billion dollars to 7.9 billion.

Besides, the Council of Ministers has decided to prolong beyond 2017 the initiative “German Excellences” promoted by the Federal Government. This is a university competition to award excellence clusters and selected schools of specialisation. Universities can participate as a whole institution on the basis of their future projects for broadening research to maximum levels. In total around 2.7 billion euros have been allocated for improving German research. “This commitment is extremely important for the further development of the whole German research system, in particular for the universities” states the President of DFG, Peter Strohschneider on the first page of Nature.

The European position about GMO

Giulia Annovi — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 09:40:00 +0100

The Environmental Commission and the Environment Council said yes to “the right to decide”. Member states may independently establish to ban or approve genetically modified (GM) crops and seeds on their soil. Only the vote of Parliament is left to approve this new rule. European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has declared GMOs safe for cultivation and has just launched an open consultation to renew applications of GM food and feed authorized, in order to further check the GM safety. But there is still some European states reluctant to introduce GM corps. For this reason, now each state can decide its own policy. Socio-economic or environmental reasons and the different land uses are the possible official excuses to deny the GM crops access into a member states.

In Europe there are still a lot of citizens who widely reject GM foods: according to Eurobarometer 2010 on food related risks, 27 percent of Europeans are very worried about GM in food and 39 percent is fairly worried. Thus, governments can take the decision to ban GM plants to follow the will of their supporters. The GMO cultivation proposal was effectively presented by the Commission in July 2010 and it has already been examined during several presidencies. The Environment Council of 9 March 2012 was not able to reach a political agreement, as a blocking minority of delegations still had concerns regarding some issues.

According to Italian Minister of the Environment, Gian Luca Galletti, “The agreement about differentiated GM crops introduction policy is the legislative priority in environmental sector during the Italian presidency”. With the concession to decide to restrict or prohibit the cultivation, each member state can specify in the application of the GMO company producer that the GMO cannot be cultivated on all or part of its territory, even before the European authorization to GMO.

Why GMOs are arriving?

So far, 52 GMOs have been authorized by EFSA but Europe has allowed the cultivation of just one GM maize variety (MON810) produced by Monsanto. This product’s genetic modification aims to protect the crop against a harmful pest and it was authorized for commercial purpose in 1998. Spain (137,000 hectares), Portugal (8,100) and Czech Republic (2,800) are the major producers of MON810, which has been also introduced in Romania and Slovakia.

In 2010, “Amflora” a GM starch potato, was authorized for cultivation and industrial processing in the EU, but it is no longer cultivated since 2011. According to the Corporate European observatory, the European openness is mainly due to some big business groups. They sustain an agreement in order to remove any differences in trade related legislation between the EU and US.

In fact, since 2013, negotiations between the USA and the European Commission to ratify a new trade agreement has been activated. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could contribute to the European economy for 120 billion of euro, and it is an attractive statement for business and enterprises. GM crop can already be sold in Europe and TTIP rules seem to guarantee the European law respect. However, Europe is trying to get close to US and business groups probably dream of better harmonized standards between the old and new world.

So are we prepared to the GM seeds and crops invasion? Consumer safety will be assured. Firstly, the risk assessment carried out by the EFSA will remain as strict as it is today. Then Europe has set up the European Union Reference Laboratory (EURL), which is responsible for reviewing detection procedures to identify GM organisms. In fact, each GM plants needs its own test, and tailored assays are an important part of EU authorisation procedure.

Moreover, food containing unauthorised or potentially dangerous GMOs cannot be put on the market and the safety is assured by strict approval criteria. Finally, EU labelling rules ensure the freedom of choice for the consumer, which is informed whether or not genetic engineering was used to produce a food product. Probably, in this context the singularity is not in consumer rights, but in European decision-making process.

The first Italian platform for smart cities

Cristina Da Rold — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 09:29:00 +0100

At the beginning of 2015, the first Italian smart-cities platform will be online. It was presented as a preview at the Smart cities Exhibition held in Bologna at the end of October, and it has been realized by Observatory Smart City of ANCI. It collects more than 1000 projects of smart cities in Italy and we will be able to navigate it from the beginning of 2015.

The cities involved into smart cities projects are 84, for a total of 1028 projects, which means about 17 projects for each city while 16 percent of them has been realized in partnership with foreign countries. The Observatory estimated that the total value of these actions is about four billion euro.

Actually, the term Smart cities has a lot of meanings, reflecting all the different forms of intelligent urban projects. They involve municipalities, but also enterprises, universities, schools, banks, hospitals. They mean talking about saving energy, the enlargement of public parks, urban regeneration, and planning. Cultural heritage, transportation, working on social inclusion. In other words, smart cities mean seven things: environment, energy, economy, people, governance, mobility and living, and among them, the richest is the area of governance, which collects one-fifth of all projects. E-government in particular, which covered a third of the projects concerning governance, that is, 15 percent of all the smart cities projects.

Remaining into the field of governance, 22 percent of the projects covers urban planning, 16 percent sharing government, 8 percent open data and transparency, and 5 percent cloud computing. Also notable is the repartition of the projects concerning environment: 30 percent of them are about pollution control, 32 percent for renewable energy and 26 percent for sustainable buildings.

|Create infographics

The biggest framers of this smart revolution are the large municipalities, above 150,000 inhabitants. According to these data, more than 46 percent of the total projects were reported by municipalities and the majority of contributions – about 70 percent – came mostly from the Centre and North, above all Emilia Romagna, Lombardia and Veneto, while in the South, Puglia stands out with 98 actions.

|Create infographics

Since the word “dataset” is really loved, here the curators are keen to specify that it is not a database, but rather “a new and important way to give maximum visibility to all processes involved in the definition of smart cities”, emphasizes Paolo Testa, Director of Cittalia ANCI. A starting point from where to plan the resources in view of the new community program 2014-2020.

Moreover, it represents an inspiration for those – municipalities businesses or public administrations – who still did not assess projects related to smart cities. The idea is to offer the opportunity to know what other cities has already done, in order to encourage the open dialogue among different cities and between the public sector and enterprises, and to eliminate fragmentation. In addition, the platform will be navigable also in English, to encourage foreign investors and catalyse future relationships.

AMS Prize to Bottazzini: "History of mathematics is modern"

Cristina Da Rold — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:56:00 +0100

Another international scientific award that speaks Italian. Umberto Bottazzini, Full Professor at the University of Milan and Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, was recently awarded the 2015 Whiteman Prize “For His many works in the history of mathematics, notably on the rise of modern mathematics in Italy and on analysis in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.”

His activity concerning history of mathematics is wide and varied, both as a researcher and as a communicator. We interviewed Professor Bottazzini on what it means to study history of mathematics today and what are the most important paths to be covered. The answer he has given to us is simple: nowadays the history of mathematics should serve first of all to the mathematicians themselves, and to do this it is necessary to especially focus on the mathematics of the last two centuries, which is not yet studied enough.

Although they have been very wide, in fact, Bottazzini’s studies have always followed a precise direction: “history must serve primarily to the present, and possibly to the future.” An idea that has been translated over the years into the choice to focus on the mathematics developed after the French Revolution, in particular on the history of real and complex analysis. “If you take any book concerning the history of mathematics, you realize it has a ‘pyramidal structure’ (with very rare exceptions): a wide base devoted to the mathematics in the Antiquity, the works of Euclid, Apollonius and Archimedes. Conversely, as the centuries pass, the pages dedicated to the most recent contributions are always less. I believe that we must reverse the pyramid and investigate what happened in the last centuries, for instance since Napoleonic age.”

Almost the entire production of Bottazzini concerned the nineteenth century, with particular attention to the history of Italian mathematics. This has been the subject of his last book La patria ci vuole eroi. Matematici e vita politica nell’Italia del Risorgimento, written with Pietro Nastasi.

When we asked to him “what is the major work that makes you proud?” Bottazzini answered without hesitation: Hidden Harmony – Geometric Fantasy, written in collaboration with the mathematician Jeremy Grey; a book that describes the history of complex function theory from its origins to 1914. It represents the first history of mathematics devoted to complex function theory, and it draws on a wide range of published and unpublished sources. In additions to an extensive and detailed coverage of the three founders of the subject – Cauchy, Riemann, and Weierstrass – the book looks at the contributions of great mathematicians from D’Alembert to Poincare and from Laplace to Weyl.

“It is important that mathematicians themselves are more interested in the history of their discipline, and in my opinion this interest has decreased substantially in recent years. There are a little more philosophers who care about this topic, but they are certainly less than a few years ago, although there are some oasis where research in this field is still carried out brilliantly, as the Florentine school, for instance. In addition, the relationships between philosophers, logicians and mathematicians are not very frequent, and, as a consequence, some arguments like for example the so-called ‘question of the foundations’ are studied less than a few years ago.”

To conclude, the message that we received talking with Bottazzini is therefore clear: much has already been said, now is the time to investigate what has not been studied yet. It is the time to illuminate the dark corners. “I do not know on what I will work in the future. I have not decided yet what I will do as an adult,” jokes Bottazzini. “For now, apart from some books in progress, there are two tentative lines of research that I intend to follow: the first is the biography of Enriques as an intellectual of the last century. This would be a natural continuation of the book on Italian mathematicians in XIX century. The second one would be devoted to scientific revolutions, by wondering, before all, what they are and if there really occurred in mathematics. Shortly, to pick up the thread drawn from Thomas Kuhn, and wonder if these categories are still founded today.”

Waste is past: the situation in Europe

Giulia Annovi — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 09:24:00 +0100

The 6^th edition of the European week for waste reduction closed on November 30, but promotions and actions have still to go on, since the Commission needs to boost recycling in the Member States. During the week 22-30 November, around 12.000 initiatives across 28 countries have been proposed, aiming to foster the implementation of awareness and raising actions about sustainable resource and waste management all around Europe and beyond its borders. Why is important to reduce waste? Not recycled residues are an environment’s threat. Moreover, nowadays waste is increasingly recognized as being a useful resource. In Europe, 492 kg of municipal waste was generated per person in 2012 (Source Eurostat).

Click on the picture to explore the map.

Some Member States still send more than 80-90 percent of treated waste to landfill, which accounted for 34 percent of waste treatment in 2012, and the target to reduce waste sent to landfills by 50 percent has not been reached by all Member States. To date, only 42 percent of our municipal treated waste is recycled or composted; the rest goes to landfill or incineration.
Moreover, many packaging materials are sold and then used by citizens as recyclable, but then delivered to landfill or incineration. Packaging producers have to estimate local recycling capabilities when new materials are introduced into the market.

Click on the picture to explore the graph.

In July 2014, Brussels has asked Europeans to recycle 70 percent of municipal waste and 80 percent of packaging residues by 2030, and ban burying recyclable waste in landfill as of 2025, along with food waste reduction objectives.
The European proposals include the vision of a new economic model, based on re-use, repair and recycling (namely the 3-R model). The new paradigm, also named Circular Economy, may be able to introduce new business, since the global waste market, from collection to recycling, has an estimated value of EUR 400 billion per annum, and to hold significant potential for job creation (580.000 positions).
However, this improvement in waste production and management will not happen without the right policies, and “research and innovation are the keys to success for the Circular Economy”, said Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.

European actions against waste

Beyond the European week waste reduction initiative, funded by the Life+ programme, there have been other projects dedicated to waste prevention. ZeroWastePro will focus on the three main pillars of waste management (3-R) in the Circular Economy, with particular attention to minimal financial and environmental costs. The outputs will concern enhanced competences on waste prevention, educational tools and eco-innovative technologies and solutions for SMEs.

Concerning food waste reduction, Europe has funded the project FoRWaRd, to develop a free online training plan, with the aim to prevent the estimated rising of annually wasted food in Europe to about 126 million tons by 2020. A shared vision and strategy to forestall food loss and waste across the whole supply chain through social innovation have also been developed by FUSIONS, a 21 partners’ project that began in 2012 and will expire on 2016.

Agriculture could be another source of waste production and resources consumption, because of high environmental impact of intensive farm systems. WasteReuse aims to develop technologies for the sustainable recycling of waste, nutrients and water in agriculture. Since citizens are directly involved in waste production, prevention and management, the VOICES is a participative project designed to involve citizens in addition to science, technology, civil society organisations and policy experts. The results of the VOICES consultation directly influenced the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 calls.

Horizon 2020 and the waste reduction loyalty

Under Horizon 2020, funding opportunities have been already launched within Societal challenge pillar. This call addresses the whole production and consumption cycle with the investment of 20 million of euros, and the final target is the near-zero waste society. The goal concerns the introduction of innovative processes and services, including organisational and management systems and business models that increase product lifespans. The creation of a buyers’ group of public procure could be the opportunity to overcome the fragmentation of demand for eco-innovative solutions for waste management.

The applications will be developing solutions for a better recovery of raw materials and for a more sustainable agriculture or in managing the urban dimension, and finally in food waste and packaging materials reduction.
Policy, education, communication and economic instruments will be important tools to spread a more sustainable use of resources and residues. The research outputs will be freely available at GEOSS and Copernicus websites, underlining once again that waste threat needs the global commitment.

Air pollution: a cost for health

Giulia Annovi — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 10:38:00 +0100

With the beginning of 2015, some new rules for cars emissions will come forwards in Europe: vehicles will have not to emit more than an average of 130 grams of CO₂ per kilometer and, by 2021, the target will be further reduced at 95 grams. In fact, road transport contributes to about one-fifth of the European’s total emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. And transport is the only major sector in the Europe where greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. Europe is still far from achieving its objectives about levels of air quality, in order to reduce unacceptable risks to human health and the environment.

The European Environmental Agency 2013 report has estimated the air pollution trends from 2002 to 2011, highlighting a general reduction of emissions.

However, despite the trends the European limit and target values for particulate matter (PM) were exceeded widely in 22 European countries and 33 percent of urban population has been exposed to high level of pollutants in 2011.

When air is not healthy

Air pollution is one of the major environmental health risks, contributing to respiratory (14 percent of clinical cases) and cardiovascular diseases (80 percent), and lung cancer (6 percent). WHO reports that in 2012 around seven million people died – one in eight of total global deaths – because of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates: for the low-middle income European countries the morbidity due to air pollution is about 75 in 100,000, while in high-income countries it decreases at 44 in 100,000. Moreover, recent evidences have attributed to air pollution other adverse effects: for instance, exposure during pregnancy has been associated with reduced fetal growth, pre-term birth and spontaneous abortions; air pollution may act on the nervous system impairing cognitive functions and increasing headache and anxiety; gas emissions have impacts on liver, spleen and reproductive system.

Furthermore, air pollution has considerable economic impacts, cutting short lives, increasing medical costs, and reducing productivity through lost working days across the economy. According to the “Cost of air pollution” 2014 report, gas emission are not cheap for national healthcare: in 2010, it cost about USD 1.7 trillion, and road transport accounts for about 50 percent of this amount. Between 2005 and 2010, the economic cost of death for air pollution increased by 7 percent.

Tech tools for the future of air

By taking advantage of open data, it is possible to monitor the quality of air in our cities in real time: Europe is almost green in this moment, but data about Italy are lack. And in any case, London, Italy’s Po Valley (including Venice), parts of Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands are still considered hot-spot for air pollution.

Even if we lack data, short term effect studies (such as Medparticles) in Europe showed a clear north-south gradient in the PM-mortality association: Mediterranean cities showing higher relative risks then the Northern ones, because of higher air temperature, particles composition and Saharan dust influence. The long-term effects of air pollution are known because of large epidemiological studies performed in USA and Canada, Japan and China, but information are poor about Mediterranean countries. For this reason, in 2013 the Medhiss European project (with the Union contribution of 791,000 euro) has been launched, to collect health and air pollution long-term data from four countries: France, Spain, Italy and Slovenia. The correlation between mortality and morbidity data, as a consequence of urban and rural air pollution exposure, will help in fulfilling the final goal of the project that will end in 2016: the development and updating of the European Union environmental policy, in order to reduce health effects of air pollution.

But air pollution studies also need practical implications. In order to fill the gap between studies on air pollution consequences and applications at clinical level, the European Myair - Pasodoble project has arisen within the Copernicus earth observation programme, contributing with maps and data. Pasodoble offers a shared framework for European countries, able to manage the quality and efficiency of informative services to support healthcare, forecast for tourists and athletes, and activities in environment monitoring agencies.

Horizon 2020 instead will try to develop technological tools able to fight against air pollution. This is the core of the forthcoming call, offering a budget of 50 millions of euro to projects dedicated to this topic. But environmental actions could not be untied from projects dedicated to cities mobility, like Re-seeties, with its contribution of 375 millions of eurs for smarter and cleaner vehicles in our cities. Technological applications are considered as the future answer to air pollution monitoring and reduction.

How to apply to Horizon 2020, successfully

Giacomo Destro — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 09:36:00 +0100

Although the future of science in Europe is strongly debated, Horizon 2020 is still ongoing and the number of opening calls is increasing. In some countries, such as Denmark, scientists have already being trained to apply successfully for H2020 calls of proposals, while other countries seem to leave the initiative to individual researchers. In the Seventh Framework Program, Italian performances were good, but nothing more: we gave 13 percent of the 7FP budget, but reaped only 8.43 percent. This time could be better: yes, but how?

We talked about that with Lidia Seravalli, an Italian project manager specialized in European funding. After her graduation in International Relations at University of Florence and a master degree in anthropology in Paris, Seravalli began managing projects funded by the European Union, first for University of Venice, then for the Municipality of Venice and now for Enel Foundation.

Let’s go straight to the point: which are the most common mistakes in applying for a EU call?

Usually, one of the biggest mistakes happens before applying. Researchers try to fit their research project into an open call. On the contrary, the proper way should be to find a call that fit the research project. Another problem is the “do it yourself” activities: appliers often don’t involve funding specialists; as result, they are not able to translate accurately their technical requirements into economical terms. This stage is particularly difficult, as it could lead to undervalue or overestimate parts of the budget, and this could lead in not passing the EU examination. The core issue, after all, is to propose an appropriate budget.

What do you mean for “appropriate” budget?

A likely budget is a large share of the final decision, at the European level. Dealing with so many Countries, with so many different approaches, bureaucracies and traditions, the European evaluators have to find a common and fixed paradigm to evaluate projects. And budgets can help a lot about it. As evaluators will see timesheets and check over the years the activities of the appliers, it is fundamental not to cheat while drafting the budget. A correct estimation of the person-months ratio is crucial, and difficult: that’s why I suggest to involve in the research team a professional specialist in European funding. To draft an appropriate and likely budget means to have certain skills and a lot of expertise.

In your experience, what is the biggest problem for Italian appliers?

It is directly linked with what I said before: in order to estimate a proper budget, you have to know exactly the bureaucracy timing – an information often impossible to gain in Italy. In other words, usually Italian appliers undervalue the role of bureaucratic process into their applications. Moreover, Italians are seen with a particular watchful eye, as in the past some scandals had eroded our credibility in managing the EU funds.

Generally speaking, what are the parameters that evaluators consider the most?

As I said, a likely budget first. But, after all, a truly innovative project has a lots of chances to win. For “truly innovative” I mean something that is really brand new, with an accurate literature review and a correct state of the art. Therefore, I would say that, despite the bureaucratization of the process, merit is the key issue in applying successfully.

Any further suggestions?

My experience suggests one more thing: read the political documents that frame the research policies. They are long, boring and sometimes complex, but in those documents you can find the keywords and the political vision of the evaluators. It could seem a loss of time, but it will help a lot in the long run.

The European fight against food frauds

Giulia Annovi — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 23:04:00 +0100

“Nutrition is the principle of life”, and to defend it the Conference on Food Fraud has been opened in Rome on 23^rd October. Conceived as a platform to discuss how to strengthen the communication and collaboration among all actors involved in the fight against food frauds and fraud-related crime, the conference has gathered together top experts from food law enforcement authorities, police, customers, judicial authorities, industry stakeholders and researchers.

The different types of food frauds include adulteration, counterfeiting, substitution (e.g. a selected fish substitutes with a lower quality one, sold at the same price) and deliberate mislabelling of goods. The adulteration of food could also pose potential health risks, but it is not only about that: it is always an intentional action carried out for financial gain. High-grade frauds are those made with food of low quality and low cost for the producer, but without appreciable and immediate effects on health.
According to the European Parliamentary Research Service, food chain in Europe is worth some €750 billion a year. The agro-food industry is the EU’s second biggest industrial sector, employing 48 million workers in 17 million companies. Thus, food fraud “endangers the credibility of European culture”, as the Italian health Minister said. In fact, losing consumers’ faith has the direct consequence of sale decrease with a big economic damage, comprising the lack of taxes payments. For these reasons, in a context of arbitration, the financial crime must also be considered and punished.
Moreover, food frauds could represent a big damage for Europe also because there are police forces dedicated to weapons, drugs or women traffics, but there are less controls for food, making the fraud an easy way to gain money with low probability of punishment.

The world food fraud monitoring

In the European context, the phenomenon of food fraud has intensified in the last years: in 1980, 20,000 European citizens have been intoxicated by adulterated olive oil and, starting from 2000, authorities have registered about one big fraud per year.

In 2001 the cow meat, in 2007 the melamine in pet’s food, and during the following year 300,000 Chinese children got sick because of the same stuff in milk leading to kidney failure. Finally, in 2013 there has been the horse meat scandal, when many consumers have paid a high price for a cheaper substitute of beef meat.
The US Pharmacopoeia Convention (USP), which set up a global database of independently documented examples of food fraud, added almost 800 new records, based on information published in scholarly journals and the media in 2011 and 2012. Milk, vegetable oils and spices have consistently appeared in the list of ingredients most prone to fraud.

Carmen Bureau, Head of Unit of European Commission DG Health and Consumers, said: “it’s necessary to create a legislation able to pass national boundaries and to embrace all food fraud related crimes, associated to a strong cooperation between independent authorities working against food fraud”.

The Europe actions against food fraud

In order to gain the consumers faith, it is necessary to strengthen an accurate information about origin and contents of foods. For this reason, on 13^th December 2014, new rules for foods labelling will be applied.
Moreover, in the context of controls for food safety, the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) has to be fortified: the public access portal is a way to share information among the 28 European Countries, in order to rapidly recall the adulterated foods from the market, but also to collect data and create reports about the food fraud.
Rules to set up coordinated controls among European countries within well-established terms, and learning programmes for experts and authorities in food fraud fight, have still to be defined. Meanwhile, the Belfast University has organized a free online course to provide advanced knowledge of food safety and food security across different levels of the food supply chain. Also, it is mandatory to standardise the analytical skills: harmonisation and exploitation of research and modern technologies are of primary importance to ensure the integrity of European food. And the Food Integrity project is an international effort to reach these purposes.
Lastly, Glenn Taylor, assistant head of Regulatory Services Hampshire County Council, linked the past with the future: “it’s also important to learn from history, because adulterated stuffs are never written on food labelling”. In fact, altered foods frequently have common nature: herbs, spices, drugs and spirits are often involved in frauds. But looking at future, “we can’t omit the web commerce and the internet advertising”, added Taylor. Thus, in food frauds it will be more and more important knowing the context and then asking the right questions.

Forest management and climate change

Giulia Annovi — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 09:59:00 +0100

We can not move through time, looking at future scenarios, but we can travel in space. Climate is changing, bringing severe repercussions on ecosystems and environments. In the case of forests, causes and consequences are tied with double strings: climate changes could affect forestry equilibrium and forestry impairment could enhance climate change, since they play an important role in carbon fixation.
In order to paint future scenes, scientists could assess forests’ condition by taking some common trees (Pinus, Quercus and Eucalypt) as models and moving through latitudes with different climate scenarios. Since South Africa is exposed to a warmer and drier climate than Europe currently is, this could help to forecast the European situation if climate change predictions hold true.
The project Climate Fit Forests, founded by Seventh European FP with 205,800 €, has gathered together scientists from different countries (Germany, Switzerland, Italy and South Africa), studying carbon dioxide dynamics and their impacts on forests’ growth, when climate conditions change because of latitude.

When climate changes, the carbon dioxide fixation in phytomass could be altered with consequences for both volume production and wood quality. In this context, Climate Fit Forests collected data could increase our knowledge in carbon dioxide fixation, as well as it could help in forests management for economic and livelihoods purposes, not only assessing wood quality but also evaluating gas emission during wood processing operations.

The final goal is the creation of tools for governments to assure management facilities for forest under the threat of climate change. The simulation tools will help in forest system’s dynamics forecasting (in terms of biomass accumulation and distribution in the course of climate change), and in estimating carbon dioxide emissions by forest operations.

Platforms for forest’s changes monitoring

Forests are at the same time sinks and sources of carbon dioxide. They absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, store it as carbon and release it through respiration, decomposition and combustion. In this perspective, deforestation is among the largest sources of carbon dioxide production, covering the 17 percent of the global greenhouse gas emission by humans or approximately 5.8 Gt of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e), per year.

FAO, with the “Forest monitoring and assessment” project and in collaboration with the UN-REDD programme, has launched on 10^th October a OPENForis Collect software, able to collect and analyse data about woodlands extension, number of species, and quality of trees. The new tools simplify the complex process of transforming raw data (e.g. tree measurements or satellite imagery) into valuable information.
The programme, involving for the moment 20 tropical and equatorial countries, allows to calculate changes in trees resources, in carbon pools and in biodiversity.

By making countries aware about how much forests they have or how much carbon they can lose with deforestation, this approach will encourage in finding better policies able to preserve forests and, as a consequence, to counteract climate change and food insecurity. In fact, there are four main mitigation strategies in the forest sector: reducing emissions from deforestation and from forest degradation, enhancing forest carbon sinks and product substitution (using of wood instead of fossil fuels for energy and wood fibre in place of materials such as cement, steel and aluminium).

The 2011-2015 UN-REDD strategy for forest preservation in developing countries will be implemented in a new roadmap spanning from 2016 to 2020, based on national policies and action strengthening. During these days, the consultative strategy development process has been closed, after an online and regional consultation. This will contribute to the development of a successful 2016-2020 UN-REDD Programme strategy.

Saving the carbon dioxide sinks of Europe

Forest destruction is a threat not only for developing countries. According to a new study published in the journal Regional Environmental Change, also European carbon dioxide sinks run the risk of being destroyed. By 2090, the area burned by forest fires could increase by 200 percent because of climate change, throwing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Since more the 95 percent of forests fires are caused by humans, the prevention could significantly reduce the phenomenon.

For this reason, European Community funded from 2010 FIRESMART, a project to set a more pan-European approach to fires prevention. Fire prevention knowledge from different European nations has been gathered together, in order to identify strengths, weaknesses and knowledge gaps and to create a network among stakeholder involved in forestry. Comparing data of European Forest Fire Information System and Global Fire Emissions Database and the created model, the paper on journal Regional Environmental Change, estimates that prescribed burnings and improved fire suppression could be two elective methods to counteract European forest destruction.

Rosetta and the Italian politics for scientific research

Fri, 28 Nov 2014 09:36:00 +0100

Despite the not-always adequate coverage provided by the Italian media, the European Rosetta Mission, which carried out in the last days the first landing on a comet in history, kept the whole world holding its breath and has been an extraordinary scientific, technological and organizational success. When initially proposed by ESA – the European Space Agency – the aim of the mission was practically science fiction. But thanks to the cooperation of thousands of scientists from tens of research bodies and to an effective partnership networks with state-of-the-art aerospace industries, the ambitious goal has been achieved. Many observed that the scientific way of blending knowledge, expertise and know-how that brought to the Rosetta’s enormous success could set an example for an effective organizational model of the Europe-system.

And Italy? We discussed about that with Giovanni Bignami, President of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).

What about Italy, in this context?

Rosetta shows that scientific research, also basic research, is essential for growing and achieving great results. Therefore I violently disagree with the government when the idea of “made in Italy” is only related to “food & fashion”. I try to point out that fundamental science pushes both technology and industry to find those innovations that, on the one hand, qualify them and, on the other one, create jobs, and above all improve the quality of our lives in the long term. I feel I have the obligation to highlight this chain effect to our politicians, but I am struggling, as it is a political effect by nature.

Why is it hard to communicate this message?

With all eyes pointed on Rosetta, many people wonder: “Why are we doing it? Why are we spending so much money to send a probe on a comet?” But I am sure that they, too, take pictures with their mobiles. Well, their cameras work with a sensor called CCD, a technology invented by astronomers. The Nobel Prize for Physics went this year to the inventors of blue LED: a technology born within theoretical researches. Today we all use LED: in Italy is often common to ignore that scientific research can provide great economic returns.

What can Rosetta teach us from this point of view?

With Rosetta we “forced” the Italian and European industries to do things that were thought to be impossible. It seemed impossible to intercept a comet travelling 20 kilometres per second, 500 kilometres far from Earth, but thanks to the great motivation given by scientific research we were able to do it. It was a great success also for our INAF and ASI (Italian Space Agency), but it is not in the interest of scientists only, soon or later all this will have technological and economical returns for everyone. This is what Rosetta can teach us: that science produces innovation and that it lets emerge the best of the nations involved.

Can we expect a greater awareness from Italian politics in the next years?

I really don’t know. The direction is decided by the political sphere, but we also need to teach citizens to respect scientific culture. And this also goes through communication activities.

In Sweden the most powerful neutron microscope in the World

Cristina Da Rold — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:34:00 +0100

Three of the main Italian research institutions, together with the Ministry for Education, University and Research, participate in one of Europe’s most ambitious projects of recent years: the construction of the most powerful neutron microscope in the World: European Spallation Source (ESS). It will be built in Sweden and will be used for interdisciplinary studies, from life sciences to physics, from nanotechnology to pharmaceuticals. A collaboration between CNR, Elettra Synchrotron of Trieste, INFN and MIUR will put Italy among the largest investors in the project, for a total of 104 million euro invested, and perhaps first in Europe in terms of number of topics in which it collaborates. A research infrastructure involving a total cost of about 2 billion euro, whose construction will start in 2015 and that will see the development of the first research programs in 2022-2023. In short, the current Italian teenagers might obtain their own PhD in ESS.

We have asked about ESS to Eugenio Nappi, MIUR representative in the Steering Committee of ESS and recently nominated vice-president of the INFN.

“ESS is the last born research organization in Europe after CERN and ESA,” Nappi explains, “a new infrastructure capable of accelerating protons just as CERN accelerators do, with the difference that here the main focus is on producing a huge quantity of neutrons. In addition, unlike what is done at CERN, ESS will study both the structure of organic and inorganic matter by means of neutron scattering.”

But what is a neutron microscope and what is its function? “It is basically a proton accelerator,” says Nappi, “made to snatch neutrons from the target material, which are subsequently delivered to the experimental stations where experiments are performed. Since neutron scattering is a very challenging technique, intense and fast pulses of neutrons are required to achieve the desired performance; for this reason, the goal of ESS is to provide neutron beams featuring an intensity 30 times larger than that currently available at the brightest existing facility. The reason why neutrons are chosen is that they are the most suitable particles to study the biological matter.”

The applications of this technique are many, starting from the radiographs of construction materials, such as those used for building nuclear power plants. “There is already an infrastructure similar to ESS in UK, which is called ISIS,” Nappi said. “It allowed English Government to save a considerable amount of money, since it was able to determine, with greater precision than other current techniques, how much life actually the materials of the nuclear plants still have, in order to dismantle them not before the time.” Another relevant area of application is the development of new materials, being the neutron scattering technique able to provide detailed images of molecular structures.

But what is perhaps of utmost interest is precisely the role that Italy played and will play in this huge international project. Certainly not a secondary one compared to the German model or to the English example. Although it is true that in recent years, when Italian Government had to cut financial resources, it has often started from the field of research, it is equally true that Italy is always at the top, when it comes to the highest level.

“We are currently on the fourth position – after Germany, which is in first place, UK and France – concerning the investment to ESS, with € 104 million,” Nappi explains. “Furthermore, we are among the few who have already signed the agreement for funding, along with Spain and UK.”

Finally, there is also another aspect to consider. “Of course, we are at the fourth position regarding funding committed, but at the same time we are the country that has wider expertise, because we are taking commitments for most aspects of the project,” concludes Nappi. “Through INFN, Italy has in fact contributed to the design of the neutron source and the accelerator section at low energies; Elettra Synchrotron Trieste is involved in the aspect of the accelerator system diagnostics, and CNR into the field of neutronics instrumentation. For this reason, EES is for our country a great opportunity and we have a prominent role in EES just because we have been able to coordinate the involvement of these three excellent research institutions and benefited of the resulting large synergy.”

The Glover case. Why Europe has lost its scientific advisor

Giacomo Destro — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 10:20:00 +0100

Someone could have hoped for a different end, but the signs were all clear: few days ago, Juncker made a final decision on cutting the role of the Chief Scientific Advisor at the European Commission. Apparently, this decision came after a struggle between the scientific community and some environmental NGPs, one above all, Greenpeace. But the story is more complicated, and is related to the new geopolitical axis in Europe: science has been (one of) the sacrificial victim in the war over the new balance in the European politics.

Since the beginning

Anne Glover had been the first, and the last, Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA): the adventure begun in 2010, during the Barroso Commission II. Since then, she faced a strong opposition, especially from some Members of the Commission and some Member States, as her role was designed on the UK and US scientific advisory model, and considered a too powerful position; however, Barroso decided to endorse the CSA position, but with a very low budget and less power over bureaucracy. Despite that, Glover, a Scottish Professor in microbiology, took her role seriously and started an intense action, first of all trying to map the scientific advisory models of each EU Member States. Her approach was frank and down to earth, but she started to face opposition from part of the civil society as she stated that there was not sufficient scientific evidence in saying that GMOs are dangerous for human health. But, until this summer, her position was not at the center of the stage. Then, quite suddenly, in July the situation got complicated.

CSA vs the Commission in a nutshell

The political struggle over the election of Juncker seemed to take science as an hostage. On the public, and explicit, point of view, CSA position was opposed by environmental groups due to her abovementioned position on GMOs. Actually, their stance against Glover’s position was taken as an example of how giving the scientific advisory power to just one person could mean to leave an open doors in multinational corporations’ lobbying activity. On the other hand, many scientists explicitly asked Juncker to leave her in office. Meanwhile, in the famous Mission Letter to newly nominated Commissioner Carlos Moedas, Juncker framed his general science policy into an industry driven research, with very few places left for basic research. On a closer inspection, the Letter already contained the headstone for the CSA experience, as Moedas was charged with “[making] sure that Commission proposals and activities are based on sound scientific”.

Why?

So, at the end of all, why did Juncker take this decision? There are, at least, three reasons. First of all, a dangerous lack in European civil society consensus, after the scandal on Juncker’s financial activities in his home country, Luxembourg. In other words, it seems that endorsing environmental groups’ position could lead to a positive return of consensus in the public opinion. But the deep meaning of this decision must be found somewhere behind the scenes.

A second reason could be the attempt to strengthen Moedas’ role into the Commission. The Portuguese new Commissioner of Science and Research have a lower role compared with his predecessors (the energy issue, in particular, is shared with other Commissioners), but he was one of the few who “safely” passed the Parliament examinations. Moreover, Moedas needs to gain trust by the scientific community, as many feared his lack of experience in scientific policy-making.

The third reason is quite indirect, but certainly has some weight in the decision. Juncker and the United Kingdom Prime Minister Cameron are in open contrast, since the election of the former Luxembourg Premier. While, in the UK, the debate whether to remain or not in the European Union project has become a hot discussion, Juncker had to undergo Cameron’s decision in endorsing Jonathan Hill as a Financial Commissioner (a sort of guardian over the banking union project), who had some problem in passing EU Parliament hearings. In brief: probably Glover CSA position had been exchanged with Hill portfolio, as, on the contrary, two British citizens could have had too much influent positions.

What’s next

Juncker decided to reorganize the entire advisory system in the EU. First of all, he renamed the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) in European Policy Strategy Centre (EPSC), with a new structure – the CSA position was not mentioned. Anyhow, it is still not clear how Juncker will manage independent scientific advice: in other words, the struggle over an evidence-based approach in EU policy making is far from be solved.

Bugging and promoting the excellence in physics

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:31:00 +0100

It calls itself “a knowledge hub”, a place where people from developing countries can share and learn at the top level. It is located in Trieste, Italy. Founded by a Nobel Laureate, it is funded (almost) by a single country, but ruled by two outstanding international organizations. It has already a great fame, due its scientific excellence and its role in promoting and educating the best young scientists from all over the world. But it is also the victim of a spy story: this year the International Centre of Theoretical Physics (Ictp) is celebrating its 50^th anniversary.

A winning bet

The key protagonist in creating the Ictp is a Pakistani Nobel Laureate. Mohammad Abdus Salam was born in 1926 in a rural district of Punjab, in Pakistan, descendant of an old family devoted to education – they were also part of the Ahmaddiyyia community, a minority religious movement of Islam (this affiliation caused its voluntary exile from Pakistan in 1974). Firstly, he tried to enter the Indian Railways, but failed the medical tests. Then, he started a glorious academic career: a BA degree with Double First-class honor in Mathematics and Physics at Cambridge, the Smith’s Prize from Cambridge University for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to Physics, a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the Cavendish Laboratory, the Adams Prize, and, at the incredible age of 33 years, the Fellowship of the Royal Society. He was the first Pakistani and the first Muslim scientist to win the Nobel Prize in 1979, for the electroweak theory. In the Sixties, he was deeply involved in building up the science policies in Pakistan, as he had played a major role in developing the national space program and the nuclear technology for peaceful use – but he had had also an ambiguous role in the Pakistani nuclear bomb project. In 1964, together with professor Paolo Budinich, the “father” of the Trieste System, he founded the Ictp (called Abdus Salam International Centre of Theoretical Physics after his death), with the aim of “providing scientists from developing countries with the continuing education and skills that they need to enjoy long and productive careers” in order to be “a major force in stemming the scientific brain drain from the developing world”.

One of the leading science diplomacy tool

Ictp was created with three general goals: foster the growth of advanced studies and research in physical and mathematical sciences, provide an international forum of scientific contact for scientists from all countries and conduct research at the highest international standards. This, first of all, means the need of money. The Ictp is almost entirely funded by the Italian government, but these funds are independently managed by both Unesco and Iaea: this point is important, as it can be consider one of the first pure tool of science diplomacy inspired by a global vision, rather than national interests. Only in 2013, nearly 6,000 visitors (23 percent of whom were women) from 139 countries participated to 29 training activities (18 of them in the Trieste campus, 11 in the developing countries). More than half of the postdocs students (56 percent) comes from developing countries: the Ictp activity in promoting and enriching scientific excellence in the developing world is hectic. But, in fifty years, there have been also ambiguous moments.

Bugging the Physics

In May 2014, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed that the Ictp was one of the main target of the United States National Security Agency (NSA) secret spying activities. In particular, Ictp was part of the Upstream collection project, i.e. the monitoring the optical fiber submarine cables, from where pass nearly 99 percent of the Internet data. It is suspected that Ictp can also be a target of the British Gchq’s Tempora project. Why the NSA was so interested in Ictp? The institution explicitly promotes the knowledge also about nuclear physics, even the one that can be used for the atomic proliferation. Despite the fact that it is absolutely not the goal of the institution to promote the proliferation, often international research centers and institutions are the arenas where information among scientists are shared (and sometimes this helps peace); that is why the United States always feared that Ictp could be one of the channel from which Iranian scientists gained information about their nuclear program. Moreover, Ictp promotes many training program and scientific research in the Arab countries, such as the Synchrotron in Jordan. Being the funding country, why Italy did not protest, as the NSA activities was a clear violation of the Italian national information security, moreover against a research center?

Italy on the first line against Multiple Sclerosis

Cristina Da Rold — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 09:36:00 +0100

Italy is one of the most important country concerning the research on multiple sclerosis and the latest news about it come from the recent annual ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS meeting in Boston. A collaborative group led by Massimiliano Calabrese from the University of Verona was amongst the 20 funded projects across the world from the first announcement of Progressive MS Alliance – an international alliance of associations on MS, formed to accelerate the development of new treatments for this disease – that has provided 30 million dollars. This project will be carried out through the collaboration between Roberta Magliozzi from Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) of Rome, Massimiliano Calabrese and Salvatore Monaco, from University of Verona, Richard Reynolds from the Imperial College London and Owain Howell of the University of Swansea (Wales).

“To understand the importance of our project,” says Roberta Magliozzi “we have to understand the mechanism by which the disease develops.” Multiple sclerosis usually comprises two phases: a first phase, relapsing-remitting, in which first inflammatory attacks appear and slowly compromise the nervous system. Attack after attack, the situation begin to crystallize, the neurological damage became more and more severe and the patient gets into the second progressive phase for which no efficient therapies are available at the moment. “Our project just fits in the gap between these two phases,” explains Magliozzi. “We want to identify early diagnostic biomarkers of the progressive phase of the disease in order to block as soon as possible those attacks that lead to permanent neurological disability."

Not certainly a simple kind of research, which requires an international collaboration between research centres of excellence. One of the main trait d’union is Magliozzi itself, who has spent her PhD at the Imperial College in London, analysing the relationship between meningeal inflammation and cortical grey matter lesions in progressive MS. Since she returned to Italy to join the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Istituto Superiore di Sanità, she continued to study the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in MS cortical pathology. Meanwhile, a team of neurologists from the University of Verona was doing some experiments on live patients. These studies using MRI have allowed researchers to understand that all patients that had showed lesions in the cortical grey matter also showed a more severe course of the disease. “When we realize that the results obtained in the laboratories of London, Rome and those taken in Verona were similar, we began to coordinate our studies,” says Magliozzi “and we decided to propose a collaboration. With this collaboration, the project was born and was then selected among the top 20 from MS Alliance to be funded.”

“For this first year we obtained a loan of 70,000 euro,” Magliozzi specifies. “If after this first year the prospects will show promising results, we will proceed with the second part of the loan, which amounts to 500 thousand euro, shared by four research groups.” This amount will cover all the costs of the research and scholarships for young researchers working both in London and in Rome.

In particular, while in England researchers will test post-mortem brains, collected and available for research use at the UK MS Tissue Bank of Imperial College London, in Rome at Istituto Superiore di Sanità, in collaboration with Francesco Facchiano, a detailed proteomic analysis of the liquor collected by the MS patients recruited in Verona will be performed. In Verona, these MS patients will be followed, and their lesion load and clinical follow-up will be performed by using new advanced magnetic resonance imaging technologies, able to precisely reveal cortical lesions and atrophy.

In a project like this, however, the winners are not the researchers, but the patients; those who were in Boston with the hope of seeing quick results before it is too late for them. “The thing that struck me in Boston,” Magliozzi concludes “is that you realize how much of what for us is a goal to reach, is actually what makes difference for these people’s life and for the life of their children. Many of the persons who have supported our project were together with us in Boston, and all of them may enter into a disability stage in less than five years. This is the reason why it is a deadline that we will try at all costs to follow.”

Just one move to ward off flu. An Italian discovery

Elisa Vicenzi — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 09:23:00 +0100

As every year, the winter season is synonymous of influenza viruses causing health problems and significant economic losses for public and private companies. One small, but not negligible, percentage will incur in complications and, potentially, there will also be an increase in mortality for new-borns and elderly patients, caused by the same virus. The vaccine against the seasonal influenza virus strain protects with an effectiveness estimated between 75 and 80 percent – therefore quite good – but not complete. Besides, the vaccination must be repeated yearly as influenza viruses change continuously and the composition of vaccines against seasonal viruses must be updated with the same frequency. Then there is the periodic occurrence of pandemic influenza, such as the famous “Spanish flu” in 1918 that killed more people than the First World War. Pandemics occur when the changes in the viral genome (composed by eight independent RNA segments) are such that the virus is completely unknown from an immunity point of view to the world population. It is therefore essential to identify strategies that allow to design a vaccine able to prevent the infections by several different – and hopefully all – influenza viruses that are circulating.

For this reason, the Cariplo Foundation, by means of its research programme on vaccinations, has allocated a significant grant to the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, for a collaborative study with the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) of Bellinzona, the University of Milan and the Istituto Zooprofilattico delle Venezie of Padua (a public veterinary institute). It is also through the Cariplo Foundation’s support that it has been possible to turn a dime in the vaccination strategies against influenza viruses, as proved by the recent publication of the study on Nature, one to the most important scientific journal worldwide.

The discovery consists in the identification of antibodies produced by our immune system that are capable of broadly neutralising flu viruses. These antibodies bind to a conserved site in the stem and not to the globular head of the viral haemagglutinin. Antibodies are the primary defence mechanism against any kind of infection. The synthesis of an antibody is the result of the initial assembling of several DNA segments present in our genome, followed by a complex maturation process based on the introduction of mutations and successive selection of the best antibodies variations with the highest affinity. The latter contain up to 20-40 mutations that are considered necessary for optimising the process of pathogen recognition and elimination. The unexpected discovery was that one single somatic mutation is sufficient for developing an antibody able to bind with high affinity and, consequently, neutralising the influenza virus with great efficacy, whilst the numerous further mutations successively introduced resulted essentially redundant.

From the published study emerged that the synthesis of these “rapid” antibodies (in subjects less than 40 years old) requires a particular genomic distribution, i.e. a DNA segment (VH1-69), which is present within the population in two different variations of which only one represented by the majority of people, is able to produce broadly neutralising influenza viruses. The study has been conducted within a cohort of about 350 employees of the San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, vaccinated against the seasonal influenza virus in autumn 2006 and 2009. The volunteers were taken a blood sample before and after the vaccination. These samples were tested for the presence of anti-influenza antibodies and for the polymorphism of gene VH1-69, able to produce broadly neutralising antibodies. The minority of individuals who did not have the “right” variant VH1-69 did not result, in fact, able to generate these antibodies. However, it is important to specify that also subjects over 40 years old missing the “right” variant VH1-69 are able to develop these kind of antibodies using other DNA segments with similar properties (probably because they have been more exposed to infections or vaccination than younger people).

In conclusion, this work represents a significant step forward for the goal of a “universal” vaccination against influenza, both seasonal and, above all, pandemic.

The (un)health that surrounds Ebola

Cristina Da Rold — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 09:13:00 +0100

It is known that a virus like Ebola finds an ideal breeding ground of infection in weak healthcare systems. However, the fear of a large-scale European contagion is spreading. Although it is true that Ebola is really frightening, it is equally true that a comparison between a country such as Italy and countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is at least difficult to maintain. Tuberculosis, Malaria, HIV, low rates of vaccinations: the African ecosystem in which Ebola has developed is crippled, and the majority of its inhabitants are highly exposed to infections. How much crippled? The WHO data describe the incidence of major infectious diseases in the area and of the systems of vaccination.

As we have already pointed out, three out of the four affected nations – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – are among the poorest in the world, with much of the population without a salary. Three countries in which the health expenditure in 2012 has been less than 200 dollars per capita, while a country like Italy has spent 3,040 dollars per capita in the same year.

Moreover, as pointed out on August 5^th by James Ball of The Guardian,“Since the beginning of the Ebola outbreak in February, around 300.000 people have died from malaria, while tuberculosis has likely claimed over 600.000 lives. Ebola might have our attention, but it’s not even close to being the biggest problem in Africa right now.”

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is the first infectious disease in the world. It is estimated that TB killed over half a million people in the Region in 2013. But the biggest danger is given when it combined with other infectious diseases, as HIV, and in this sense in Africa this kind of contagious is very diffused. Another danger arises when TB develops resistance to the antimicrobial drugs used to cure the disease. In fact, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis could develop resistance to the antimicrobial drugs used to cure the disease. In these cases, TB does not respond to at least isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most powerful anti-TB drugs.

Actually, tuberculosis is also present in Italy: 3,142 reported cases in 2012. The difference with African countries is that in Africa the percentage of the population affected is about an order of magnitude greater. In Liberia, 0.19 percent of the population suffers from tuberculosis, 0.22 percent in Sierra Leone and about 0.1 percent in Guinea, while in Italy the percentage is 0.05 percent.

Malaria

One of the greatest dangers of daily life in Africa is called malaria.

Malaria is the most important parasitic disease, and the second in the world for infectious disease morbidity and mortality after tuberculosis, with 500 million new clinical cases per year and one million deaths per year. Malaria is an infectious disease caused by protozoa of the genus Plasmodium and is transmitted to humans by female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles.

Malaria is present in over 100 countries around the world, but more than 90 percent of the cases and the great majority of deaths occur in tropical and equatorial countries. Within the three countries most affected by Ebola, according to the latest WHO estimates, the highest incidence was recorded in Guinea, with 38,333 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants. Liberia follows with 27.793 cases, and Sierra Leone with 19.027 cases.

HIV and AIDS

The numbers provided by the World Health Organization are clear: at the end of 2013, 11.7 million people had access to antiretroviral therapy in low and middle-income countries and 35 million people were living with HIV in 2013.

According to recent estimates, 60 percent of AIDS patients in the world live in Africa, and a considerable amount of them are children. Most of the children living in sub-Saharan Africa were infected by their HIV-positive mothers during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding. Over 240,000 children became newly infected with HIV in 2013.

Moreover, as we have said above, HIV is the strongest risk factor for developing active disease as TB. In 2012, approximately 320 thousand deaths from tuberculosis occurred among people living with HIV: one fifth of the estimated 1.6 million deaths from HIV in that year. In this sense, the majority of people living with both HIV and TB reside in sub-Saharan Africa, about 75 percent of cases worldwide.

Immunization

Even if in our country the debate on this topic is still fervent, in Italy 95 percent of children are now vaccinated against the major infectious diseases. On the contrary, in Africa, especially in countries affected by the Ebola virus, vaccination rates are much lower. In Guinea, for example, the percentage of children vaccinated under one year of age in the last years does not exceed 60 percent. Four out of 10 children are not vaccinated against the most common infections like measles or whooping cough.

The Ebola outbreak is scary. But even more frightening is the mingling of diseases that live in sub-Saharan Africa and the weakness of the populations and health systems involved, which makes Ebola even more dangerous.

Science versus politics in the European Union?

Giacomo Destro — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:06:00 +0100

The debate on scientific advisory and future policies is becoming very harsh in the European Union. In the last weeks, an increasing numbers of contributions have created a huge debate about the necessity of a Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) at the European top decision level, as the mandate of Anne Glover is close to its end. Meanwhile, the auditions of the future Commissioners are going not so well at the EU Parliament, as many faced fierce attacks from members of the EU Parliaments. In addition, a letter from the European scientific community put even more pressure on Juncker to stop his intention about switching funds from basic to industry-based research. In brief: the battle over the future of the European Union seems to pass through science, rather than politics.

The debate over scientific advisory in Europe

Everyone knew that the mandate of the first Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) to the Commission was ending. But many waited to express an opinion on the future of such an important figure, until the Moedas’ Mission Letter by President Juncker. That letter, in brief, meant two thing: first of all, a technocrat banker, who never dealt with scientific policies, was put at the head of the scientific policy making and funding process. Then, in the letter was clearly stated that he has the duty of “making sure that Commission proposals and activities are based on sound scientific evidence”; although Juncker now denies to make a decision on the future of the CSA post, it seems clear his opinion on the matter. From this point on, a huge debate arose, sometimes in a hectic way: does Europe really needs a CSA? In the last days of August, an important conference was held in New Zealand about scientific advisory to politicians, where experts investigated lessons from previous experiences. Meanwhile, some NGOs sent a letter to Juncker, asking him to abolish the CSA post, as it “is fundamentally problematic as it concentrates too much influence in one person, and undermines in-depth scientific research and assessments carried out by or for the Commission directorates in the course of policy elaboration”. This letter created a “war of letters” between who was in favour and who was contrary, effectively summarized by The Guardian. Basically, the question was whether a single CSA could offer a neutral views of the state of the art in each scientific area or not: NGOs, such as Greenpeace, said that a single person cannot bear lobbying pressure from powerful multinational companies (often referring directly to Glover’s stance in favour of GMOs), while scientists see CSA as a guarantee of independent and evidence-based policy making. The struggle is yet to be finished, but Juncker seems to indicate (indirectly) a preference on not renewing the post of the CSA, a move with deep political implications.

Commissioners under attack

In the last weeks, the clash between Juncker and a large sector of the European scientific community became more severe. Many designated Commissioners are facing strong oppositions while having the traditional auditions at their specific parliamentary commissions. These oppositions are based both on the person Juncker decided to nominate and on general political issues. Although Moedas passed his “examination” after a 3 hours long debate (the main point was his skills for the Science & Technology portfolio), a large majority voted in favour – with the exception of the left parties. The biggest problem came from the Commissioner for Education, Hungarian Tibor Navracsics, who did not pass the audition mainly due to his proximity to Hungarian President Orban, often accused of reducing civil rights. Other four Commissioner are about to follow Navracsics’ path. As result, the entire Juncker Commission (and political view) risks not to pass the overall vote at the Parliament general assembly on 22^nd October.

Antithetic views

The last, but not the less heavy, attack at the Juncker view of the future of science in Europe came from scientists themselves. In a letter, emotionally entitled “They have chosen ignorance”, they express their fear about a general cut on basic research funds, exactly the policy that Juncker indicates in nominating Moedas as Commissioner of Science and Technology. While Juncker wrote “I would like to focus more on applied research, with a greater participation of the private sector and a special focus on small and medium enterprises, in particular in Horizon 2020, with a view to reinforcing our industrial leadership”, they denounced “[Member States along with European leaders] have chosen to ignore the crucial contribution of a strong research sector to the economy, particularly needed in the countries more severely hit by the economic crisis. This has all happened under the complacent gaze of European institutions, which worry more about Member States complying with austerity measures than about maintaining and improving national R&D infrastructures that can help these countries change their productive model to a more robust one based on knowledge-generation”. The two are non-negotiable, antithetic and culturally opposite views of the European research, namely the future of Europe. Which one will win?

Close encounters of the third kind

Ilaria Capua — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 07:21:00 +0100

In the globalised environment, the interconnection and interdependence of economies enable pathogens to spread in unprecedented ways and extents. Human to human transmission (close encounters of the first kind) occur with pathogens that are well adapted to the human host, and spread between countries and continents. In a similar way, pathogens spreading between animals (close encounters of the second kind) spread not only within a farm, but also between different farms, due to trade, or live animals or vector movement, in a transboundary manner.

Close encounters of the third kind are those that enable pathogens that are maintained in the animal reservoir to cross the species barrier and infect humans. Movement of infected people or of the animal reservoir across countries and continents continuously cause outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, even at great distance from the index case. This has occurred on a global scale with pandemic viruses such as HIV or influenza H1N1, or, to a minor extent, with the diffusion of West Nile Virus at a national level, or with minor international spread – so far – as the MERS coronavirus. Certainly, increased awareness and response capacities are essential to the prompt identification and management of these outbreaks. However, greater transparency and the possibility of obtaining diagnostic reagents, viral strains and sequences in a timely manner would enable the scientific community as a whole to efficiently advance in the progression of knowledge. There are now several initiatives that are going in this direction. Initiatives that will be fully operational only if scientists will contribute with their data and materials.

In order to maximise the efforts of the scientific community, another issue that is essential is the capability of the scientific community itself to communicate with stakeholders. Here we need to develop close encounters of the first kind by engaging the general public in several aspects of science and health. This can be done through health festivals that should become part of science festivals worldwide. Scientists also need to continue to engage with other scientists operating in parallel disciplines (encounters of the second kind) to cross-fertilize and expand their areas of knowledge.

Very relevant are also the close encounters of the third kind, which concern communication between scientists and politicians. National and European politicians ultimately allocate funding and are responsible for direction and strategy within a given field. However, politicians’ and health professionals’ decisions are not taken based on the same data. This causes a misalignment between the priorities of the scientific community and those that are brought forward by political will. Politicians’ decisions are influenced by newspaper headlines, by the interests of their constituency, or by the protests or lobbying activity of the interest groups they represent. Thus, an issue that was believed to potentially become a major health issue, which is well managed and kept under control, or does not evolve into a worrisome disease, will be perceived by the media as a hoax or as a result of conspiracy between scientists and Big Pharma.

Scientists and healthcare workers often achieve great results in the identification and diagnosing of novel pathogens. However, media coverage about the escape of a virus from a laboratory, the risk of gain of function experiments with H5N1 viruses or the latest news on the inefficacy of Tamiflu, saturate the interest of the political establishment, and above all causes cuts in funding and shakes the credibility of the scientific community as a whole. This determines a loss of both focus and direction, which in turns led to a loss of energy, resources and time.

It seems reasonable that the scientific community understands the importance of establishing a communication channel with the political environment and of being prepared to reject the conspiracy theory or hoax accusation, whenever applicable. Such an approach would bring added value to their work and would enable the medical research community to do a better job for public health.

The winning season of the Italian research in technology

Giacomo Destro — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:30:00 +0100

The Italian technology and start-ups are having an interesting season. There have been some international initiatives in which Italy gave (and is giving) its best, at least in terms of technology: this could be seen as the first results of the renewed interests of the Italian government in a structured international scientific cooperation, through an implementation of the net of its scientific attachés and its scientific cooperation programs in Asia. Two events have been particularly interesting during the last months, one held at the Hong Kong Science Park and the other one in Brussels.

A successful landing in Hong Kong

First of all, Italian research institutions experienced a winning participation to the Soft-landing program for technology and innovation collaboration of the Hong Kong Science Park Corporation (HKSPC) – the Asian city’s provider of R&D facilities, infrastructure, and services for technological start-up. The Soft-landing program is a two-year program financed by the Hong Kong government to attract overseas start-ups to promote their technology, set up strategic outposts and foster collaboration between academia and industry. According to the Italian Foreign Ministry, “the participation of our country, in fact, has been qualitatively and quantitatively very important so far”. In total, 250 proposals have been submitted for the program from 26 research centers from all around the world, 70 of which from Italian entities. Among them, the Evaluation Committee has approved four Italian projects.

Winning technologies

Three out of four winning projects come from the university of Perugia. The aim of the project called Micro and Nano Energy Harvesting is the prototype of a new class of micro-powering systems to integrate the standard existing batteries even in electronic mobile devices. These systems is based “on the exploitation of energy present in the ambient (e.g. vibrations) and its conversion into electric power by using non-linear dynamics approach”. The second project, called Pulse-Compression Ultrasonic Technique for Non Destructive Testing Inspection of Forged Steel with High Attenuation, deals with large forged steel structures inspection, by developing a pulse-compression device for the ultra-sonic compression. Then, the third project presented by the University of Perugia is SCER – The Italian Acronym for Development of a New Renewable-Energy Conditioning System for Commercial Buildings, which is meant to provide a system aimed to reduce the energy consumption due to cooling, heating and electric power requirements in the large industrial and commercial buildings. The fourth project, subscripted by Isomorph srl, a private enterprise based in Trieste, is called Solar Pyrolysis with the Linear Mirror II and develops a pyrolysis system to heat bio-mass (hay) in absence of oxygen, producing gas and carbon with no CO2 emissions.

TechItaly 2014

In parallel, some days ago, in Brussels, started, TechItaly 2014 Boosting European Growth through Investments on Innovation, which is meant to be the arena where Italian research in technology and the global challenges designed by Horizon 2020 can merge, in order to create jobs and economic growth. In other words, TechItaly is “a unique opportunity to mobilize public and private sectors to transform global challenges into economic opportunities”. Structured as a series of four workshops (that will end in December, later this year), participants are asked to match the most updated technologies and advanced researches with the industrial needs. The first round has been held at the European Parliament in Brussels the 25^th of past September. The opening ceremony was introduced by the Italian Vice-President to the EU Parliament, David Sassoli, the Vice-President of the ITRE commission, Patrizia Toia, the Italian Ambassador Alfredo Bastianelli and the president of the Italian Institute for Foreign Commerce (ICE), Riccardo Monti. This kickoff meeting, divided in three parallel roundtables, was titled Transforming Global Challenges in Opportunities for Growth, clearly linked with the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges programs. The first roundtable dealt with cyber-security, the second with demographic changes and the third with raw materials. The next sessions will be hold in November (the 11^th) and will deal with Food Safety – in view of the forthcoming Expo 2015 – and (November 25^th) Cultural Heritage. Finally, in December 3^rd, the last session dedicated to Innovative Infrastructure. The events are organized and sponsored by the Italian Foreign Ministry, in the framework of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Innovation needs education

Giulia Annovi — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 10:33:00 +0100

Seventeen Italian universities have been included in the global universities performance table. The list, created by Times Higher Education, has been drawn up after a careful evaluation of university core missions: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

The highest Italian rank is the 63 position, achieved by Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa but, when considering the 182 European universities, Italy has reached the 15^th position. Some European countries have been cited several times in this list, while others are never mentioned. In Europe, the gap between the economically strongest nations that are able to invest in higher education and the poorest ones characterised by relevant investments reduction, is growing more and more.

In this context, the European University Association (EUA), the higher education community in Europe, has arisen with the precise aim to sustain the university development at national level, but also to enhance the general quality of European universities. Innovation, internationalization and sustainability are the main goals of EUA. And on 9 and 10 October 2014, the University of Bergamo will host the EUA funding forum, a meeting created to design strategies for efficient and sustainable funding for the European higher education.

University and the possibility to draw the future society

While the 2012 Bucharest Declaration established that “higher education should be at the heart of our efforts to overcome the crisis”, Europe has been undergoing a financial crisis that undermined the university capacity to adequate funding.
Moreover, the university challenge of cheer up the economic fate of Europe is also strictly related to demographic trends. Effectively, it has been estimated that, within 2050, the 20-24 years old population will undergo a reduction of 24 percent.

“Taking into account these issues”, said Stefano Paleari, dean of Bergamo University and EUA member, “we can distinguish two different kinds of universities: an education able to grow high skills workers, because future society needs such figures, even if they will represent only the 1 percent of population; and a system of middle quality, accessible to the entire community”. In front of these two trends, a perfect equilibrium would be revolutionary. “In this context, the political challenge is to compare the university of excellence with the international higher education institutes”, Paleari suggested. “But at the same time, it is necessary to take care of the middle level universities, in order to avoid social segregation”.

This second challenge concerns the welfare state and the demographic changes. In comparison to American universities, the Europeans ones are cheaper, but now it is time for a mandatory consideration of higher education sustainability. “In Europe, and mainly in Italian society, we need solidarity and individual responsibility, if we do not want to fall into failure”, Paleari said. “In effect, the current university risk is to invest in talented young, destined to work abroad and to come back to their country during the old age, when they need assistance”.

Italian university and the innovation challenge

In order to acquire the right equilibrium between responsibility and social attention, the Italian universities need flexibility. While during these years the Italian universities have faced the challenge of reaching the European standards with MOOCs, English courses and higher students mobility, the secret to offer an attractive context is to differentiate the academic proposals. “In order to perform this real innovation, we need more academics at our disposal”, said Paleari. In fact, while the ratio between academics and students in the first 100 European universities is one out to seven, in Italy there are one out of 30 university lecturers. “Moreover, the universities need a more intense mobility”, Paleari continues. “And this may also be an opportunity of employment creation. In fact, during this period an innovation without a real structural change has been realized”.

Data analysis, information management, and higher institution fees advice could be valid means to promise vivacity in academic framework. Motivation, recruitment and engagement are at the basis of system improvement. “And this does not mean privatization: Austria and Japan, for instance, have applied flexibility to university, maintain public funds”, Paleari assured. “We need to rethink the way to work and interact within the university”. Moreover, innovation has to push through young researchers: “money got from expenses reduction have to be invested in young researchers. Inclusion is mandatory,” concluded Paleari. In conclusion, Italy does not have an a priori gap in comparison with other European countries: Italy does not lack the will in taking on innovation challenge.

Adeus basic research, welcome Commissioner Moedas

Giacomo Destro — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 11:25:00 +0100

The Jean-Claude Juncker’s new Commission is taking shape. The first moves showed that the Barroso structure will be changed completely. This new course has invested the scientific policymaking, starting from the appointment of the new Commissioner on Science and Innovation. Rumors said that Juncker initially preferred a Portuguese woman, Maria Luis Albuquerque, Minister of Finance in Lisbon. But the Portuguese government wanted her to sit in a (at least apparently) top economic portfolio; so, after it became evident that it was not the position Albuquerque was looking for, Lisbon designated Carlos Moedas, a young technocrat who had an active role during the bailout of Portugal (ironically, “moedas” means “coins” in Portuguese). He is young, talented and serious, but some fears have arose after his nomination.

A banker

Carlos Moedas was born in 1970 in Beja, a city in the south of Portugal. His graduation in engineering is probably the solely point of contact between his career and science. After that, he worked for five years at the Suez Company, in France, and then obtained, in 2000, an MBA at the Harvard Business School. He went back in Europe, starting to work for Goldman & Sacks Bank in London, in the “merge and acquisition” branch, for four years and then he settled back in Portugal to create his own investment company. With the rising of the European debts crisis in 2008, he became coordinator of the economic research for the Portuguese Social Democratic Party (PSD, center-right), entering the team that negotiated with the Government the 2011 State budget. Since 2011, he was appointed Secretary of State: under this label, he was the one overseeing the ESAME, the agency who monitored the implementation of the structural reforms imposed by the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund). Proposed by the Portuguese Prime Minister in August 2014 (after the resignation of Albuquerque), he was finally accepted by Juncker in September. To complete his nomination he still need to be audited by the ITRE commission and then undergoes the vote of the European Parliament. If everything will be ok, he will be officially appointed as the new Commissioner of Research, Innovation and Science in November.

The new structure of the Commission

The Juncker’s Commission has a completely new structure. The Commissioners are no more directly referring to the President, but have to report to some Vice-Presidents. These Vice-Presidencies have been designed as “project managers” who oversee many related issues (each given to a particular commissioner) and has the duty of coordinating and help these issues to interact each other. In other words, the Commission does not appear as a “horizontal” structure, with everyone in charge of his own issue, but it will be far more hierarchical and mixed. In the Mission Letter, sent by Juncker to Moedas, the role of the new Commissioner is clearly described: “I [want] several Commissioners working closely together as a team, led by the Vice-Presidents, in compositions that may change according to need and as new projects develop over time… You will, in particular, contribute to projects steered and coordinated by the Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness and the Vice-President for the Euro and Social Dialogue, as well as the Vice-President for the Digital Single Market and the Vice-President for Energy Union. For other initiatives requiring a decision from the Commission, you will, as a rule, liaise closely with the Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness.”

Some fears arose

The career of Moedas and his duties as the new Commissioner on Science and Innovation have created some doubts in the stakeholders. First of all, he never dealt with scientific policy making during his career, contrary to Maire Geoghegan-Quinn. But, mostly, doubts arose as Juncker, who during the elections has already explained his view about scientific policies, wrote in the Mission Letter: “I would like you to focus… more on applied research, with a greater participation of the private sector and a special focus on SMEs, in particular in Horizon 2020, with a view to reinforcing our industrial leadership and our capacity to address societal challenges”. This address could be the key-factor that lead Juncker to nominee a merge and acquisition banker, who probably may have less problems in cutting budget for basic research. Moreover, in the Letter, Juncker asked Moedas “to make sure that Commission proposals and activities are based on sound scientific evidence and contribute best to our jobs and growth agenda”: although Juncker still denies to take an official decision (he said before he want to set the entire Commission team), some analysts read this as the end of the great experience of the Chief Scientific Adviser to the European Commission.

The Italian role in the “invisible” astronomy

Antonio Pilello — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 09:27:00 +0100

The Institute of Radio Astronomy (IRA), whose role is recognized at the international level, is the academic institution where radio astronomy research is traditionally carried out in Italy. We had the pleasure to speak with its director, Luigina Feretti.

What are the main projects currently active at IRA?

Our scientific research regards all the fundamental questions of modern astrophysics: for example, the dark matter, the galactic nuclei hosting supermassive black holes and the formation of all the cosmic structures. Our astronomy is “invisible”, but it is complementary to the optic one. There are several natural phenomena of non-thermal origin, generally due to relativistic particles that move in a magnetic field, which are detectable only through radio waves. We also carry out important studies of geodesy, for example by measuring the movement of the Earth’s crust.

How many people are involved in your research activities?

Our headquarters are in Bologna. We manage the Italian radio telescope facilities: the “Northern Cross Radiotelescope”, located in Medicina (Emilia-Romagna), and two 32-m single dish antennas located in Medicina and Noto (Sicily). Recently, a new 64-m antenna, the Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), started its preliminary operations near Cagliari. The total number of employees is in the order of 70: about half of them are researchers and engineers. The others are technicians and people of the administrative staff. We also have several associate scientists, including University professors, and young PhD students and post-doc fellows.

Your radio telescopes are part of a global network. From this point of view, what is the role of Italy?

Our antennas are part of the VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) astronomical and geodetic networks for about 150 days a year. Our radio telescopes serve in the European network as well as in the global one and work in synchrony according to the VLBI technique, in order to simulate a radio telescope as large as our planet. Thus, they offer a very great detail since the spatial resolution depends on the size of the total radio telescope. Furthermore, since there is a Russian radio telescope in orbit, called Spektr-R or RadioAstron, we can also simulate a radio telescope even larger than the Earth itself. In particular, as regards Italy, we decided to participate from the beginning to the global network because we understood the importance of this kind of cooperation. In fact, the Sardinia Radio Telescope will integrate the network of radio telescopes; this will lead to a greater collection area that will allow to see the fainter radio sources.

Recently, NASA has produced a study on the problems that might arise in the communication between humans and extra-terrestrial life forms. With regard to non-experts, the program Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is probably the best known.

In general, you do not need an extreme angular resolution to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. In the past, we made a passive-type search using a versatile tool, which is connected to the antenna and autonomously analyzes the signal while the antenna is observing a scientific target, such as a black hole or a galaxy. This signal is recorded and then analyzed with some special techniques. Since we know how natural signals are, we could find some extra-terrestrial ones because they are expected to be very strong and with a precise frequency. Thanks to the recent discovery of many extrasolar planets, we could switch from passive search to an active project in order to analyze those in a precise and promising position, but this research will be very expensive in terms of time and resources.

The first Italian to grab the Lise Meitner Prize

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 09:21:00 +0100

For the first time the prestigious Lise Meitner Prize, which is awarded every two years by the Nuclear Physics Division of the European Physics Society (EPS), has been given to an Italian researcher: Paolo Giubellino, director of research and coordinator of the INFN international ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) at CERN in Geneva. Actually, the winner is ALICE itself, because Giubellino was just one of the four winners of the prize and they are all involved in ALICE. The other three are Johanna Stachel (Physikalisches Institut der Universität Heidelberg, Germany), Peter Braun-Munzinger (GSI, Germany), and Jürgen Schukraft (CERN, Switzerland). But why ALICE was rewarded? As Giubellino tells us, there are two different reasons for considering ALICE a flagship of global research: its contribution in clarifying the history of the universe and the structure of the matter.

Starting from the latter, ALICE allowed to elucidate the mechanisms of the so-called strong interaction, which is one of the four fundamental forces, the one that ties together the parts that make up the atomic nucleus, i.e., proton-proton, but also quark-quark.

“The point is that the strong interaction between two particles, unlike for example the gravitational force, increases with the distance between them,” Giubellino explains. “Therefore, if one attempts to free a quark by separating it from others, the energy of the interaction becomes so large that eventually it is enough to create a quark-antiquark pair. This feature is called confinement, and it means that we never can observe quarks if they are isolated but only when they are bound inside hadrons. However, the fact that force grows with distance indicates an alternative way to pursue the study of free quarks: if one can take many works and squeeze them together in a small volume, they will be very close to one another and therefore experience very little interaction point. They will be free, albeit in a small volume. How do we obtain this? Using the Large Hadron Collider. It can accelerate nuclei – which are made of protons and neutrons, and therefore of quarks and gluons – to extremely high energy and have them smashed against one another. When the two nuclei collide, the nuclear matter is compressed and heated to form, for a very short instant, 10^-23 seconds, a droplet of matter where the quark are free. Matter in this state has the same nature as the Universe as a whole in the first millionths of a second of its life. This allows us to address two problems: the one of confinement and the one of the mass of the hadrons. In fact all the mass around us is due to the nuclei of the atoms, and therefore to the quarks of which they are made. Yet, the mass of free quarks is only one percent of that they acquire when bound. So, most of the mass we observe is due to the fact that quarks are bound into protons and neutrons… this is a fascinating aspect of the structure of matter to understand.”

“However, the strength of ALICE are the people involved,” tells Giubellino. “In particular young people. In our group at CERN half of the people involved are students: 350 PHD and about 150 post-doc, coming from 37 different countries.” A real melting-pot science. “The presence of young people is not secondary or incidental to the proper research,” continues Giubellino. “They are both the engine and the result of our research, both in ALICE and in their future research projects.”

And Italy? “We can say that the INFN has been a ’leader all along’ of the entire ALICE project,” says Giubellino. “We were involved in the initial nucleus of the project since 1990, concerning the experiment design, and during the construction of the equipment. More than a third of ALICE was conceived and built in Italy, including the development of the necessary technologies. Italians have been leaders in seven of the 18 subsystems which compose the experimental apparatus of ALICE.”

“Anyway, what seems to me important to point out here is that the authentic winner it is not INFN but the whole Italian university system,” says Giubellino. “The selection procedures are carried here by election, and what you do is evaluated by other scientists. The presence of so many Italians in the research centres all over the world, and in leading positions, is an undeniable sign of the excellence of our university system, which prepares and trains them. It is a treasure of our country which we often forget.”

What Ebola taught us about risk communication

Michele Bellone — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 11:21:00 +0100

Each outbreak has some lessons to teach to those involved in health crisis management, especially in terms of risk communication. In fact, any infectious disease can become much more dangerous when supported by wrong or missing information. On the one hand, misinformation can spread far and fast, especially online, often crossing geographic borders before local organisations have ramped up their response to an outbreak. On the other hand, the lack of proper information about, for instance, how people get infected, may slow down efforts to contain the diffusion of the disease.

The Ebola outbreak that is currently raging in West Africa has highlighted these issues.

As of 26 August, this outbreak has already caused 6,242 infected cases with 2,909 deaths. So far, it has caused more cases and deaths than any previous Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic. Extreme poverty, dysfunctional health systems and fear are the three main reasons behind this international health crisis.

Of the four affected countries, three – Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – are among the poorest in the world, with large numbers of their inhabitants lacking salaried employment. In order to find work, large numbers of people flow back and forth through these countries’ borders, known to be porous and hard to control. Not surprisingly, the transmission of the virus has been consistent across the intersection of the three borders.

The health systems of the affected countries lack the necessary resources to tackle such an emergency: the capacity of local health facilities is not enough to host all the patients and the number of doctors available is particularly low, with the majority of them being concentrated in urban areas. Such a situation is aggravated by the fact that the virus infected more than 240 healthcare workers and more than 120 of them have died, including Sheik Umar Khan, the heroic doctor from Sierra Leone who was credited with treating more than 100 patients.

And here comes the fear factor.

Fear of being quarantined, which could drive infected people away from the surveillance system or push them to hide their sick relatives; fear of becoming infected by their own patients, which led healthcare professionals to refuse to go to work, thus depleting the already scarce health resources available; fear of not being able to provide for food, due to the block and the strict controls across the borders; fear of having been cursed, as, in some areas, Ebola is thought to be a product of witchcraft. Fear is nurtured by both misinformation and lack of information. This is the very reason why an effective risk communication may help to save lives.

TELL ME experts have been collecting and studying the existing evidence about risk and crisis communication during epidemics and pandemics. Their research suggests that risk communication requires a multi-layered approach that takes into consideration technological, cultural and social developments. On these bases, they developed a Framework Model aimed at local health organisations, which translates concepts and theories into a practical approach that can be adapted to specific risk situations and serve as the foundation for a communication guide. The model identified seven main components of risk communication and the inter-relationships between them: public sphere, segmentation, mass media, social media, opinion leaders, research and stakeholders.

Effective outbreak communication should be a dialogue between all these elements, with the public sphere very much at the centre. Most of all, TELL ME experts highlighted the importance of “listening to the public”, in order to acknowledge that public fears should not be disregarded as irrational. On the contrary, they should be taken into account when planning an outbreak communication strategy, in order to build trust with the authorities and avoid the generation of misinformation from the onset of the outbreak.

Gaining people’s trust in West Africa, is not an easy task for authorities. Decades of war have fuelled the distrust of the population towards government and institutions, including healthcare ones. This, added to the already mentioned fear issue, constitutes a serious problem for one of the key relationship in health risk communication: the one between population and healthcare professionals. Acknowledging people’s concerns is thus crucial in order to establish a link between them and the institutions, a link that may become a channel to be used to fight both misinformation and the lack of proper information.

One way to build trust, as highlighted by TELL ME experts, is for the organizations to establish a presence on the media – especially on the social media – long before the emergence of a crisis. This would help to create a sense of community and to develop an interactive kind of communication, based on the exchange of information and opinions between individuals, groups and institutions. As mentioned before, “listening to the public” must be a core tenet when dealing with the public. A tenet that cannot be pursued if the risk communication is intended as a top-down message system, with the flow of information only moving one-way, from institutions to people. In such a system, there is no place for interactions and, as a consequence, there is no place for listening or acknowledging people’s concerns.

Health and government institutions of the affected African countries have not built a social media presence but this does not mean that it is too late for them to develop a two-way communication with the other stakeholders involved. This would mean not only the population, but also healthcare professionals. Appealing to them is crucial, not only because they are a mediating channel between health agencies and the public, but also because their higher exposition to a disease includes them amongst the risk groups. Which means that their risk perception could affect their risk analysis. Three members of the TELL ME consortium employed an online survey of Israeli health care professionals and the general public in Israel; they found that a relatively low risk perception from health care workers is associated with a tendency to base their behavior on analytical knowledge. However, if the risk perception is high, no significant difference was found between Israeli health professionals and the Israeli general public, meaning that they both base their attitudes more on emotions and personal experience than on analytical knowledge. This is another element that must be considered in health crisis management. In such a context, the impact of social media, both as a channel for misinformation or as a tool to tackle it, should be analysed carefully.

The dynamics behind the spread of false rumours have been recently investigated, using the riots occurred in Birmingham in August 2011, and the relative diffusion of misinformation on Twitter, as a model. This study revealed that false information, especially one with a dramatic content, might spread easily if not immediately challenged. However, as more people on Twitter found out about it, they began to cross-verify and check with official sources. This demonstrate that spontaneous reactions by social media users may counter the spread of misinformation online, even within hours, given that proper information are available for fact-checkers to use them.

In the Ebola case, many people in the regions struck by the virus started using social media in order to share information about the disease and its prevention. Hashtags like #EbolaFacts became trending topics, and were also shared by local celebrities. The high utilisation of mobile phones in West Africa strengthen the effect of these campaigns, thus allowing to offer proper information about how to avoid to become infected. However, the most rural areas in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are not online, which means that those people most at risk of catching the virus are also those most difficult to reach.

There are other important issues to take into account: distrust towards the institutions due to long periods of conflict; superstition regarding both miracle cures or the supernatural origin of the disease; merits and flaws of social media as tools against wrong and missing information. These are some examples of social, cultural and technological elements that are characteristic of the West African situation and that will affect any approach to risk communication. These are elements that should be quickly identified when dealing with a health crisis.

This is the lesson we should learn by this Ebola outbreak. A lesson to be used to better fight this disease right now but also to better prepare for another one, because risk communication cannot simply be a reaction to a crisis but should help to be ready to face it before it occurs.

We have learnt from previous experiences that Ebola outbreaks can be contained, even without a vaccine or cure. Due to the virus’ features, identifying the infected persons, isolating them and treating them in proper facilities can break the chain of transmission, thus stopping further diffusion of the disease. And again, doing so requires a highly efficient communication strategy.

Original version of the article on the TELL ME website.

Paving the way for the incoming challenges

Giacomo Destro — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 07:36:00 +0100

How is managed the process to set up the calls of proposal in Horizon 2020? A good example of its functioning has been given by the stakeholders consultation, ended in June 2014. The consultation is the first step towards the definition of 2016-17 working program for the Societal Challenge 5, the one dealing with environmental issues. The preliminary results have been published some days ago and showed stakeholders’ main concerns and needs. A general consensus arose on the need of much more interdisciplinarity, together with policies and actions to improve the awareness of the ‘civil’ society on environmental issues.

The H2020 Societal Challenge 5

H2020 has been set up upon three main pillars or priorities: generating excellent science, creating industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The latter, in particular, has been seen as the major economic growth driver, since the general paradigm of Horizon 2020 is to create a “smart, inclusive and competitive” economy. In particular, Societal Challenge 5 is about scientific research on climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. The aim is to “achieve a resource – and water – efficient and climate change resilient economy and society, the protection and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems, and a sustainable supply and use of raw materials, in order to meet the needs of a growing global population within the sustainable limits of the planet’s natural resources and eco-systems.”

The stakeholder consultation

The consultation was conceived to identify potential areas and actions to improve the next work program 2016-17, in order to make it more democratic, user-driven and financially efficient. To do so, the main stakeholders, such as research institutions, universities, private company and NGOs, were asked to reply to seven broad questions.

Figure 1. The questions in the consultation (source)

Preliminary results

139 stakeholders replied to the questions. Most of them (83 percent) were organizations, mainly academic institutions and association. 22 percent of the answers came from industry or industry association. Generally speaking, despite a wide consensus that cities and buildings are the key areas for research and innovation, the consultation has shown a fragmented bunch of requests. This, maybe, can be explained by the kind of questions posed: in other words, broad and open questions could not be the right way to truckle the issues of such a wide societal challenge.

Figure 2: Respondents by nature of organization (source).

Figure 3: Respondents by country (source).

Anyhow, some general issues have been found:

the request for interdisciplinarity of R&I actions, particularly those including social scientists in projects,
the need of more holistic/systemic approaches, able to interconnect disciplines and communities,
a requirement to improve stakeholders participation and engagement, connecting academia and industry (large companies and SMEs), but also local players, end users and citizens.

The framework of these needs seems to be the necessity of changing production and consumption patterns towards a circular economy/systemic eco-innovation. Stakeholders seemed to be aware of the difficulty of establishing such a new paradigm, so they proposed a policy-mix, including regulation, taxation, public procurement and awareness-raising measure. Another general concern of the respondents was that they believe society is not fully aware of the environmental problems and potential adaptation and mitigation. In order to face that, many respondents proposed to implement large-scale pilot projects and “living labs” to test, demonstrate and increase social awareness, while developing new markets. “Such projects would provide quantitative information on the value of, for example, nature-based solutions and enhanced understanding of the multiple functions of ecosystem (e.g. food, water, energy, water catchment, climate change mitigation, tourism/economic benefit, spiritual value)”. Moreover, some respondents asked the Commission to implement longer projects, for example, when Technological Readiness Levels (TRLs) are low.

The path towards 2016-17 calls of proposals

This consultation is the first step in the long rush to define the 2016-2017 work program. In parallel, other main stakeholders has been consulted on similar questions, such as the European Technology Platforms, the European Innovation Partnerships, the Joint Programming Initiatives, etc. In the second part of this year, all the questions risen up by these consultations will be part of an exchange with the Member States. After that, in the first half of the 2015, the Commission will develop the content of the 2016-17 work program, taking into account the answers of the consultation and then, in summer 2015, there will be the adoption and publication of the calls for proposals for 2016-2017 period.

Grants for Italian SMEs within Eurostars-2

Cristina Da Rold — Sat, 13 Sep 2014 09:17:00 +0100

Good news for the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that aim to bring their own scientific research at an international level. The Ministry of Education and Research has officially committed to fund and support Italian participants in Eurostars-2, with a budget of 0.5 million euro in grants and 2 million euro in loans, in order to develop new ideas as part of the action taken under Article 185 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Which means funds with a better rate than that proposed by the actual market.

TFEU aims to integrate parts of national programs in order to build a common European research program. Eurostars is an European programme that supports research-performing SMEs for the development of innovative products, processes and services that should be rapidly commercialized. The European Community has funded Eurostars-2 with 287 million euro for the period between 2014 and 2020, requiring the member states a funding at least three times higher. Hence the commitment of the Ministry of Education to invest a total amount of 2.5 million euro in this second phase of the project (the Ministry of Education did not participate to the first deadline, last March).

Therefore, Eurostars-2 is the last link in a long chain of initiatives for the construction of a European network for research, an international coordination in view of Horizon 2020. The main link of the chain is represented by EUREKA, an international initiative launched in 1985 to promote and support scientific and industrial research through the creation of R&D projects. Eurostars-2 is coordinated by EUREKA, as happened for Eurostars in 2013. In this occasion, the Ministry of Education had planned a total funding of 4.2 million euro (1.5 million euro contribution to the expenditure and 2.7 per subsidized credit). Public actors – universities and research institutes – were only given a contribution to the cost, while private entities were funded with both a contribution to the costs and a subsidized loan. In addition, Eurostars-2 has the bottom-up approach and all the typical characteristics of EUREKA projects. There are not privileged or excluded areas, except for military applications.

There are two specific requirements for SMEs that want to apply; they are financial criteria, calculated using the data reported in the last approved balance sheet:

the net assets of the enterprise must be greater than half of the difference between the sum of the costs of all the projects for which public funding has been requested by the participant during the year, and the sum of the contributions received, approved or requested for the same projects;
the quotient between financial charges and turnover of the enterprise must be less than 8 percent.

Finally, concerning the percentage funding of eligible costs, it depends on the dimension of the enterprise/research centre, as can be seen in the table below.

Thus, we just have to wait for the outcome of the selection procedures that expired on September 11^th and see which new Italian projects will benefit from these funds, anything but small.

Vegetarian or vegan? A choice concerning not only you

Giulia Annovi — Sat, 13 Sep 2014 08:08:00 +0100

With a growth rate of 1.5 percent in 15 years, in 2014 Italian vegetarians and vegans are about 4 million, according to Eurispes report. Vegetarians avoid eating meat, while vegans follow a stricter regime with the absence not only of meats, but also of products originated from animals. After centuries of omnivorous diet, may these new habits have consequences or benefits for our body?

Inside the human guts, there is a huge microbial ecosystem. The interest around human intestinal or oral microbiota, namely the commensal bacteria that we house in our guts, has quickly increased over the last years: in fact, the number of Pubmed cited publications about this topic has raised from 80 issues in 2000 to 2,700 in 2013. The reason lies in the involvement of gut bacteria in different physiological or pathological conditions, ranging from energy regulation, cognitive processes and immunity trade-off.

Despite the big number of studies about microbiota, “there are few observational studies considering the faecal and salivary microbiota, and metabolome of individuals subjected to different dietary habits since long time ago”, said Marco Gobbetti, leader of Diet4MicroGut, an Italian project arisen to investigate the bacterial flora susceptibility to diet, and the relationship between microbiota alteration and state of well-being. Since nutrients for humans are nourishing able to affect the growth and balance of native microbes, an impaired diet may imbalance the gut flora and, as Gobetti explained, “we still don’t know if the genetic heritage may be (and to what extent) a lifeline towards a wrong diet”. In fact, other studies are based on the effects of rapid and intense change of the dietary habits, and alterations of the human intestinal and salivary microbiota over a short time has been already observed.

In order to study how the omnivore, vegetarian and vegan diets may affect the oral intake of microorganims, and the composition of the oral and faecal microbiota, the research has been addressed to a large number of individuals (about 50 for each dietary condition), recruited in various Italian regions. “It’s the first time that a microbiota research has been addressed to such a large number of individuals”, said Gobetti and his words are confirmed by the inclusion of the Italian study in the U.S. clinical trials list. Dietary habits registration and biological sample collection covered three weeks, then samples have been analysed in ten Italian research centres, joined in a unique effort to build up a permanent European platform for such type of studies.

Researchers are analysing samples with a huge variety of techniques: bacteria will be recognized and characterized for their antibiotic resistance, for DNA sequences and functional activities, and for metabolomics traits, with the aim to determine representative populations of the three types of diet. Diet4MicroGut has started in 2013 and it will go on until 2016. The first results are about the salivary microbiota. Analysis from the Ercolini’s laboratories at Federico II University in Naples confirmed that dietary habits seem to slightly influence the microbial composition and only in part the metabolome. “The faecal microbiota could represent another issue and we hope to get some consistent results within the next months”, said Gobbetti.

The interest for Gobbetti’s group research is strengthen by some new findings. Cathryn Nagler has recently published a paper on PNAS, underlying the role of gastrointestinal bacteria in allergic response to food. The absence of specific bacteria could be detrimental for some immunological reactions responsible for allergies. In addition, the author suggested that an ultimate solution could be the allergy process interruption by manipulating the microbiota. Moreover, the Martin Blaser paper, appeared on Cell, showed how microbiota alterations are related to obesity and how could be important to restore the balanced gut population. Finally, another study published on Nature compared the Italian diet with that of African hunter-gatherers Hadza, confirming how diet could influence guts populations but also health: for instance, Hadza do not suffer from colon related diseases. Starting from these premises, it could be interesting to assess if different diet are able to restore or conserve guts flora.

Gobbetti’s team research is destined to rise: “we are already involved in a European joint project initiative (ENPADASI) that aims to establish a European network among research groups working on diet and human body responses in health and disease states”. Gobbetti also highlighted the possibility to go on under Horizon 2020. Effectively the Grand Societal Challenge of Horizon 2020 also includes the issue of food impact in human health.

Certainly, understanding diet effects may be an instrument to favour a stable and healthy oral and intestinal microbiota, which is able to prevent diseases and guarantee human longevity.

Life outside universities

Francesco Aiello — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 15:33:00 +0100

When is a scientist not really a scientist? This the provocation launched by Nature last week.

For many people, whoever has a PhD in Molecular Genetics or in Physics can rightfully exhibit this ‘title’. But for others, science is something that you ‘do’, not just something you learnt. According to the purists, then, those who leave the lab after a post-graduate education, in order to work somewhere else, have lost their way and have been seduced by the dark side.

In this view, job opportunities for post-PhD outside the research world have been often labelled as ‘alternative’ careers.

But is it fair to consider these ex-scientists as failure? The answer is found reading journals like Nature every day: if it weren’t for the scientists who publish their work, they would not exist. But the existence of these journal is also based on ex-researchers in alternative careers. Those who leaves the academic world for other paths, why do they do it? Here, the British journal editorial allows a consideration about the ‘PhDs factory’ and post-PhD job opportunities.

In the scientific area, the number of PhDs assigned every year has increased of almost 40 percent between 1998 and 2008, reaching a total of about 34,000 for the OECD countries members. This growth has however made it less of an elite system, a system guided by research funding and not by the request of the work market.

In 1973, 55 percent of the PhD laureates in Biological Sciences ‘made in USA’ used to get a place as researchers within six years of course completion. From 2006, only 15 percent manages to get a place six years after the PhD.

Even worse, the data from the American Society for Cell Biology underline that less than 10 percent of 86,000 currently PhD students in Biology in the US will become university professors. “The academic market collapsed in 1970, but the universities have not updated their admission policies because they need graduate students to be employed in the laboratories. Once the students have completed their studies, they will not find an academic job,” explains Mark Taylor from Columbia University. The numbers speak clearly: there are much more PhD graduates than the university system can employ.

But, then, why not choosing an alternative career as soon as completing the PhD?

Many young researchers find it frustrating and almost a failure after years spent studying and doing academic research, and they prefer to accept small grants in their University instead of looking for a different job.

But the contrary is also true. In Italy, for example, the title of “dottore di ricerca” (PhD equivalent) that certificates knowledge and expertise acknowledged by the State, is not taken into account by the Italian companies, by whom is almost unknown. In the job market, almost nothing is known about what they do in university, therefore a researcher is treated as a youngster who is starting to work three years later, instead of being considered a precious resource. Things are not better in the public sector: it should be enough to notice that, in open competitive exams, the PhD title does not provide higher scores in respect to other candidates, but is evaluated at the commission’s discretion.

Another aspect that should not be ignored, however, regards the inadequateness of many PhD programmes as far as entering the world of work concerns. Too often, PhD courses are too specialised and the research carried out is too ‘narrow’, not palatable on the job market. In many cases, holding a PhD title turns out to be a handicap more than an advantage: because it precludes other possible jobs; or because the acquired knowledge and expertise are only spendable in the research or in university teaching. “The majority of PhD programmes are conform to a model of European university developed in the Middle Ages, where education is a cloning process that aims at transforming the students in their mentors. The clones now are much more numerous than their mentors,” underlines Taylor. Many are advocating a change in the PhD programmes in line with gaining useful skills for becoming competitive beyond the academy. Instead of being the first step of a ladder that terminates with an academic job, the PhD courses should be like a path that, through a series of different ways, leads smoothly to the world of work. Universities should not just prepare students to become ‘only’ good academics, but should put them in the condition of taking advantages of other opportunities opening up in the job market.

Outside universities, a world full of possibilities does exist. An example is the story of Renata Sarno, who, after eight years of theoretical physics, has completely changed work, making her own fortune with online business. “She was a brilliant student,” remembers her supervisor Giorgio Parisi, theoretical physicist at the University of Rome. Sarno had arrived at Parisi’s laboratory to finish her graduation thesis in physics in 1987 and continued working there throughout PhD and post-PhD. She helped developing the supercomputer then used for modelling subatomic particles called fermions. A future in the university was her likely prospect, but things went differently. In 1994, the post-PhD funds finished. “I found myself without a salary and decided to take a new way,” remembers Sarno.

She did not waste any time, and together with three friends and only 10,000 euro she launched a series of websites, among which a travel website called Venere that was one of the first websites offering hotel booking and other services. “At that time, the Internet was really poor of contents. It was only the following year that the first search engine was launched. Our idea was a portal for hotel booking. This way, we could offer a service without having to ship anything, therefore without any problem of logistics or storage. The initial aim was to sell abroad something that we had in Italy: the ample offer of hotels,” explains Sarno.

Fundamental for the company success – Venere has been sold for 200 million euro in 2008 – was the knowledge in calculus and problem solving acquired during the years of PhD. “Parisi was sorry to see one of his students leaving the university but he was proud for my success”. Sarno did not leave the research completely. After selling Venere, she founded a foundation supporting research for blue cone monochromacy, a rare genetic disease of the retina that is transmitted through the chromosome X and affects 1 to 50 people over 100,000.

The story of Renata Sarno is just one among many other story of researchers who, after completing a PhD, successfully chose to take another path, different from the academic one.

Big data can help biodiversity conservation

Giacomo Destro — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 08:11:00 +0100

Ecology is one of the most complex scientific field in terms of variety of related areas of study. In the last years, researchers in ecology have tried to build up a model that relates data from ecology, paleontology, genomics and phylogenies, together with localization data and climate models. This effort has been made in order to create a scientifically strong model to prioritize biodiversity conservation policies. In July 2014, scientists from University of California announced that a first model of this kind has been created “taking both distribution and relationships into account to identify lineages that need preservation, in particular rare endemics”. The setting of priorities is particularly urgent, as a recent article on Science has shown that between 16 and 33 percent of species are threatened or in danger, with an average decline of 25 percent in their abundance. This could affect human well-being, as all species are linked each other in the so-called food chain. But, due to the complexity of ecological models, many studies on biodiversity are based on average or incomplete information. Moreover, many data about biodiversity can be found in a plethora of sources, such as scientific articles, museum, publications or individual studies.

Endemism as a measure of biodiversity

The first step made by Brent Mishler, the biologist at the University of California who built up the new model called CANAPE (Categorical Analysis of New And Paleo-Endemism) together with Australian colleagues, was to take into account also the digitalized information of Natural History Museums. His idea was to create a model that comprehended both the number of species in a specific area and the endemism, i.e. the variation among species and their geographic rarity. Mishler argues that the resulting tree of life “gives more weight to those branches that are endemic, which means that is restricted in range. This relative phylogenetic endemism is a better measure of diversity and rarity, and should be what scientists and policymakers look at when considering whether to conserve an area”. In other words, CANAPE could lead to set a priority list of endangered species, fostering the endemic ones. The model is said to be ready to be applied to all good georeferenced database of species abundance and relatedness. Mishler and colleagues at Berkeley already received a US$ 390.000 grant to apply CANAPE model to the California State Plant Database.

Creating a “culture of data”

But, as said before, it is not just a question of “model”. Complete and usable datasets are also difficult to find. In 2013, a paper published by the University of California analyzed in detail the problem of creating a culture of data management for ecologists. Considering that often ecologists collect a large number of data, but lack a culture of curation, they proposed four actions scientists should follow to “treat data as an enduring product of research and not just a precursor of publications”. In particular, they suggested that scientists should:

Organize, preserve and store data for posterity, using open source tools that writes Ecological Metadata Language (such as, for instance, Morpho).
Share data through specialized network (such as DataONE), online University libraries or scientific journals.
Collaborate and integrate data with a variety of colleagues from different fields of study, since ecology is a multi-related area.
Address data management issues with students (through dedicated, hands-on activities) and peers.

A tool against a (new) future failure

In 2001, the European Heads of State at the EU Summit in Gothenburg (Sweden) decided that “biodiversity decline should be halted with the aim of reaching this objective by 2010”. Soon after it has been launched the “2010 Biodiversity Target”, enforced year after year by some implementation tools, such as the Kiev Resolution on Biodiversity or the “Message from Malahide”. Some nations decided to bind themselves to the 2010 Biodiversity Target by adopting individual Biodiversity Action Plans (here is the Italian one). Despite all these documents, the 2010 Biodiversity Target largely failed. This mainly was due to a lack of consensus on how to measure the biodiversity loss. Scientific models such as CANOPE can now bridge the gap and, through its results, set priorities easier to achieve.

Europe embraces the hydrogen challenge

Giulia Annovi — Sat, 06 Sep 2014 09:00:00 +0100

The agriculture wealth does not lie only in food supply, but also in waste production. A European project, started in 2012 and close to its end, has faced the problem of organic waste reuse and, at the same time, the challenge of fuel production from natural and low-environmental impact sources. HyTime obtained an European contribution of 1,609,026 euros under the 7^th Framework Program. The project, led by the Netherlands, is the result of collaboration between industries and universities from France, Germany, Austria, Poland and Italy.

The aim of the project was the transformation of grass, straw, molasses or unsold organic goods from supermarkets into hydrogen (H₂), with the help of thermophilic bacteria able to convert biomasses to H₂ at high efficiency, applying anaerobic digestion to appraise residues.
According to the FAO database, the amount of agriculture crop biomass burned in 2012 was 40 millions of tonnes, an opportunity that must be exploited to facilitate the transition towards the target of 2020, establishing that 10 percent of all energy used for transportation in member states must be generated from renewable sources (Directive 2009/2023/EC).

The use of biomass creates important opportunities for Italy: in our country, the dry weight of burned biomass is almost two millions of tonnes. “It has been estimated that Italy could be able to produce 5-10 percent of the national energetic requirement, using uniquely the biomass residues,” says Angelo Moreno, president of the Italian Association for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells (H2IT). In this way, our gas reliance from foreign states could decrease from 85 percent to 75 percent, assuring seven billions euros of savings to our state”.

Hydrogen is a clean energy carrier because its output is only water, making it emission free. When hydrogen production arises from renewable resources, it even becomes a zero impact stuff. “The method proposed by this project, using wasted biomasses instead of food (e.g. maize) is an example of sustainable production of hydrogen,” comments Angelo Moreno.

Moreover, H₂ is better than renewable resources, because they are intermittent, uncertain and could not be stored. Instead, hydrogen could be stored and carried as a liquid from a place to another one with trucks, and also with the 2000 km hydrogen-pipelines already present in Europe. These facts, together with its waste origin, could increase the public awareness and approval of the benefits of a clean and renewable energy carrier like H₂.

The increased interest of Europe towards hydrogen

Food and chemical factories have produced hydrogen since forever, by the methane or other hydrocarbons reforming. It has been estimated that, each year, 500 millions of cubic meters are produced. Electrolysis of water is another method becoming more popular because of its simplicity.

Europe interest towards hydrogen has started during the 80s: in fact, since 1986 the EU has funded some 200 projects on hydrogen and fuel cell energy technologies. In 2000, five national hydrogen organizations established the European Hydrogen Association (EHA) and started a close collaboration to promote the use of H₂ in Europe. In 2003, five researchers supported by 40 assistants have tried to plan future developments of hydrogen economy, and the European decarbonization pathway has been started.

Beside the traditional methods of hydrogen production, other futuristic techniques are stepping up: for instance the artificial leaf, able to perform a sort of photosynthesis, thus making hydrogen from solar light.

In any case, HyTime is part of a bigger funding policy and research programme, in which the EU has joint forces with European industry and research institutes in a public-private partnership to accelerate the development and deployment of technologies in the most efficient way: Europe has gambled 400 millions of euros on the Joint Technology Initiative (JTI).

Now, European interest in hydrogen is raising, because we need large amounts of cheap energy. We need to control the local pollution in our cities and we have to counteract global warming worldwide; roughly 13 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions come from transportation and betting on H₂ could be a part of solution. But the real driving force towards the hydrogen economy is the reduced reliance on foreign oil. Effectively, the European funds for hydrogen are not ceased: new projects will be launched under Horizon 2020 and the H₂ research will receive 665 millions of euros from EU.

Hydrogen vehicles and the state of the art

Assisting to hydrogen technology development, a question comes to mind: when will the use of hydrogen as transportation fuel be possible?

All vehicles manufacturers have set and produced hydrogen car prototypes. During this year, a couple of automotive companies have announced vehicles commercialization. However, in Italy the research sector on hydrogen cars is not sustained.

At the same time, Europe is setting the infrastructures to allow the circulation of these vehicles: the SuperGreen Project is organizing the green corridors across EU states, to develop sustainable transport networks by fulfilling requirements covering environmental, technical, economic, social and spatial planning aspects. Denmark, France, United Kingdom, Norway are developing new strategies to satisfy the European requests. Germany has invested 1.4 billions in hydrogen technology development under the National Innovation Programme (NIP), to match the requirements of automotive companies and fuel vendors. In fact, a special issue of the NIP encompasses hydrogen-fuelled vehicles for road transport along with the supply of hydrogen (production, distribution and delivery/refuelling). Hydrogen service stations are expected to increase not only in European states (there was 80 stations in Europe in 2013) but also in Italy: in fact, within 2023 we have to provide for 25 hydrogen service stations.

In this context, Italy pays the lack of national energetic plan, and Angelo Moreno underlines: “To get the European points, Italy should involve researchers, medium and small enterprises, producers and consumers to make a harmonious program”. On the other hand, Italy can mention some important local projects to hydrogen technology development: the experimental park in Venice; the Zero Regio project to develop hydrogen infrastructures for passengers car; the Environment Park in Turin and some private enterprises as SofcPower or Electro Power System with their international relevance.

“In any case, we must remember that hydrogen could be an important solution but not the unique solution.” Angelo Moreno concludes. “We need an agreeable development of all alternative technologies, if we want to get a resolution to energetic and environmental problems”.

Why the US Navy has chosen CNR

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 09:03:00 +0100

The US Navy has been funding for many years a collaboration with CNR scientific research in the field of marine industry. On July 23, at the Marine Technology Research Institute (INSEAN) in Rome, the Admiral Matthew L. Klunder of the US Navy delegation has visited the Italian Institute in order to further strengthen this scientific collaboration.

To understand the reasons behind such cooperation, we have talked with Emilio Campana, the INSEAN director.

“CNR is in a very unique situation compared to other institutions in the world that deal with scientific research in the marine field because – and this concept must be highlighted – the collaboration between the Navy and INSEAN just relates to the field of scientific research. Which means studying how to build better ships that go faster, consume less and are able to better cope with the difficulties,” explains Campana.

“In other countries, there are two types of institutions dealing with marine research: on the one hand those that are under the complete control of military forces, as it happens in Spain and France, and on the other hand the commercial institutions, such those operating in Netherlands and Germany. Instead, CNR belongs to a third class: since we are a research institution, we do not obey neither to the dictates of the Italian Navy nor to the will of the market.”

“Most of all,” says Campana, “it is the Italian innovation that interests the American Navy. Using a metaphor, the research market is a bit like the meat market, your research must ‘smell fresh’ to attract customers. If the US Navy funds us, is because CNR is working on the forefront of this field." The Italian research is an excellence in the field of marine industry and there are two main areas where CNR is providing its contribution.

The first area concerns the creation of accurate databases to be used for the experimental evaluation of simulation codes (also used in the so-called “simulation based design”) to predict and improve the performance of a vehicle at sea. In other words, the aim is building models that more accurately describe the actual sea conditions, in order to simulate the behavior of a vehicle and to evaluate its strengths and weakness, and consequently improve the initial design. A new project regarding this topic will start in 2015.

The second area concerns the link between the ship structure and the fluid that surrounds it. “Ships are not rigid objects, but are closely related to how they stay in the water: motions, impacts, and the characteristics of the materials and of the structure have to be considered” explains Campana.

“A new focus in our studies for the CNR, adds Campana “is the fact that the sea is a chaotic environment, and this environment does not follow a deterministic trend, but a stochastic one. We are therefore developing a stochastic approach to the Simulation-Based-Design, both in the evaluation of the performance of the ships and in their own design.”

Passenger ships simulations at this level of detail are less relevant to their design, when compared to cargo ships or military ones. “If a passenger ship realizes that weather condition and sea state are not good to sail, she can decide not to sail, in order to avoid ending up in trouble: a military ship cannot choose, since it is more exposed to the chaos of the sea.”

Not to mention ships carrying dangerous cargo. “Today there are no precise guidelines if an accident occurs involving a ship carrying toxic substances. CNR is also working on this direction,” says Campana. Building better ships is therefore not trivial, and it is not a coincidence that the US Navy wants the best.

Towards an European network for research

Cristina Da Rold — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 08:24:00 +0100

On July 22^nd, all the European Ministers for Research were in Milan to lay the foundation stone of the European Network for Research, an international coordination that will involve 800 amongst the largest research centres of excellence in Europe, such as CERN and the Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste. Aim of this network is to make Europe more united and thus more competitive on the world stage, starting from the recent decision of implementing 60 percent of the projects of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) by the end of 2015. How? By establishing specific national plans within a European plan for scientific research.

Let’s take a step back. Actually, the idea of a European network is not that recent. It dates back more than ten years ago, precisely in 2002, when ESFRI was born to support a coherent approach to policy-making on research infrastructures in Europe and to facilitate multilateral initiatives, thus leading to the better use and development of research infrastructures at EU and international level. That was the moment when this new commitment for the construction of an international network of research facilities of excellence has started.

Moreover, ESFRI carried out substantial work on the prioritization of financial support to these projects through a one-time financial contribution for the priority projects and to financially support the other projects (preparation and implementation) identified by ESFRI. In other words, the aim is to identify the best research projects and invest funding in order to complete the 60 percent of them by the end of 2015.

This is obviously a very ambitious roadmap, but as our Minister of Research Stefania Giannini has ensured, the resources are not lacking, even in Italy. “I am glad to announce that in a few days I will release Italy’s new National Plan of Research Infrastructure. It represents a decisive step to reshape research and innovation policy in Italy, and also towards a better use of structural funds,” Giannini said, introducing the international meeting in Milan. Italy in fact will be a pioneer, introducing its new national plan for research infrastructures as an offshoot of the more general National Plan for Research (PNR), expected in September.

But what exactly are the highlights of this roadmap? The three main questions that the ministers have identified are the following: how can the European research infrastructure system effectively support European competitiveness? Which instruments can guarantee excellence, promptness and the best use of our resources at European and national level? How can we ensure a long-term sustainability of this system? “The third is probably the most crucial aspect,” Giannini said “and for this reason we need to coordinate many aspects, including, for example, the public access to data and a welcoming attitude towards users from all nationalities.”

Furthermore, the importance of the openness of the research infrastructure, as this a major factor determining the impact on innovation and growth. “Finally,” concludes Giannini “it’s crucial to open services and data to public and private innovators, including industry and SMEs.” In other words, to reinforce partnerships with industry and transfer knowledge do usually produce new patterns and innovation. However, in such a period of financial constraints, to ensure the best use possible of available resources is essential. Many countries have systems for evaluating the internal competition, in order to select the national research infrastructures to be sustained. “We are talking about 100 billion dollars overall with an operation costs of over 10 billion euro/year and about 350 million euro/year at European level” Minister Giannini added, “and, in this regard, a key point is to consider the entire European system as a single system.”

“Come for free and you will leave knowing that this is what European infrastructures should tell to the best researchers in the world,” concluded Giannini, as a slogan for the meeting. We know that it represents, at least in Italy, an extremely significant challenge.

Juno will study chameleon neutrinos

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 10:27:00 +0100

Last week in China was launched Juno, an international experiment that aims to reveal once and for all the mysteries of neutrinos, together with two other future experiments planned worldwide, Hyper-Kamiokande in Japan and LBNF at FERMILAB, and Italy could not miss. Hundreds of scientists from around the world gathered in these days at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, in order to give birth to an international collaboration for the construction of a gigantic underground neutrino detector with liquid scintillator, which exploits a technology that is similar to that used by the experiment Borexino at Gran Sasso National Laboratories. We have talked with Gioacchino Ranucci of INFN, deputy coordinator of the collaboration. JUNO’s collaboration, in addition to China and Italy, also includes Czech Republic, France, Finland, Germany, Russia and the United States.

“Juno’s goal is to study the properties of neutrinos, that transform themselves into one another, which makes them like chameleons” said Ranucci. Today, we have three families of neutrinos, electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos, and what we observe is the transformation of one into the other, which is called “property of oscillation.” Certainly, this property is adjusted by a matrix, the mixing matrix, which gives the parameters expressed in trigonometric form, for instance as angles that, together with the mass differences between each couple of neutrino types, determine the probability of transformation of a neutrino from a family to another. It is therefore precisely the properties we want to investigate."

Specifically, Juno investigates a particular parameter: the so-called “hierarchy of neutrino mass”, which is the order in which are arranged the masses of the three types of neutrinos. In other words, scientists want to understand which of the three families of neutrinos is lighter. To do so, however, they need to take very precise and very numerous measures that will allow them to properly investigate the features of this order. For this reason, they need a very sophisticated equipment, such as Juno. Its technology is actually not very different from that of another Italian experiment, Borexino, in which researchers are working in Gran Sasso Laboratories; the difference is the size of the experimental apparatus.

Juno is a large sphere 35 meters in diameter, filled with a glittering substance, a hydrocarbon, which sparkles with elementary particles. So far, nothing different from Borexino. The Juno sphere, however, contains about 20,000 tons of liquid scintillator, compared to the less than 1,000 of the experiment at Gran Sasso Laboratories. To avoid the problem of noise signals, the sphere is immersed in a large pool of water that acts as a shield for the ambient radioactivity. Both the sphere and the pool are placed 700 meters deep underground, in order to ensure some protection against the cosmic rays. Juno will accomplish its scientific task by capturing and studying the neutrinos copiously coming from a nearby nuclear reactor complex, at 52 km from the detector. The scintillation light is captured by photomultipliers and convert it into electrical signals, which are then analyzed by researchers to decipher the characteristics of neutrinos.

“We are just at the beginning of the experiment, but we can say that Juno’s mission is very ambitious and hopeful” Ranucci said. “We believe that this experiment, together with others in the world as Hyper-Kamiokande and LNB, will be a first observation viewpoint to catch aspects still obscure of our universe, and that, by unlocking some of the mysteries associated with neutrinos masses, in the future could open up new energy scales, larger than those are accessible nowadays with our accelerators.”

Horizon 2020 and Climate: which Work Program for Europe

Cristina Da Rold — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 08:52:00 +0100

Waste. Water. Green Economy. Those are the main focuses of the recent Horizon 2020 Work Programme that has been adopted on December 10^th 2013 and definitively updated last July 22^nd with the parts that relate to 2015. Within this Work Programme, Europe has set its objectives concerning climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. The estimated total budget including horizontal activities will be about 348 million of euro for 2014 and 377 million for the following year. The aim is to fill the gaps in the knowledge base necessary to understand changes in the environment, policies and methods.

Based on current trends, the equivalent of more than two planet Earths will be needed by 2050 to support the growing global population. It is evident that it implies a better use of our resources in order to decouple our economic growth. The project provides three calls, concerning the three main focuses – waste, water, green economy – and each call contemplates many other smaller calls concerning these three specific areas. Let us see more in detail.

One: Waste is a resource

The global waste market, from collection to recycling, has an estimated value of 400 billion euro per year, and a smart economy can minimise the production of waste and reuses it as a resource. There are two main reasons to improve in this direction: first, a near-zero waste society has an environmental rationale; secondly, it means job creation, so it increasingly becomes a factor of competitiveness.

This call addresses to the whole waste cycle, from waste production to the design of processes and products for recyclability to reuse and waste management. But the most interesting feature of this call is that it is addressed to the 7^th Framework Programme, in particular to the VOICES project, which had a bottom-up structure. Through a participatory approach that involved science, technology, civil society organisations and policy experts, citizens identified the main priorities, which were then clustered into six thematic areas: economic instruments, education and communication, modelling business and consumer behaviour, policy, product and production design and waste management. A special focus is dedicated to “Food, Agricultural and construction waste” topic, which also represents a good opportunity for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Finally, there is a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency), which provided ESA Earth Science data. Data are fundamental to achieve the Waste goal. In particular, the project will use data taken from GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) and Copernicus (the European Earth Observation Programme).

About the budget, the Program provides 103 million euro, split in 59 million euro for 2014 and 44 million euro for the following year.

Two: Treasuring our Water

The title of the call is emblematic: Water Innovation, boosting its value for Europe. But what does actually “boosting” mean? The answer is treasuring. The world market for drinking and wastewater reached an amount of 250 billion of euro in 2008, with corresponding investments of more than 33 billion of euro per year. Pollution of water from run-off alone was estimated in 2011 to cost the European Union 30 billion of euro each year. Moreover, the previsions say that a 1 percent increase of the rate of growth of the water industry in Europe may result in 10,000 to 20,000 new jobs. Which means more competitiveness for Europe.

The European Project provides five specific calls concerning water, which are expected to contribute to several policy objectives including those set out in the Europe 2020 Resource-efficient Europe Roadmap for water. First, impacts of droughts and floods should be minimised; secondly, alternative water supply options are only relied upon when all water saving and water efficiency measure are taken and other options exhausted; then, water extraction must remain less than 20 percent of available renewable water resources.

The budget? 160 million euro: 67 million for 2014 and the last 93 million for 2015. In detail, the specific calls are the following:

- WATER1 – Bridging the gap: from innovative water solutions to market replication

- WATER2 – Integrated approaches to water and climate change

- WATER3 – Stepping up EU research and innovation cooperation in the water area

- WATER4 – Harnessing EU water research and innovation results for industry, agriculture, policy makers and citizens

- WATER5 – Strengthening international R&I cooperation in the field of water

Actually, it is not the only call concerning water policy in Europe. There is a European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) where water and its priority areas for action are described in the Strategic Implementation Plan and to research gaps identified through the WFD Common Implementation Strategy activity as well as through relevant European Technology Platforms.

Three: Toward a resource efficient economy

The third call of the project concerns business and aim to convey the scientific results into the market economy, bringing innovative solutions and encouraging their take-up by public authorities in their procurement practices. A key element is to provide services accessible by everyone. These new services should provide high quality and ultimately useful data for the public sector, business and society. As the project underlines, citizen are fundamental to achieve such a goal. For this reason, actions will address the need to both usefully harness Earth Observation data and to engage citizens in developing systems for effective transfer of environmental knowledge for the benefit of scientists, policy makers, business and society.

This topic represents the larger group of calls: 20 different calls for a total budget of 351 million of euro, 166 for the first year and 185 for the second.

However – and it is a crucial point of the entire project – an efficient economy must proceed with a sustainable supply of raw materials. In particular, actions must focus on sustainable access to and production of raw materials to ensure significant reduction in resource use and a secure and sustainable supply of key raw materials.

An exemplary punishment

Roberto Defez — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 09:49:00 +0100

Last July 2014 the Forest Guards of the Friuli Venezia Region destroyed two GMO corn fields both owned by Giorgio Fidenato. In these two cases, however, two different laws were implemented: a regional one in the first case and a national one in the second one. The simple fact that the laws coming into force are always new and always different is self-explanatory. For those against GMOs this proves the dynamism, the initiative and the capability of the various executives in adapting to challenges - also legal ones - that are always new and more and more complex. For those in favour of GMOs this is the proof of a mixture of impotence and improvisation. For those who do not deal on a daily basis with this matter, it shows how complex is this subject, where rules and laws change as soon as turn your head and perhaps more than one person gives up in getting involved in this topic, waiting for a solution to come by a wave of magic wand.

By growing GMO Bt-corn in 2010, Fidenato broke the law that had regulated GMO cultivations until spring 2013, law n. 212 of 2001. A law he challenged in a three years long hearing which ended by showing its non-validity in Italy, since it had never been notified to Brussels and was therefore to be considered illegal. The Friuli Region had also issued local rules that banned GMO cultivations, subsequently declared illegal too, since they had never been notified to Brussels either. Because of these national and regional laws issued against European regulations, an infraction procedure has been launched against Italy on February 7, 2014.

After the law 202 of 2001 had been “demolished”, the Letta Government issued an interministerial decree on July 13, 2013 (signed by De Girolamo, Orlando, Lorenzin, then-Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Health). This decree forbade Bt-corn crop because of the fear (only theoretical) that some unpronounceable insects might not like the presence of GMO pollen in the surroundings. However, this decree did not include any sanctions or envisage any actions for managing the GMO corn that, as soon as law 202 had been cancelled, had been grown in the field owned by Silvano Dalla Libera and in Giorgio Fidenato’s one, both in Friuli.

The year 2013 ends with the public threshing of GMO corn in Dalla Libera’s field. In October 2013 the harvest is conducted at the presence of police officers, besides hundreds of farmers and citizens, and under the electronic eye of TV cameras and the local Forest Guards.

Once the corn has been harvested, the media attention fades away and the topic “sinks” for a few months. But, on the contrary, a couple of details must be explained. What happened to that GMO corn? Has it been hidden, smuggled or sold to the black market? No, it has not. That GMO corn has been simply and legally sold and used by those many people who asked, wanted, paid and used it. But not only. That Bt-corn, as all non-GMO Italian corn, has been subsidised by the CAP (Common Agriculture Policy): therefore, growing GMO Bt-type corn means being able to ask for and receive European funds that are given to all farmers who cultivate authorised vegetable varieties.

Now, let’s see what happened on July 14, as mentioned at the beginning.

Last March 2014, the Friuli Region issues the law 5 of 2014 which bans the cultivation of Bt-corn. On the basis of this law the Forest Guards destroy the first field of Bt-corn owned by Fidenato. It may look incredible, but this law too has never been notified to the central competent authority in Brussels and, once appealed, the European Union explains that not only the law is not valid, but that the Italian judge must disapply it. Now that the corn has been destroyed who is going to pay? And how much? This is reiteration of violation for a Region already under infraction procedure, they will not dare using money from the taxes to pay for these choices that are only politics! An institution that commits such infringements should not look into the citizens’ pockets to find the necessary money to pay these fines: perhaps they should use personal money of whom made the mistake instead?

But the national Government wants to show its activism and issues a legislative decree, the so-called DL Competitiveness that, like any other decree, enters into force on its release date on the Official Journal, June 24, 2014, even though on August 1, 2014 the Legislative Decree under discussion had not been converted into law yet. The public prosecutor Dal Tedesco, in Udine, cannot not wait and decides to use a provisional legislative decree for destroying the second field owned by Fidenato where Bt-corn was cultivated. This corn was already finishing blooming and, even though it had not reached full maturity, its spikes were well grown. The haste for destruction had to be justified with some urgent motivations and the public prosecutor Dal Tedesco cited some not better described health reasons. The Public prosecutor must be aware of evidences unknown to the whole Scientific Community, to the Agency for Food Safety of Parma, to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and to all the Central Offices of the European Union and the World Health Organization. It will be very interesting to analyse in depth the technical motivations used to support this choice. For sure the health reasons and the concerns for insects described in the Decree of July 2013 are much different and the last decree cannot pretend to interpret the 2013 Decree with penal sanctions.

But, in this case too, it is interesting to notice what happens as soon as the media attention fades away. What happened to the corn harvested by the Forest Guards? What do they do with it after threshing Bt-corn plants and spikes? In 2010, the first harvest of Bt-Corn that had initiate the penal procedure against Fidenato, that same corn had been dried and stored and made available to the judiciary authority for being sold. In 2013 it has been harvested by farmers and sold as animal feed. This practice has nothing strange as Italy imports GMO corn of the same type since 1996, which has been included into animal feed for 18 years now, also for products denominate DOP and IGP. But not this time. In 2014 the same corn that we have been buying from abroad since 1996 becomes special waste and is sent to the incinerator, not used for biogas or biofuel, not for animal feed, simply burnt by the incinerator like garbage, with a cost for the citizens of 6,000 euro. It should be clear that also this incinerated corn will receive the usual European funds by the CAP: the European Union subsidises what the Public Prosecutor Dal Tedesco incinerates. It would be nice to know if this 6,000 euro will be taken from the citizens’ pockets too. If the Public Prosecutor is right, Fidenato should pay, but if this is not the case, who is going to pay, “dear” Office of the Public Procurator of Udine?

In conclusion, I am certain by now that the reader has learnt a lot, therefore I can finish with a simple question: do you think that the Legislative Decree Competitiveness, which introduces those sanctions (up to 50,000 euro in one of its last version, but not so long time ago there was also reclusion for three years) that have authorized the destruction of Fidenato’s second field and the subsequent corn incineration, has been notified to Brussels before entering into force?

Merits and flaws of using social media to fight Ebola

redazione — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 10:05:00 +0100

Can social media be used as a way to prevent the spread of infectious diseases? Such a question is certainly on the agenda right now, with the Ebola outbreak currently raging in West Africa and having already claimed the life of 887 people out of 1,603 cases since this March.

This epidemic is caused by a lethal but not highly contagious virus, which does not transmit just by breathing. The only way to get it is to come in contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, usually through person’s mucous membranes or broken skin. Indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids may also lead to being infected.

This is the largest Ebola outbreak since this virus was first identified, in 1976, and is obviously raising great concern. Alarmist news about the spread of the disease within and outside African borders have been appearing, especially on the web. As pointed out by Declan Butler on Nature, bringing the outbreak under control requires effective communication strategies. It is indeed crucial to convince people to trust health workers and to follow public health advice. Particularly, these strategies should involve local community leaders and stakeholders, in order to trace the spread of the virus and to identify infected people.

And this is how social media could play a significant role, as many believe.

Many people in the regions struck by the deadly virus started using social media in order to share information about the disease and its prevention. On Twitter, hashtag like #FactsOfEbola, launched by the Nigerian blogger Japheth Omojuwa, and #EbolaFacts, which is also shared by local celebrities like Ghanaian actress Juliet Ibrahim, became trending topics.

Also, one of the points being stressed in an appeal wrote on Lancet by a group of medical researchers from Sierra Leone, regarded the use of mobile technology to fight the spread of the disease. “Emerging technologies can help early warning systems, outbreak response, and communication between health-care providers, wildlife and veterinary professionals, local and national health authorities, and international health agencies,” wrote the researchers. Mobile phones are quite diffused in West Africa and Ghana – where the #EbolaFacts campaign started thanks to a local radio station, the Accra – has the country’s highest mobile broadband penetration rate.

However, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), the most rural areas in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are not online. People from isolated villages are more at risk due to dangerous behaviours like eating bushmeat – which also includes that of the presumptive reservoir hosts of Ebola, the fruit bats – or touching infected persons without proper precautions, for instance in the case of burial ceremonies. Thus, those people most at risk of catching the virus are also those most difficult to reach.

“Twitter is an effective tool, but primarily among developed country audiences,” told Gregory Härtl, WHO’s head of Public Relations and Social Media, to The Daily Beast. For sure, social media created a lot of awareness and are a useful tool for journalists and healthcare workers, but they are only a part of the solution.

Who's in, who's out in the new European Research Committee

Giacomo Destro — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 08:20:00 +0100

If continuity means importance, research and energy have been confirmed as a priority for the European Union, at least in its Parliament. Despite the challenging election of the new Parliament, on the scientific point of view nothing seems to be changed. On the 7^th of July, Jerzy Buzek has been nominated Chair of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE), one of the most relevant committee of the EU Parliament. This nomination has a deep political meaning, along with that of the vice-chairs.

Excellent in scientific research, excellent in politics: Jerky Buzek’s career

Jerky Buzek, a former Polish Prime Minister, is an important politician in the EU Parliament. Son of an engineer, he took the doctoral degree and became scientist in Chemical Engineering at Polish Academy of Science. Then, after the fall of the communist regime, he entered the world of politics, successfully: he became Prime Minister of Poland from 1997 to 2001, the first democratic PM to serve a full term. In 2001, he did a step back from politics and returned into scientific research, becoming Pro-Rector at the Akademia Polonija and Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Opole University of Technology. However, after just three years he came back in politics, being elected for the first time at the EU Parliament: he immediately entered the ITRE until 2009, when he was elected President of the European Parliament, with the largest majority ever. When he ended his mandate as President, in 2012, he entered the EU Parliament Foreign Affair Committee. After this year elections, he has been re-elected as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and now he has become President of the ITRE.

ITRE members | Create Infographics

Scientists and non-scientist in ITRE committee

The vice-chair nomination and the other members of ITRE

The scientific and political path of Jerky Buzek, a former PM and President of the Parliament, is a clear sign of the importance of the committee. Moreover, he has proved a strong conviction in the European integration. This can probably enforce all the financial subsidies structure of the EU, first of all Horizon 2020. But another political sign of the ITRE importance can be found in the nomination of the first two vice-chairs: both of them were ITRE vice-chairs during the previous legislature: excellence in the head, continuity in the body. As a matter of fact, the Italian Socialist/Democrat MEP Patrizia Toia has been confirmed as the first vice-chair, having served in that position since 2009, and, as the second vice-chair, the Czech MEP Miloslav Ransdorf, who also served in the same position since 2004. A newcomer in third position of vice-chair is the German MEP Hans Olaf-Henkel, a former top manager of IBM Europe. The real fight has been about the fourth position, harshly contended by two candidates: Dario Tamburrano, an euroskeptic Italian MEP (from Movimento 5 Stelle in coalition with the Nigel Farange’s Europe for Freedom Party), and Morten Helveg Petersen, a liberal MEP from Denmark. The latter won with 37 votes in favor against 17, but Tamburrano denounced a partition of positions between the three major European political parties.

First declarations

Although the first meeting, held in July 22^nd, had a procedural agenda, Buzek immediately set the mid-term priorities for his presidency. First of all, a genuine discussion about the ongoing diplomatic negotiations on the EU-US Treaty, as it will have deep implications on the energy sector. Then he set the digitalization, energy security and re-industrialization as a more general issues to be discussed. He did not mention any discussion about scientific policies, which is something that can be seen as something good, or bad.

Migration and public health in Europe

Cristina Da Rold — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 08:40:00 +0100

Talking about public health in Europe today also means talking about migration. Nowadays, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 73 million migrants are estimated to be living in the European Region, accounting for nearly 8 percent of the total population, and 11 million immigrants have arrived in Europe in 2013. The point is that the word immigration has several meanings: it means people who choose to come and live in Europe for study and work; it means the difficult stories of those who have to leave their families to come to work as a domestic worker; last but not least, it means fleets of people crammed into small boats putting their lives in the hands of luck. This last phenomenon represents one of the biggest challenge for European health policy.

Create Infographics

Although involving the whole of Europe, the problem of the ongoing management of migration flows does not affect all countries equally. Since the beginning of the crisis in North Africa in 2011, the Mediterranean countries have been experiencing a continuous state of emergency, due to the uncontrolled arrival of migrants fleeing from their countries, and the weakness of the infrastructure, often incapable to stem such a phenomenon. Although some places in the Mediterranean area are at the centre of the migratory routes, Italy was not the country with the largest number of immigrants in 2013.

In fact, according to WHO, France, Germany, the UK and Sweden have welcomed many more immigrants in 2013 than Italy. And even if we consider the totality of migration worldwide, Italy is not on the top of the rank.

Create Infographics

Three types of migration throughout Europe

“We see a particular phenomenon, which is the presence of three Europe, depending on the type of migration that we consider,” says Santino Severoni, Public Health and Migration Coordinator of the WHO European Office for Investment for Health and Development. The whole area of the former Soviet Union is substantially affected by a migration triggered by economic reasons and people usually speaks the same language of the receiving country. On the other hand, in Northern Europe the majority of migrants is made up by asylum seekers and people aiming to stay there. Instead, Southern Europe is facing a difficult humanitarian situation. Severoni explains that the challenge is to plan a series of infrastructure that allow to cope with the humanitarian situation without needing a permanent state of emergency.

The chart below tells another facet of the differences in immigration that characterize the different European states. We observe, for example, that in Italy 85 percent of the 92,000 immigrants are refugees, while only the remaining 15 percent is made up of asylum seekers. The difference is substantial, even with respect to the issue of health. Refugee status is applied in cases where there is a fear that a person may be persecuted in his country of origin. It implies a residence permit that lasts for two years and is renewable, and it obligates foreigners to subscribe to the national health service. Instead, asylum seekers have the right of staying in Italy for a long time if fundamental freedoms are denied in their country of origin. At the same time, however, the protection afforded by the state is more restricted.

Concerning the differences between countries, data highlight that, in Greece, only 5 percent of the immigrants – which were 73,000 in 2013 – are refugees, with the big chunk being represented by asylum seekers. In Germany and Spain the situation is very different compared to our country, which is why – as it is clear from Severoni’s words – an international coordination seems necessary in order to take into account the structural diversity of different countries in terms of health policies.

WHO: Italy leads a European pilot project

Beyond numbers and comparisons, in Italy, in recent years, immigration is a problem, even for public health.

There is a widespread call for international aid coordination at the European level that can help to meet the demand of those fleeing war without bringing down entire islands, as often happens in Lampedusa. Our country has promoted and entirely funded a special office within the World Health Organization, for a total of 1.8 million Euros over three years, since 2011. Unfortunately, few words have been dedicated to such an initiative by Italian media and the existence of the project is little known. “The office was created in 2011, when we realized that the North African crisis that was emerging in Europe, would soon be translated into immigration crisis,” Severoni says.

The project is implemented under the new policy framework for the WHO European Health for Health 2020. The goal? To identify success stories that could be achieved in other countries, making accurate information about the actual likelihood that immigration brings to the public health of the host country and address the different legal scenarios that determine access to health services by migrants, in order to stem the spread of infections.

Not emergency, but planning

“What I think is the crucial point,” continues Severoni, “is that the immigration issue is treated as an emergency, when in fact it should be handled as a part of public planning. It’s just a different view of the problem and we intend to work on that. This happens because declaring an emergency means having instant access to extra funding without resorting to bureaucracy. In Sicily we are doing an amazing job. Other European countries like Malta and Portugal, with Spain being the next one, are taking inspiration from the Italian program.”

The case of tuberculosis

“Lastly, another important point is represented by the Health Information System, for instance concerning communicable diseases,” explains Severoni. “Perhaps the most significant example in this sense is the case of tuberculosis.”

It is true that tuberculosis continues to be a major public health problem, but it is equally true that the real problem for Europe. is represented by the poor hygienic and sanitary conditions in which migrants have to live as soon as they hit the ground. “Regarding tuberculosis, we register only two cases over 10 thousand migrants,” Severoni says. “Furthermore, with regard to infectious diseases, it is not easy to have a clear overview of the situation since data are often not comparable. Although TBC among migrants is occasionally highlighted as problematic by political or populist movements, actually there is a lack of data to indicate significant TBC transmission from migrants to the native population; the majority of the studies indicates that the transmission of TBC occurs within migrant communities themselves.“For this reason, the aim is to involve all the stakeholders: the Ministry of the Internal Affairs, prefectures, the army abroad. The impact of migration on public health depends on decisions made by different sectors that need to communicate” Severoni says.

“For example, in some countries regulations require that migrants who have done research for asylum should be kept closed in shelters, some with only one hour of exercise per day, so make them unable to escape. In cases like these, WHO has reported the development of mental illnesses related to these stringent conditions.”

The Italian role in Graphene research

Antonio Pilello — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 08:43:00 +0100

From 23^rd to 27^th June 2014, Gothenburg (Sweden) hosted the Graphene Week 2014, one of the most important conferences for scientists who study graphene and other 2D materials. About 450 researchers attended the meeting, including the two Nobel prize laureates Andre Geim and Klaus von Klitzing. Afterwards, we had the pleasure to speak with Vincenzo Palermo, the leader of the Functional Organic Materials research unit of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), who is working on the research and production of some innovative materials for optoelectronics and photovoltaics, using self-assembling molecules and graphene.

Europe is a leader in the field of research on graphene. What about other continents?

Graphene was discovered in Europe, but there are many investments and research projects as well as excellent research groups also in countries of other continents, for example in South Korea, where the interaction between academia and industry is very important. In any case, our continent is at the forefront for the number of scientific publications. As concerns the funding and the number of patents, also Asia and North America are very competitive.

What is the potential of this innovative material?

Graphene has some amazing electrical, mechanical, chemical and optical properties that have been extensively studied and demonstrated in laboratory. Obviously, not all of them will be able to give large-scale commercial applications. In the short term, the graphene will be probably useful in the field of composites to improve the mechanical, electrical or chemical properties of various polymeric materials or others based on carbon fibres. In the medium term, the excellent electrical properties of graphene will allow to build new high capacity batteries or super capacitors, flexible electronic devices and sensors.

In the Graphene Flagship Project there are 23 Italian partners, such as research institutes, universities and companies. What is their role in the consortium?

During the last competitive call, whose winners were selected through evaluation by anonymous referees, Italy has been very successful, being the nation with the most selected partners. Currently, Italy is the nation with most partners within the Flagship, together with Germany. The partners have different sizes and responsibilities, from large multinationals to small enterprises, which are a relevant part of Italy’s industrial system. For example, thanks to regional research projects, my group is collaborating intensively with some small and medium enterprises within the technopole created in Bologna by CNR and the region Emilia-Romagna.

What are the main innovations introduced in Sweden during the Graphene Week 2014?

Regarding the results, the most important ones concern the production of graphene. In the long term, the big challenge will be the creation of some new two-dimensional metamaterials, stacking different materials such as conductors, insulators or semiconductors one over each other at atomic scale. In general, it will be very important for the industrial applications to have a good quality control and a better metrology because at the moment there is no uniformity in the use of the terminology related to graphene.

In the Graphene Flagship Project there are many partners. How is the work coordinated between them?

The Flagship has a supranational structure. The research activity is divided into many work packages and in each one there are partners from different nations. In order to get the best results, it is important to take advantage of all excellences in Europe, avoiding any barrier or competition between the contributors. The whole community works strategically in the same direction, speeding up and maximizing the impact of this new technology on the European industries and economy. Furthermore, there is also an intensive exchange of resources and personnel between the various institutions.

The woman who built evidence-based policy making in Europe

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 08:42:00 +0100

Anne Glover is a Scottish professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and is ceasing her position as the first EU Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) during the Barroso Commission II. She made a huge job in spreading the evidence-based method into policy making, by advising President Barroso with the most up-to-date scientific discoveries. But her second main goal was to create a network of all the people involved in governmental scientific advisory across the European Union: this network came together for the first time on June 22^nd at the EuroScience Open Forum (Esof). This year, Esof took place in Copenhagen, the capital city of a country that is massively investing on science. It is always difficult to create a new network, but this time was even harder, as Glover faced problems both on the theoretical and concrete points of view.

A microbiologist at the European Commission

“What [the European Commission] do[es] is policy for science, whereas what I am doing is science for policy”, Glover stated. In other words, she promoted evidence-based criteria in the European policy making. But, in doing this, she has vied with at least two main problems: the relationship between scientific truth and the democratic process, and the interconnections between fields of knowledge in policy making. About the first problem, she was deeply conscious that policy making cannot be completely based on scientific rationality. “The challenge is [when] the democratic process comes in,” Glover said. “Lots of policies are not based on evidence, there could be other economic or social reasons. Take a simple issue such as harmful drugs. There are more people killed horse riding […] rather than taking ecstasy. So do you use that evidence, and say: ‘Fine, let’s ban horse riding, and legalize ecstasy?’ Well, no, because there are lots of other issues and lots of other factors to consider”. Science can help, but does not have to be considered as a “revealed truth”. In building up a policy, many aspects have to be taken into account. That is why she always promoted interconnectedness between fields of knowledge: “the policy world very much mirrors what we do in science today. When I first started doing research in my field, around 35 years ago, I really just needed to speak to other biologists”, Anne Glover explained, “yet now I can’t do my science without speaking to material scientists or chemists outside my field. That’s why I think the more we increase that interconnectedness at a policy level, the better chance we have of creating really effective policies”.

Scientific advisory models in Europe

In building the network, Glover also faced concrete questions. First of all: who she has to relate with? Along with many other political institutions, the science advisory in Europe is variously conducted. There are four institutional models. UK and Ireland have a formal government chief scientist: Sir Mark Walport advices the Prime Minister Cameron, while Professor Mark Ferguson provides advices to the Irish government. In some cases, the chief of the National Academy of Sciences is automatically the government advisor, as in Netherlands and Austria. Other countries do not appoint the advisory service to one person, but delegates it to a special commission: this happens in Denmark, Finland and Greece. Italy and Spain usually give the duty to officials. Finally, other countries do not have a scientific advisory for governments, or have a mix of models: this is the case of France and Germany.

A forum for scientific advisory

Anne Glover will leave her office in November 2014, as Juncker will enter in force. Despite science is not his main priority, the future President of the Commission, during the electoral campaign demonstrated an interest in science, and maybe about science-based policy making. Many analysts suppose that it is unlikely that Glover will be reconfirmed in her place, even because the recent tensions between Germany and UK about Juncker nomination (Glover is Scottish). However, during the two and a half years at the Commission, Glover has built a shared urgency on evidence-based policy making. The forum hosted by the EuroScience Open Forum will probably be the basis for an effective scientific lobbying action in European political decisions.

Horizon 2020: the Turkish challenge

Cristina Da Rold — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 09:41:00 +0100

Political relations between Europe and Turkey have never been easy and even in scientific research, often over the parts, the inclusion of the Turkish Government into international dynamics represented a special case. One example of this particularity is the fact that the final agreement that allows Turkey to be among the beneficiaries of Horizon 2020 was only signed in June. “Turkey is a much valued partner. Its dynamic business environment is a perfect test bed for the development of innovative products and services – making cooperation a win-win for researchers and enterprises on both sides," wrote the UE press release.

But what is exactly the Turkey’s potential within a project like Horizon 2020? Actually, Turkey has been associated to EU research framework programmes since 2003 and, under the last European programme between 2007 and 2013, more than one thousand participations from Turkish public and private institutions in some 950 projects received almost €200 million in EU funding.

However, its current level of investment in R&D is less than 1 percent of GDP, below the EU average that is of 2 percent and the target it has set itself for 2023.

The element that attracted the European attention were probably the Turkish small and medium-sized enterprises. In an economic landscape as difficult as that of the last few years, they have been one of the hangers in the country, as well as in the whole European community, which for years invested its capital in Turkey.

Therefore, it seems that, once again, the field on which the game is played is the economic one and it is not a coincidence that today there are those who talk about the BRICS + T, thus including Turkey in the group of economically emerging countries, along with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

In this regard, ISPAT, the Turkish agency for the support and promotion of investment in Turkey, provides a very interesting overview about how the country is investing in key economic sectors. Particularly, in relation to the themes of Horizon 2020, it is important to consider the data in three areas: Information and communication technologies (ICT), Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, and Energy and Renewables.

ICT

About ICT, Turkey’s ambitious vision until 2023, the centennial foundation of the republic, envisages grandiose goals, in order to become one of the top 10 countries in e-transformation. These goals include the increase of the number of companies to 5,500, of employees to 65,000 and of exports to USD 10 billion.

These predictions cannot fail to attract attention of the international community. In particular, the Turkish government has set itself the ambitious goal of reaching 30 million broadband subscribers and providing internet connection for 14 million houses at a speed of 1,000 Mbps. In terms of money, it means to increase the ICT sector’s size to USD 160 billion, with a market growth of around 15 percent each year.

Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals

The healthcare industry is transformed based on the demographics of a country as does a shadow with a body that produces it; thus, a rapidly growing young population is one of the key factors driving demand for the healthcare sector. In 2012, Turkey’s pharmaceutical market has been the sixth largest market in Europe and the 16^th largest in the world in terms of sales. Furthermore, between 2012 and 2013, the healthcare industry and the pharmaceutical sector grew by 5.8 percent and 8.9 percent, value much higher than the European average.

In 2012, as reported by ISPAT, the social security system now covers approximately 99 percent of the total population with 75.2 million people covered, which is an increase of 29 percent from 2002, and Turkey intends to continue its relentless growth up to 2023. The health tourism is one of the engines of the economy, accounting for 20 billion USD by 2023. Moreover, as a result, healthcare spending per capita has been targeted to almost triple by 2023, reaching USD 2,000.

Energy and Renewables

Also from the energetic point of view, the aims of the Turkish government between now and 2023 are quite ambitious, especially in terms of renewable energy sources, which are abundant in Turkey. More in detail, one of the aims is in fact the increase of the share of renewables to 30 percent, through the maximization of the use of hydropower, the increase of wind power installed capacity to 20,000 MW, and the installation of power plants with 600 MW of 3,000 MW of geothermal and solar energy.

According to data reported by ISPAT, these predictions are justified. Turkey has become one of the fastest growing energy markets in the world, in parallel to its economic growth registered over the last ten years. In Turkey the power distribution is fully managed by the private sector, while the privatization of power generation assets is set to be completed within the next few years. Even in the field of nuclear energy, Turkey has set itself specific objectives: commissioning nuclear power plants, two of which are operational nuclear power plants, and a third is now under construction.

Therefore, from the economic point of view, Turkey is today a challenge, especially inside the country but at international level. A challenge that Europe, having agreed to include the Turkish government within the Horizon 2020, seems to have accepted.

From Trieste to Africa: interview with Mario Giro

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 09:28:00 +0100

The relationships between science and international politics are a hot topics at the moment and there are several key players in this field. One of them is Mario Giro, Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry in the Italian Government.

He was born in 1958 in Rome. After his studies in Italianistics at Università La Sapienza, he entered the Community of Sant’Egidio, a public lay association recognized by the Catholic Church that, since the late ’70s, has been known as one leading forum for international peace talks, such as those regarding the Mozambiquan civil war, the Balkans, Algeria and Congo. Mario Giro has been involved in most of these peace talks, and so, in 1998, he became the Head of the International Relations of the Community of Sant’Egidio, mostly dealing with Africa. For his efforts towards peace, he was awarded in 2010 of the Prize for Conflict Prevention by Fondation Chirac. Then, in 2012, he became Advisor for Andrea Riccardi when the Head of the Community of Sant’Egidio was nominated as the Italian Ministry for International Cooperation. Finally, in May 2013 he became Undersecretary of the Foreign Ministry, in charge of South America, Subsaharian Africa and the promotion of the Italian Language. On February 2014 Mario Giro has been reconfirmed in his position by the new Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

In May 2014, the Italian Foreign Ministry hosted an important event, called “Africa and Italy: Scientific Cooperation for Sustainable Development”. The meeting focused on the importance of the scientific cooperation in strengthening the African development. Some of the most prominent personalities from Italy and Africa have met the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, together with the ambassador Mamadou Kamara Dékamo, from the Republic of the Congo, who has represented the African diplomatic corps, Mariém Aouffa, representative of the African Union, and the TWAS Executive Director Romain Murenzi, former Minister of the Education of Rwanda. Undersecretary Mario Giro was present at the meeting. We asked him about Italian scientific cooperation programs, Africa and the role of science in the international relations.

In the last years, Italy seems to be particularly active in promoting its scientific cooperation policies, as for instance the Meeting with Scientific attachés and the recent “Africa-Italia” meeting. What will be next?

We are focusing on the 50^th anniversary of the ICTP, in October, in order to create an important arena to put in contact the international scientific community located in Trieste.

Does Italy has a defined science diplomacy?

The Ministry promotes three main objectives regarding science diplomacy: to support the geopolitical needs of our foreign politics; to support jobs creation, by promoting our innovative companies abroad; finally, to support the dialogue in politically unstable areas or countries. This in a long-term view. But today, bearing in mind the economic crisis, we tried to focus our efforts to promote international research projects and researchers mobility (both from and to Italy): this, for example, happened recently with China and Brasil.

Which instruments does the Foreign Ministry use for Italian science diplomacy?

We have our network of scientific attachés, coordinated by a dedicated unit at the Ministry, which is appointed to build the mid-long term strategy. From the financial point of view, the Ministry put an average 4 million euro per year (in the last 5 years) to support the internationalization of our scientific research. This includes the Bilateral Agreement on scientific and industrial cooperation with Israel. Moreover, we dedicate other financial resources in supporting international scientific organizations, such as ICTP or TWAS.

Someone could say that, before putting money on international programmes, Italy should devote resources to help the national scientific research system. What is your opinion?

A cosmopolitan scientific community is not a zero-sum game: every scientific finding is a great new opportunity for the whole humanity. Thousands of scientists and researchers from more than one hundred countries have been educated over the past decades in Trieste, or have had the opportunity to develop their scientific knowledge there, through a constructive dialogue with experts from other countries. Once back in their country of origin, many of them have formed the new recruits and several foreign researchers, “adopted” by Trieste, today stand in prestigious positions, defining the overall scientific agenda.

ICTP, ICGEB, TWAS, Area Science Park and SISSA: all these form the so-called “Sistema Trieste”, maybe one of the most active system in which science diplomacy is put in practice. But many Italians barely know its existence. Do you think that Sistema Trieste is undervalued by the Italian Government?

I would add the ICRANET in Pescara, so we can define an Adriatic dorsal of the excellence in scientific research. They all are international organizations with a multilateral governance, therefore Italy cannot decide or use them by its own. Nevertheless, it is true that this Adriatic dorsal is underutilized in relation with the Italian scientific system.

For many decades you have been dealing with Africa, a fast changing continent. Which is the Italian science diplomacy towards Africa?

We are focusing on emerging countries, such as Nigeria or South Africa. I guess that Sistema Trieste could take the celebration of the 50^th year of ICTP as an opportunity for the African, European and Italian scientific community to dialogue together. In this occasion, they can start a deep thinking that could lead, in 2015, to guidelines and scientific cooperation programmes between Italy and Africa, through Europe.

Africa is becoming an example of “bottom-up” science, namely scientists and direct stakeholders that group together to do scientific research. This model is particularly suitable for agronomy or health. Do you think this is a good model of cooperation?

All the developing countries are increasing their investment in R&D and now more than one third of the world’s research takes place in these countries. The bottom-up model of cooperation is one of the leading trend. In Africa, for example, through the bottom-up model, Malawi has increased agricultural productivity, Zambia, Senegal and Uganda have improved access to health services, and Niger started a reforestation program. But bottom-up is not the solely way: since it is not simply to imitate and adapt scientific knowledge already developed elsewhere, Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria are investing in frontier technologies from telecommunications to biotechnology. At the same time, the political attention to science is enhancing, as, for instance, in 2002 was created the Committee of Presidents for science or the African Union, which devoted a summit to science in 2007. Despite the progress, we still need to work in order to promote science education in Africa among women and young people, and to ensure the commitment of the African Union that at least 1 percent of GDP in every country will be invested in scientific research.

Looking at the brain to understand drug addiction

Valentina Daelli — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 10:35:00 +0100

An increasing complexity seems to characterize the scenario of the European drug problem. The picture that emerges from the EU drugs agency (EMCDDA) 2014 report, published last May, highlights a stable general situation, in which new problems and threats appear. Drug users seem to represent a complex continuum from rare experimental use and habitual, compulsive use: a pattern that differs from the old dichotomy between a small group of “hard” drug addicts and a larger group of recreational users. The associated risks can be thus difficult to estimate and predict, often depending on a number of different factors.

According to the report, over 80 million of European citizens have used an illicit drug during their life, almost a quarter of the entire adult European population. New drugs, new consuming behavior: in order to face the problem, different approaches have to be integrated, from social intervention to clinical services to basic brain research.

Which are the contributions that neuroscience research can have in the field of addiction treatment?

“A first, fundamental change brought about by neuroscience studies is a switch in the perception and conceptualization of addiction,” explains George F. Koob, Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of NIH, in Washington DC. “The role of brain in addiction is now widely acknowledged, and it is becoming more and more accepted to trait drug and alcohol addiction as a brain disease”.

George F. Koob is one of the three researchers who received the 2014 Neuronal Plasticity Prize, conferred by Foundation IPSEN during the FENS forum of neuroscience. Together with Koob, two other laureates shared the prize: Barry J. Everitt and Michel Le Moal. “Removing the social stigma from addiction is a first step in trying to address the problem,” adds Barry J. Everitt, professor and director of research at the University of Cambridge. “Suffering from drug or alcohol addiction is still perceived as something to hide. For example, just think about Alcoholics Anonymous: we would not have Diabetics Anonymous or Heart patients Anonymous”. According to the three scientists, a superficial approach to the problem still considers addiction as a bad attitude, not very different from a wrong habit. Taking drugs, or drinking alcohol, is often depicted as something that an addict can avoid. “If we read tabloid press, we can see titles like «You can just say no»,” comments Everitt, “but maybe it is not true, maybe you cannot avoid it, you cannot just say no”.

“The study of the brain and its functioning can lead to a change in the social and clinical attitude towards addiction, as other diseases,” observes Koob. “Before the introduction of antidepressants and thus the understanding that neurons’ behavior is related to the mental and mood state, depression was mainly considered as a problem of motivation. Now we consider it a disease, and we treat it with medicines and therapy. A similar change can happen with addiction”.

Despite the importance of a change in perception with respect to addiction, this is not the only contribution of brain research in this field. Understanding how neurons react to drugs, which mechanisms lead to compulsive use of substances and how individual differences can affect the way in which we interact with drugs are only some of the examples that can stimulate the development of novel treatments in the clinic. In the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, the research group led by professor Everitt studies the neuropsychology of drug addiction, and the relationship between memory and compulsive behaviors. The results of their research could help developing new treatments to prevent relapse and promote abstinence in drug addicts.

“We investigate the role of one type of memory mechanism on addictive behavior,” explains Everitt. “We can imagine how hard it is for an alcoholic to refrain from drinking when he or she enters a bar. There are some stimuli that become associated with the effects of drugs or alcohol: they could be objects, places, even people. These cues can induce craving and drug seeking behavior. So we asked: what if we could reduce or eliminate their ability to influence relapse?”

There are two approaches that scientists can use in order to manipulate the effect of memories on addictive behavior. The first one is the pharmaceutical intervention: some molecules can affect the mechanism involved in the influences of drug-associated cues. However, according to Everitt, it seems that the pharmaceutical industry is not interested in developing a commercial drug with this characteristics. “So we tried a different approach: can we modify the representations of drug-associated cues held in memory?”

By following a specific procedure that involves the use of simple beta-blockers, it is possible to make a memory unstable: the drug-associated memories can be disrupted when they are in such unstable states, preventing the subsequent drug seeking behaviors. The procedure, which has been tested in animals, is now going to involve patients in a community of alcoholics in Cambridge. The idea, explains Everitt, is to include the practice in clinical treatment, for example within a cognitive therapy.

Understanding the reasons that transform a drug user into a drug addict could be of crucial importance to develop clinical treatment for addictive behaviors. Not everyone react at the same way to drug use. “Some addicts go on for months or years using heroin or cocaine only on weekends before becoming daily addicted users; others report that they had such an intense positive response that they became addicted from the first time,” explains Michel Le Moal, professor of neuroscience at the University of Bordeaux.

“For many years, individual differences have been an annoyance rather than a challenge for experimenters: they wanted to study the average behavior. Now we understand that looking at differences among individuals may be the only approach to study some pathologies”.

If we can comprehend why some people are more resilient and others are more vulnerable to addiction, we could find specific treatments or actions to cure or even prevent compulsive behaviors related to drugs or alcohol. “Addiction is often related to anxiety: drug or alcohol becomes a kind of self-medication for some individuals who are more vulnerable to stress. If we can treat anxiety, we might be able to prevent the development of addictive behaviors in some people. Impulsivity control, another trait related to addiction, can be helped with mindfulness treatment”.

Health in Europe. Improvement through cooperation

Cristina Da Rold — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 09:17:00 +0100

Talking about the European Region does not mean speaking of a homogeneous situation, also from the point of view of health. To realize how complex and articulated the European scenario is, just think that in Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and Turkey twice as many children die before the age of five if the figures are compared with so-called industrialized countries. Not to mention the infectious diseases, the use of alcohol and tobacco, which reflect a Europe still deeply layered and with several countries still extremely dependent on their history.

The issue is not trivial because if it is true that Europe wants to brand itself as a unique community and pursue common objectives, it is necessary to take the issue of health policies very seriously. Health is in fact a major resource and asset for societies, because good health benefits all sectors, including economic growth.

This is the viewpoint of the World Health Organization that in September 2012 has launched Health 2020, the new European policy framework for health and well-being, involving the 53 Members States of the WHO European Region. The philosophy of Health 2020 is very clear: its aim is not to make national and local health systems even but to make them evenly better. This is at once a challenge and a turning point. A challenge that basically translates into two points: first, the need to improve health for all and reduce the health divide and, moreover, the need to strengthen leadership and participatory governance for health.

Specifically, Health 2020 is based on four priority areas: investing in health through a life-course approach and empowering people; tackling the most important challenges of noncommunicable and communicable diseases; strengthening people-centred health systems and, finally, creating resilient communities and environments.

This is the general main trend. Whereas, in more pragmatic terms, Health 2020 strives to achieve measurable impact on health in the whole Region. The goals are six: reducing premature mortality; increasing life expectancy; reducing inequalities and enhancing the population wellbeing; ensuring universal coverage and the right to the highest attainable level of health and finally setting national standards for health in member states.

The objectives of Health 2020 are therefore clear and ambitious, but the problem that arises, however, is how to actually implement these objectives, taking account of the various health and political ecosystems, and the diversity they entail.

The WHO strategy is to use the small European countries as examples and catalysts of the project throughout the European Region. Exactly this strategy was discussed last week in San Marino, during the international meeting “Implementing the Health 2020 vision in countries with a small population”, sponsored by San Marino and coordinated by the WHO Regional Office for Europe based in Venice, Italy. The meeting saw the participation of Ministers and senior representatives in the field of Health of Andorra, Cyprus, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro and San Marino. Interestingly, also these eight small states present a situation far from being homogeneous, from both the health management and the political point of view, in line with the entire European scene. Further details in terms of this diversity can be analyzed.

A first overview covers the real GDP per capita, a parameter mentioned over and over again when it comes to Europe. Whether you consider the whole of Europe or the eight small states too, the differences between the various nations in this regard are remarkable. For example, while Monaco has about the same number of inhabitants of San Marino, it has a GDP three times greater at the same time.

A second parameter – this time about the health care industry – emphasizing the deep heterogeneity of Europe concerns the annual costs of health care. Data taken by the WHO dossier Core Health indicators in the WHO European Region 2013, show that the percentage of GDP that each state has devoted to the health sector in 2011 is quite different between countries. And the same applies to the public sector health expenditure and the private households “out of pocket” expenditure.

Create Infographics

The question of the distribution of infectious diseases contributes greatly to feed this need to make the European landscape more homogeneous. Also, according to WHO spreadsheets in fact the proportion of new HIV cases varies greatly from country to country, especially from Eastern Europe to the West and the same trend can be observed in the case of TB. Not coincidentally, one of the declared goals of Health 2020 is tackling the most important challenges of noncommunicable and communicable diseases throughout the European Region.

To summarize, even focusing on few types of data, without considering the whole and more complex situation in a comprehensive way, we realize that if the European systems want to see an improvement in the health care sector, a coordination action is a must. And, most of all, a very challenging one.

Diary from FENS 2014 - Day Five

Elia Dante Magrinelli — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 23:25:00 +0100

Every attendant of the FENS today spent some of his time to greet and share the contact with the most relevant colleagues found during this conference. One of the most important and interesting aspects of these events is indeed the possibility of creating networks of contacts, collaborations and nonetheless friendship within this big and active community. The next appointment of this huge event will be in two years in Copenhagen thus… “Arrivederci” in Copenhagen!

3 – Lisa Holt, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Lisa Holt focused all of her carrier so far in understanding the processes occurring during axon elongation. Her efforts revealed the mechanisms behind attraction cues during axon growth, showing how protein synthesis in the growth cone of the axon is necessary to polarize the axon toward the attractive cue. Most recent studies made in her lab were aimed to identify the specific genes transduced in the growth cone by very specific and unbiased assays. These studies can lead to new breaches in the understanding the rules of the axon growth processes, a series of very precise mechanisms at the base of the high complexity of the brain.

2 – Patrick Kahold, University of Maryland, USA

Patrick Kahold’s subjects of studies are the circuits formed in development by the subplate. These cells are a temporary population of cells formed during the development of the cerebral cortex, which is necessary for an appropriate wiring between the thalamus and the cortex. The approaches used in his lab allowed creating a map of connectivity between different type of cells of the subplate and the cortex and how these circuits evolve during time. His lab managed to demonstrate the existence of a feedback circuit between cortex and subplate. Such a circuit is very important for the strengthening of thalamic projections to the cortex, which are key processes for a correct wiring of the brain. His technique can also be adapted to study many different type of circuits in a more widespread fashion.

1 – Svante Pӓӓbo, Max Plank Institute, Franckfurt, Germany

Svante Pӓӓbo is a leading expert in human evolution studies. His efforts lead to the sequencing and the comparison of the Neanderthal, human and Denisovan genome. His works led to a deep insights on the geographical, historical and evolutionary origin of the human species, showing how the first humans emerged from Africa and spread in all the continents after mixing with few other hominids. His studies are also focusing on understanding which main genomic changes made it possible to develop those cognitive functions that are unique in humans amongst hominid species, an exciting and very promising field of study that can allow us to focus more functional studies on the human specific genes or mutation that will be identified.

Diary from FENS 2014 - Day Four

Elia Dante Magrinelli — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 07:57:00 +0100

The fourth day of the FENS has been characterized by the controversial absence of Yoshiki Sasai, whose participation to the conference was in the schedule but it was very recently cancelled. It seemed to me that, as the proverbial elephant in the room, all of the attendants knew about it but few commented. Although no official communications were given, it would be easy to guess that her absence might be connected to the recent retraction of her paper by Nature. As this particular piece of news reached many researchers over the last few weeks, many were probably hoping that this venue could have been an occasion for presenting some clarification to the scientific community on behalf of the authors. Nonetheless, the Forums continued, presenting many interesting presentations.

3 – Hey Kyoung Lee, John Hopkins University, New York, USA

Hey Kyoung Lee’s efforts allowed us to understand the physiological modification that occurs in the cortex after prolonged sensory deprivation. The loss of one of the senses, e.g. vision, enhances sensibility in other senses. This phenomenon is due to two main events: the scaling up of the intensity of signals of the remaining senses on their reciprocal primary areas and the scaling down of inputs of coming from other cortical regions into the aforementioned primary areas. Lee’s study shows how in sensory loss, the enhanced sensibility of the remaining senses arises at the expenses of other cortical processes which are still to be fully explored.

2 – Lisa Giocomo, Stanford University, USA

Lisa Giocomo’s lab studies the functions of grid cells in the enthorinal cortex. These cells are involved in providing memory and learning during free navigation of animals, cooperating in orientation behavior in open space. Her extensive study showed the importance of a specific group of the enthorinal cortex called border cells. These cells are important for maintaining for maintaining over time a stable memory of the space and therefore good orientation abilities. In conclusion, her work provided, in a very robust and accurate way, a model of a rather complex mechanism.

1 – Gilles Laurent, Max Plank Institute Franckfurt, Germany

Gilles Laurent’s lab aims to understand the mechanisms and the algorithms running in different nervous systems. They already managed to explore simple systems, such as the insect olfactory systems, and are now investigating the dorsal cortex of reptiles. They chose this model for its relative simplicity and close evolutionary proximity to the mammalian cerebral cortex, on which they aim to move forward next. The techniques developed and used in Laurent’s lab include innovating molecular, electrophysiological and imaging tools, which all combined are providing the necessary conditions for deciphering the functions of this important system, and hopefully of other similar ones, a very exciting and inspiring perspective for the future of this field.

Diary from FENS 2014 - Day Three

Elia Dante Magrinelli — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 08:20:00 +0100

The third day of the FENS Forum opens with one negative note, the knowledge that the conference already reached his half-life. Most of the participant already visited at least once all of the stands of the guested companies, therefore the main focused returned to be aimed to the presentations and the new posters.

3 – Daniela Pietrobon, University of Padova, Italy

Daniela Pietrobon’s lab is currently studying the mechanisms that trigger migraine and the molecular target that could be pharmacologically regulated to relieve this disease. The trigger of migraine events is the cortical spreading depression, which causes waves of hyperpolarization in all cortical neuron. They analyzed the specifics of excitatory and inhibitory circuits in models of familiar migraine and demonstrated how P/Q Voltage gated Calcium channel are at the base of the excitation/inhibition unbalance that triggers events of CSD, indicating how more insights on the functions of this channels and on molecules that modulate their activity could provide new chances for alleviating these debilitating events.

2 – David Fitzpatrick, Max Plank Florida Institute, USA

David Fitzpatrick and his lab analyzed the visual cortex of the ferret finding groups of neurons that responds selectively to onsets and offsets of light, confirming the existence of a cortical map for on/off light. Visual stimuli from the retina are collected and sent to the thalamus and finally to the visual cortex. Contrary to the orientation map, the on/off maps in the visual cortex are a novelty. These experiments were performed recording the activity of population of cells in the cortex of live animals, which enables to measure the response to specific stimuli given to the animal.

1 – Adriano Aguzzi, University Hospital of Zurig, Switzerland

Adriano Aguzzi’s lab is strongly involved in studying prion diseases. His study allowed already shedding light on the process of transmission and progress of the Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), finding how chronic inflammation together with prion acquisition are required for prions to duplicate. More importantly, his lab tested some molecules able to bind prions, thus resulting in the stabilization of these complexes and preventing them from breaking and replicating. On these bases, new molecules are being tested in his lab, thus allowing to draw new rules for designing drugs able to stabilize prions in CJD and others similar. Such an effort is also contributing to a better understanding of how prions trigger cytotoxicity in brain cells not only in CJD, but in other protein aggregating diseases as well.

Diary from FENS 2014 - Day Two

Elia Dante Magrinelli — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 07:44:00 +0100

Sunday. Second day of the FENS. When the poster session started. It will gather almost 4,000 posters until the end of the congress. And here is my personal top three of this day.

3 – Alessandro Usiello, University of Naples, Italy

Alessandro Usiello’s lab performed extensive studies on the role of D-aspartate in hippocampus, showing how this amino acid can increase NMDAR activity. Increasing D-aspartate levels also allowed reverting the effects of the psychoactive drugs PCP (Angel Dust), which usually reduces NMDAR activity. Moreover, D-aspartate administrations in schizophrenic patients allowed improving the symptoms of the disease. These results gave an important new path in the treatment of schizophrenic disease and shed new light in the general knowledge on D-aspartate functions.

2 – Anna Nobre, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Anna Nobre gave an exhaustive lesson on the principles and the history of attention studies, an aspect of behavior that is key to any task we commonly perform. Her experiments required the collaboration of volunteers that had to perform specific tasks while being recorded through an external electrode, in order to see their brain activity in different regions. Nobre’s contribution to understanding this mechanisms focused mainly on decoding the biology and physiology of temporal expectation, demonstrating many of the mechanisms we are all able to use in order to improve our responses performances to many tasks.

1 – Alexander Bonnin, University of Southern California, USA

Alexander Bonnin is investigating the role of fetal programming and development diseases. His lab developed a system that can culture developing mouse embryos maintained inside the placenta: this system also allows controlling the molecules that are being injected in the placenta and reach the embryo. Using this set up, Bonnin’s team studied the integration of Citaloran, a common anti-depressive drug used for pregnancy depression. Such a model is used to study in more detail the pharmacodynamics between placenta and embryonic tissues, in order to improve pharmacology with new molecules designed so that they do not pass the placenta and therefore do not affect the development of the embryo.

Diary from FENS 2014 - Day One

Elia Dante Magrinelli — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 09:35:00 +0100

The opening of the 9^th session of the FENS came with an unexpected surprise. After the organizer committee, represented by Marina Bentivoglio, made the mandatory honors, the ceremony continued with the “Fanfara del 1° commando areonautica”. Their participation enriched this first day of conference with beautiful music, ranging from the masterpieces of Puccini, Verdi, Modugno and Morricone, a participation that resulted in being just as much unexpected as appreciated. Regarding the events more in topic with the conference, these are my three favorite moments of the first day of the FENS Forum 2014.

3 – The Historic session and “The smile of the mind”.

An entire room has been filled with posters displaying the work of different projects aiming to recuperate and restore the material of many important neuroscientists. The work and the materials made in the laboratories of Nobel prizes like Lord Sherrington, Ramon Y Cajal , Camillo Golgi and others was shown to the public also thanks to projects financed by the FENS society. Together with this work, a nice presentation showed how the nervous system has been analyzed and perceived in the past, starting from the designs of Leonardo Da Vinci – whose anatomical tables represented with high fidelity the organization of the central and peripheral nervous system – to the studies of phrenology. Finally, it was highlighted how mental diseases started to appear in artistic representation through the work of caricature and grotesque artists. Even though this session was not showing high ground-breaking or state-of-the-art technique, it was still interesting for the mere fact that for someone, like a young neuroscientist trying to understand where he or she wants to go in his or her career, it is very important to know where he or she came from.

2 – Ann Marie Craig, British Columbia, Canada

Ann Marie Craig presentation focused on how synapses are very unique structure whose misregulation can lead to a spectrum of nervous system diseases like, for instance, autism. Their method allowed them to find specific molecules that play important role in the formation of synapses. Her extensive work, which combined the cooperation of many other groups of researchers, showed how all of these molecule contribute to synapse formation in different combination that are specific for subsets of cells, driving different functional aspects like plasticity and balance of excitation and inhibition.

1 – Christopher Moore, Brown University, USA

Christopher Moore lab uses state-of-the-art technologies in order to observe the functionality of the neocortex of mice. A main focus of Moore’s lab is the study of the interaction of vascular system and neurons. These two components are in strict proximity and provide continuous information about the hormone condition of the body to neurons, modulating their functions. His work shows how neural activity regulates vascular dynamics both directly and through astrocytes, while, on the other hand, vascular dynamics changes feedback to neural activity, thus facilitating its activity. They succeeded to identify a neuronal population that is very sensitive in responding to vascular dilatation with an increase in activity, a mechanism that adds a further level of complexity about the functioning of neocortex.

E-health challenge: facing health problem using technology

Giulia Annovi — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 07:43:00 +0100

The relationship between genetic heritage and environment has considerable effects on health and healthcare. Individual differences have an important outcome in susceptibility to diseases and treatments. Moreover, physiology and health status are influenced by environmental conditions and life-style.

By relying on increasing mobile network options, home broadband, and availability of various information and communication technology (ICT) tools, it may be possible to collect information at various levels, with a continuous screening of patients. Health status monitoring could be translated in early and accurate diagnosis, and targeted intervention paradigms. In addition, technologies could facilitate dialogues among doctors and patients, and could make citizens aware of their own health and diseases prevention. On the other hand, physicians could take advantage of data collected: they are an incredible wealth to identify trends, to make statistical measurements and to highlight the most effective treatments.

In USA, there are popular programs and tools based on personal engagement to share symptoms, treatment plans, and medications, but also to collect data then employed for research purposes. For instance, Curetogether covers over 500 medical conditions, while Patientslikeme counts more than 250.000 members, 2000 conditions, and over seven million of treatment and symptom reports.

But there are also tools able to work in the background, as body sensor or non-invasive equipment measuring day-by-day biophysical parameters. Sensors will feed realistic data-driven models and will allow predictive tools to optimize the allocation of resources. This will lead to a greater quality of care and to move towards a more efficient prevention. An example of integration of multiple devices for healthcare is represented by Continua Alliance, while an open source project to monitor effects of environment and food on our body is Bodytrack.

European and Italian e-health

With a higher life expectancy, Europe is ready to face the rising of health and social care costs at about 9 percent of European GDP in 2050. For this reason, Europe has demonstrated an increase interest in the concept of personalized medicine and procedures, helping people to better manage their health and quality of life, and offering the possibilities to provide cheaper services for health, thus improving healthcare efficiency by 20 percent.

Based on the “European Hospital Survey: Benchmarking deployment of e-Health services (2012–2013)”, which involved 1,753 hospitals from 30 European countries, the majority (63 percent) of the them devotes less than 3 percent of their budget to information technology. The two functionalities with the lowest availability levels are those that allow the monitoring of patients remotely (4 percent) and the exchange of medical patient data with any healthcare provider in another country (5 percent). But in any case, the European situation is far from being homogeneous in the introduction of information technologies. In Italy, overall savings from the introduction of ICTs in the Health Sector are estimated to be around 11.7 percent of national health expenditure (i.e. € 12.4 billion). Savings from digital prescriptions alone are estimated to be around € 2 billion.

According to “European Hospital Survey: Benchmarking deployment of e-health services (2012–2013)” Italy closely resembles the European average in e-health: only “Single Electronic Patients Records (EPR) shared by all departments” showed a significant difference with the EU30 average (-27 percent).

All other areas are very close to the European average, with “Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) usage” shared by 86 percent of hospitals; e-prescribing by 53 percent; integrated system for e-Referral used by 37 percent; and Tele-monitoring exploited by 18 percent of healthcare institutes. Integration, namely exchange of clinical information, is meanly performed by 56 percent of hospitals.

Nevertheless, Europe has bet on e-health during the 7^th Framework Programme with projects like Iterstress, for the management and treatment of stress-related disorders; or Personalized medicine, a project running till January 2015, involving 19 partners from 9 European countries with the aim to develop new tools, infrastructure and models to accelerate personalized medicine for the benefit of the patient.

The proposal of the Virtual Physiology Human Institute, which involves 65 institutions from 15 countries, has the big challenge to reach biomedical data integration at individual level. The project started with Discipulus, planning to generate a digital patient, a virtual living version of an individual, in order to simulate his physiology and possibly response to treatment and medical care. This project is going on with Avicenna, a program creating computer simulations to improve clinical trials of drugs, devices and biotechnology products. Italy joined the majority of these projects with the participations of different research institutes.

Europe and Italy through Horizon 2020

E-health is part of EU2020 Strategy and its Innovation Union flagship initiative – the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing . The main objectives of Horizon 2020 programs of e-health will be the introduction of tele-medicine and homecare systems and services; the adoption of integrated regional/national health information networks and distributed electronic health record systems, and associated services; the usage of systems for health education and health promotion of patients/citizens; and finally the implementation of specialised systems for researchers and public health data collection and analysis.

On April 2014 was launched a consultation on mobile health (mHealth) to put the patient in control, and to reach a more efficient healthcare system. Since 100,000 health apps are already available and, by 2017, 3.4 billion people worldwide will own a smartphone, mHealth could save €99 billion in healthcare costs in the EU. And to get the maximum benefits some questions are still to be addressed.

The Action Plan of Horizon 2020 has already included a budget of €330 million for personalising health and care and the proposal will closed on October 2014. Another call, with the deadline on April 2015, has been launched with a budget of €162 millions. A program entirely dedicated to old-age support is “Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme”, with the closure-day for application on the end of June 2014.

But the European’s proposed research and innovation funding programme Horizon 2020 includes more than €8 billion in support of research and deployment in the area of health, demographic change and well-being. Over the period 2014-2020, this will mean opportunities for businesses, to get involved in areas as diverse as personalised medicine, advanced analytics, mobile technologies and apps.

Social changing starts from smart learning

Cristina Da Rold — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 08:42:00 +0100

“We change when we change the way we learn”. In today’s society this must be more than a slogan, it should be a real mantra, a fixed point when it comes to renew the educational institution. Even in Italy, this is a growing scenario and there are many and fruitful initiatives in this direction.

This topic was discussed on June 13 in Trieste during State of the Net, an international conference that gathered experts from around the world to tell the network situation in our country. E-learning, smarter learning, but what do they mean really? Beyond many important reflections on the importance of new technologies, what is really changing in Italy? A lot of things are changing, Damiano Airoldi, Alfonso Fuggetta and Gigi Tagliapietra explain, both in the field of school education and business.

The experience of Impara Digitale

Dianora Bardi is a teacher, graduated in Literature in 1978. She taught in high schools and worked with several Italian universities until 1998, when she met Giovanni degli Antoni, the great guru of informatics in Italy, and she decided to work with him for ten years. After this period, Dianora developed a new teaching method for mobile devices (iPad and EbookReaders) that more than 30 schools today apply. In order to model this method, the Centre for Studies Impara Digitale is born, founded together with other teachers, academics, software developers and other experts.

Impara Digitale is an association founded in March 2012 to promote the development of an innovative teaching method, which allows the Italian and European schools to learn the benefits of digital technology. It aims to introduce a teaching method through the use of personal technology and furniture. In addition to impara Digitale, Dianora worked also with the Ministry of Education as a trainer at a national level and coordinator of media education schools of excellence.

“Dianora was a pioneer in the field of e-learning in Italy, but despite Impara Digitale is now a model that is the law in Italy, Italian institutions do not seem to keep up with this innovation,” explains Damiano Airoldi, member of the Impara Digitale board.

Does the Italian law keep up with these initiatives?

The recent Italian legislation on textbooks, including the Article n. 15 of the Law n.133/2008, which provides that textbooks be adopted from the school year 2011/12, should be in digital form or mixed. Also, the Ministerial Decree 41/09, which defines the technological characteristics of adoptable texts, has opened a cultural and scientific reflection on the introduction and the value added by educational publishing in the digital practice of teaching/learning.

Although Italian law imposes the complete digitalization of content written on paper, we are still far from achieving complete this goal. “We need in fact that even the teachers themselves know the new technologies,” says Airoldi “and that’s why it takes time and energy. That’s why all the initiatives like Impara Digitale are welcome!”

Smart learning in a business context

“Sharing content brings innovation and progress in our society,” explains Alfonso Fuggetta, CEO at Cefriel, the ICT Center of Excellence for Innovation, Research and Education at the Polytechnic of Milan. “An example of how much this sentence is true is Expo 2015, the international fair to be held in Milan next spring. How to strengthen the best for Milan Expo 2015? Using just smart technologies that make the services in the area easy to reach and benefit for everyone. Building a reference model for service interoperability: everyone can join the ecosystem!” Fuggetta continues. Sharing does not mean data-sharing, but to adopt a vision where many actors on the scene cooperate to improve a service.

To sum up, nowadays smart learning, smart life and e-learning are not isolated monads confined to a specific sector, school or business. On the contrary, they are nothing more than ways to express a key concept that pervades our life: “knowledge and learning are based on sharing,” says Fuggetta, and the web and the new technologies that use them seem to represent the main road.

Populist parties and the European scientific policies

Giacomo Destro — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 09:47:00 +0100

The biggest surprise in the European Parliament elections has been the victory of the so called Eurosceptic and Europhobic parties, such as the Front National (FN, from France), the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip, from Uk) or the Dutch Party for Freedom. Despite their proclaims, these parties come from different backgrounds and have a different approach to science and research – as clearly shown by an analysis made by Science|Business. In other words, the percentages in favor, contrary or abstained when voting European scientific policies such as Horizon 2020 or Energy Roadmap 2050 are almost the same. This trend is likely to continue in the newly elected European Parliament.

Hawks and doves

The Science|Business outlook is based on how the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted during the last 2009-2014 Parliament about the main scientific policies. Among others, the activities included were the Fuel Cells Joint Undertaking, Energy Roadmap 2050 and, of course, Horizon 2020. These votes clearly show a gap between two set of parties: on one hand, the “hawks”, such as Ukip and Party for Freedom, that constantly voted against the main scientific issues at the EU Parliament. On the other hand, the “doves”, such as the Northen League (NL, from Italy) and National Front, that generally voted in favor or abstained. The analysis has been summarized in the charts below:

click on the image to see the other interactive grapichs

A general value

The reason behind this division among Eurosceptic parties is hard to understand. Looking at the pure political families, both groups contains far right/nationalists and Eurosceptic (or, in some cases, Europhobic) parties: in other words, their composition is similar. Neither the geopolitical factor can explain this rift: both the hawks and the doves come from countries (such as Uk, Netherlands, Belgium or France) with high percentage of R&D investments on GPI. Nor their electoral background helps: their voters’ basin is almost similar, namely countryside working class who fears low cost competition from East Europe and North Africa. Moreover, their voter is likely not interested in science or research policies, so this could not be the point. Maybe, the difference in voting has something to do with general values.

Therefore, the key to read it could be whether they consider science as an issue in the political battlefield or not. In other words, parties such as Ukip and Party for Freedom may consider scientific research as a common political issue, another sector in which the European bureaucracy has too much power. Other parties, such as the Northern League or the National Front may consider it as something in which the European Union can operate effectively or consider scientific research as a “higher value”, out of the political clash, or simply do not care.

Is this a trend?

If so, this analysis could be considered as a trend: they will continue to vote separately, as their vote on science-related issues is based on meta-political considerations. This is likely to be even though their MEPs almost doubled from the 2009 elections (from 38 to 69). Moreover, this is strengthen by the fact that the biggest newcomer, the Italian Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S), has an undefined mood toward research policies. Due to their recent political history and their various voters’ basin, it is very hard to predict something. Rumors say that they are about to join the Europe for Freedom and Democracy group, that is leaded by one of the “hawks” party (the Ukip), but they asked “freedom to vote”.

Sustainable packaging: the next commitments for Italy

Cristina Da Rold — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 09:05:00 +0100

Nowadays, the impact of packaging as a byproduct of the food industry fortunately has become a topic of much discussion when we discuss the ecological footprint of food chains. However, at the same time reducing the use of packaging in the production and distribution of food is not easy.

Between 2014 and 2015, Italy will play an important role in the debate on the sustainability of packaging systems: first, at the end of the current year will end a three-year project in which our country is a partner; furthermore, packaging should be one of the hottest topics of Expo 2015. The exhibition coincides with another international fair dedicated to the packaging industry: the IPACK-IMA trade fair.

From scientific research…

In December 2012, the European Union has funded an international project for reducing the environmental impact of food packaging. This project is called SUCCIPACK, it involves many countries, including Italy, until the end of 2014 and is coordinated by the Association de Coordination Technique pour l’Industrie Agro-alimentaire (ACTIA). It is funded by the European Union under FP7 and it has the aim of developing sustainable, active and intelligent food packaging materials.

In fact, the SUCCIPACK project has carried out the first production of polybutylene succinate (PBS) materials with 100% bio-based succinic acid (wheat sector) for the processing of food packaging. The production of new PBS grades has been performed by the Agro Industry Research and Development (ARD).

A first aspect is the optimization of the synthesis and compounding of polymer and copolymer grades for industrial plastic transformation processes to obtain films, trays and pouches. Tailored packaging functionalities will be obtained by flexible in-line surface treatments to control gas barrier properties and to introduce antimicrobial activity.

Until now, the first tests have demonstrated the feasibility of the material for packaging concerning fresh ricotta cheese and beef, while future tests are planned to understand how these materials perform for packaging fish, chicken and vegetarian dishes.

…to international trade fairs

The interest of our country to the issue of packaging must not be only synonymous with European projects and research. The concept of sustainable packaging has to start at first by the large stakeholders, who are, together with the institutions, the real players in the game.

Packaging is also one of the topics that will be covered in Expo 2015, which has food as its main theme “Feed the planet, energy for life”. Expo 2015 is partner of the international fair to be held in Milan with the opening of the Expo itself: IPACK-IMA, which will take place from 19 to 23 May 2015 in Fieramilano exhibition center, and which will be focused on processing and packaging. “Without packaging you cannot feed the planet, and hence the collaboration with Expo,” says Guido Corbella, Chief Executive Officer of IPACK-IMA spa.

In accordance with the expectations, one of the topics that should most benefit from this co-operation with the theme of the Expo is just packaging. In collaboration with Expo, IPACK-IMA has planned a series of seminars and conferences for a sustainable vision for the technological and social development. Furthermore, thanks to the partnership with UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) WFP, FAO and IFAD, today IPACK-IMA is recognized as the reference point for the development of initiatives and events that put technology at the heart of sustainable development.

“The main topic of the exhibition is precisely sustainability, not only in ecological terms but also from a social, economic and cultural perspective,” adds Corbella. “These are themes on which Italy seems to be very sensitive. For instance, the attention that the big players in the food industry are giving to the issue of prevention. Moreover, consumers today are very attracted by anything that is ’nature friendly’ and then it is clear that the big brands have a common interest in working on the sustainability of packaging.”

But beyond the exhibition, there will be international conferences organized worldwide throughout 2014, that will accommodate a real dialogue around the theme of sustainable packaging.

East Afripack will host from 9 to 12 September 2014 at Nairobi, Kenya, the international conference “Food processing & packaging innovation for a sustainable development”, which examines the issue of sustainability as a key driver for future technological innovations and the development of the food industry. East Afripack, the exhibition dedicated to the process technology, packaging and converting industry in East Africa, has been organized by IPACK-Ima spa in joint venture with PMMI and in partnership with UNIDO, EAC and the Ministry of Industrialization and Enterprise Development of the Government of Kenya.

This is part of the cycle of conferences developed by Ipack-Ima and UNIDO through a Memorandum of Understanding. The cycle started in Mumbai, India on February 11^th of this year. It will continue with the upcoming conference at East Afripack, followed by another in Indonesia, autumn 2014, and will reach a climax in Italy during the second day of IPACK-IMA 2015 on May 20^th.

Stamina is not an isolated incident

Pietro Greco — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 09:59:00 +0100

The science journal Nature, one of the most widespread in the world, dedicates three pages of its last issue (June 19) to Elena Cattaneo, biologist and senator for life, and Gilberto Corbellini, historian of medicine, for a comment on the Stamina case and the attempt to impose a therapy with no scientific basis. Both of them are Italian and the Stamina case is also Italian (we were about to write, typically Italian). However, Cattaneo and Corbellini warn, it should not be considered an exclusive of the Bel Paese. Because the phenomena has already passed the mountains (two years ago Stamina arrived in Switzerland) and the seas (this year Stamina landed in Cape Verde). We could add few other attempts in Florida and the Ukraine origin. In other words, Elena Cattaneo and Gilberto Corbellini are launching an appeal to the international scientific community: let’s be on guard, as this is not Italian folklore.

Nature acknowledges the alarm. Not just by offering a lot of space and visibility. But also because, in the same issue, the journal publishes another comment signed by another Italian, Paolo Bianco, biologist expert in stem cells, and Douglas Sipp, Head of the Office for Research Communication of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.

And they say that Stamina is not an isolated accident at all. On the contrary, it is the expression – perhaps extreme, perhaps out of hand – of a more general and deeper process that we might define by using just one word: deregulation. A word that evokes a political season (Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US) which has also been a long and profound cultural season, not yet concluded. And that now is trying to extend its arm to biomedicine too. Even to medical practice. And has its avant-garde in stem cells.

The idea of deregulation in the medical field – which is already practiced in several countries – is quite simple: less ties. More (illusory) freedom. The introduction of new medical technologies (drugs or more) – states the supporters of deregulation – is long and expensive. It requires four exhausting phases (a preliminary one, called phase 0, has been recently introduced in the US). It entails unbearable investments and, in conclusion, prevents innovation. In the name of freedom of cure and demand for innovation, we allow, who is willing to, to access medical technologies (drugs or more) not yet passed through the four canonical phases. Perhaps they might have passed Phase I only, which tests on small groups of healthy people or patients (from 20 to 80 subjects) whether the treatment is not toxic or harmful.

The idea, therefore, is simple. It is enough to show that a new medical treatment is not evidently harmful and anyone, at his own risk and previous informed consent, can use it. This procedure cuts time and costs. And if the users share their data on the effects of the technology, deregulation becomes a big mass experiment and allows to conclude in shorter time and with lower costs Phase II, III and IV of clinical trials.

The idea is simple and is spreading quite rapidly. Paolo Bianco (who, we would like to remind, fought against the use of Stamina, demonstrating with Michele De Luca, its groundlessness) and Douglas Sipp cite a data from ClinicalTrials.gov, the database of the US National Institutes of Health where clinical trials conducted all over the world, funded with public or private money, are recorded: at the moment, besides Stamina, there are more than 360 attempts for applications of mesenchymal stem cells (the same cells used by Stamina). Well, none of these studies has produced some published results yet.

The idea of deregulation, then, is as simple as dangerous, state Bianco and Sipp. Because it transforms patients in guinea pigs, whom even pay. And drags scientific progress in medicine back in the past. And the principle upon which the idea is based, freedom of cure, is a false freedom. Because a patient who has (or believes to have) few hope to live or even just to be cured, has no much choice and would try anything.

However, on the other hand, the problem is real. How can we develop new clinical technologies in less time, in order to satisfy the unsatisfied requests of patients?

Paolo Bianco e Douglas Sipp answer to this question with the only possible answer. We cannot lower down safety standards and erode scientific practice. We must, however, modify the model, mostly supported by private funds, on which the innovation process for medical technologies is based nowadays in the Western countries and not only. Governments must take charge of it. Only States can allow the necessary resources and guarantee researchers the needed serenity for producing authentic innovation.

In fact, innovation has always been guaranteed by public funds. Few years ago a book (The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, Random Editions), by the US physician Marcia Angell, first woman director (for 10 years) of The New England Journal of Medicine – one of the most authoritative medical journal in the world – demonstrated that at least 80% of the really new and innovative formulae in pharmacology are produced by research projects supported with public funds.

It seems most likely that new ideas arise in serene environments with no immediate interests. Where creativity is free to explore and nobody chases you for results here and now.

And if we look better, this was the idea – only the State can support free research, primum movens of innovation – promoted by Vannevar Bush when, in 1945, he published the Science report: the Endless Frontier. A report that launched and informed about the modern research politics in the US and all over the world. Let us remember the lesson of this great mathematician, who collaborated with the democratic Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but was politically a conservative.

The debate about deregulation is a major issue in medicine and health policies. The Stamina affaire is deep-rooted within such a tangled context; knowing its story, even its most obscure details, is thus important to understand how these topics may impact on citizens, and most of all on patients, if they are not faced properly. This is one of the reasons behind the Scienza in rete’s investigative journalism project about the Stamina affaire, carried out by Roberta Villa and Antonino Michienzi. The resulting report will be available for free as an e-book at the beginning of July.
Stay tuned, because it is time to shed light on the Stamina affaire.

Italian physics and the Middle East

Cristina Da Rold — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 07:28:00 +0100

On May 12, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and the International Centre for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) signed a scientific collaboration agreement. Aim of this cooperation is the development and implementation of Italian technology for the radio-frequency cavities for SESAME’s storage ring – radio-frequency cavities serve to re-supply the electrons with the energy they lose when emitting synchrotron light.

“SESAME is an ambitious project for the construction of the first synchrotron light source in the Middle East,” explains Giorgio Paolucci, scientific director of SESAME. “Today there are 12 synchrotrons in Europe (and a total of about 60 in the world) but none in the Middle East, although the need for them was recognized by eminent scientists such as the Pakistani Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam about 30 years ago”. The Centre, which is intergovernmental, brings together Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority and Turkey (the Members), thus providing an extraordinary example of collaboration between entities with very diverse cultural, political and religious backgrounds.

“Perhaps the most significant feature of this project is that politics does not in any way interfere in the scientific research,” says Paolucci.

The project was born in the late nineties, thanks to the efforts of several scientists in and outside the region. These scientists proposed to use components of the BESSY I light facility in West Berlin, which was being decommissioned, to set up a synchrotron light source in the Middle East (following the re-unification of Germany it was decided to build a larger particle accelerator in East Berlin). The project then evolved and though a few of the BESSY I components, which have been greatly upgraded, are being used, SESAME is constructing a completely new 2.5 GeV storage ring, thus making it a state-of-the-art research centre.

In addition to Members, SESAME also has some observer countries, among which a number of countries from Europe (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) but also from other regions (Brazil, China, Japan, Kuwait, and the USA). These countries play an important role in SESAME, one of which is putting their know-how and technology at the disposal of the Centre. In the case of Italy, for example, it has contributed with the donation of some accelerator parts that became surplus to requirements, and through INFN, the Ministry of Education, University and Research is providing 1 million euros from its 2013 budget for the joint construction by INFN, Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and SESAME of new radio-frequency cavities for SESAME’s storage ring. These cavities are to be built in the framework of the scientific collaboration agreement signed between the three institutes in May 2014. Moreover, in a statement made by the representative of the Minister of Education, University and Research at the meeting of the SESAME Council held on the premises of the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (LNF) in May 2014, SESAME was informed that Italy will be providing €1 million more in 2014, and that this could possibly be repeated in the future. All this makes Italy an important partner in the project.

But for which areas of research will SESAME be used? “The spectrum of research will be very large,” Paolucci explains, “and this will not only be for basic research, but also advanced experimental research, such as studies of advanced radiology and dental implants, or applications in cultural heritage, particularly archaeology. Anyway, appetite comes with eating. There is no doubt that when the laboratory becomes operational, there will be a large variety of proposals.”

In the meantime, however, the four areas of research are:

studies of protein crystallography;
cellular analysis using the infrared spectrum, which allows us to study the distribution of proteins within a cell;
research on the reactions of rock materials under extreme pressure and temperature conditions;
study of the absorption spectra to determine the levels of pollution of soil and air.

”With regard to the schedule for the laboratory to become operational, despite an initial small delay, we now expect the plant to be ready for first use at the beginning of 2016,” said Paolucci. “In any case, what we want right now is to develop a feeling of confidence in the project, so that the laboratory may serve the needs of the scientific community in the Middle East and neighbouring countries, which has a great deal to offer in terms of science.”

Global warming and heating cities: a challenge for Europe

Lori Berti — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 07:34:00 +0100

Climate change today is a reality. It involves lot of problems, the toughest ones being the loss of biodiversity, the rise of sea levels and the increase of temperatures. But there are also other less known phenomena connected with the global warming. One of them is the urban heat island, which is induced by materials composing the urban environment and involves numerous cities across Europe. Cement retains heat, sewer systems carry water away quickly, impeding the cooling, and heat is trapped between surfaces because of the so-called canyon effect. Thus, urban areas are generally hotter than the surrounding rural areas and in summer cities burn. “We still remember the heat wave that struck Europe in 2003, causing the death of almost 70,000 people in 12 countries,” affirms Paolo Lauriola, epidemiologist of the Environmental Protection Agency of the Emilia-Romagna Region. “The situation can only get worse, because urbanization continues to grow as well as climate changes. To address the problem monitoring, mitigation and adaptation actions are necessary.”

Fortunately, Europe is already moving in this direction. The three-year application project UHI (Urban Heat Island), has been implemented through the Central Europe Programme to reduce effects of heat waves and the final conference is scheduled for June 12, 2014. The project involved 17 partners in Central Europe among institutions and research centers, including the Italian cities of Bologna, Modena, Padua and Venice. It mainly consisted in redesigning urban areas in a green way, connecting global models and urban housing construction’s models. The main interventions have been construction plans, addition of green areas and water surfaces, restructuration of industrial districts, communication and public education to allow people to adopt conscious behaviors. Davide Fava, coordinator of the Transnational Scientific Board of the project, explains: “In order to develop this project we assumed an approach based on dialogue and confrontation. We made a choice of governance, deciding to involve decision-makers, experts, urban planners but also citizens, because prevention creates positive solutions that make it convenient. In 50 years from now, heat peaks in summer will be 5-7 °C higher than today, which means that rates of mortality might increase: we have to be prepared to face this future.”

But UHI is not the only European project that dealt with the problem of heat in urban areas: the project COOL-Coverings, which started in June 2010 with the aim of cutting energy consumption, improving indoor comfort and reducing the appearance of urban heat islands. COOL-Coverings developed innovative coatings for buildings so that their exteriors, thanks to nanoparticles and micro pigments, could reflect light instead of absorbing heat. The project involved 14 partner organizations from industry and academia, four of which were Italian: the Center for Colloid and Surface Science of the University of Florence, the Polytechnic University of the Marche, D’Appolonia and MBN Nanomaterialia.

COOL-Coverings ended in 2013, but another project is currently in progress: TURAS (2011-2016), which aims to deal with the climate challenges and improve urban life. Contrasting flood risk, taking care of biodiversity and supporting local businesses are some of the main goals. Stuttgart, for example, is trying to cool down the city using natural processes, like building a “green wall” in a park area that can use the water while tempering summertime heat. The project brings together decision makers from local authorities, SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and academics to develop strategies, spatial scenarios and guidance tools for more sustainable and resilient European cities. A key element is engaging with local citizens to get their input on sustainability issues; indeed, TURAS project team is developing an interactive forum for people to interact and get involved.

Today the European Commission door is still open to new ideas. The Horizon 2020 Call “Smart cities and communities” for 2015 is presently accessible: areas of interest are those of low energy districts, integrated infrastructures and sustainable urban mobility. There are over EUR 108 million at disposal of the best projects coming from municipalities and industries that can achieve innovative solutions for energy efficiency, aimed to guarantee a greater resistance to climate impacts.

Climate change: what to say and how to say it

Antonio Pilello — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 08:02:00 +0100

According to the Special Eurobaromer 409, around one out of six Europeans think that climate change is the single most serious problem that the world is facing. The survey provides some measures on the perception of climate change in relation to other world problems and collected the opinions on who within the EU is responsible for tackling climate change. We had the great pleasure to speak about the usefulness of this important tool with Luca Mercalli (LM), President and Editor in Chief of the Società Meteorologica Italiana, and Sergio Castellari (SC), senior scientist at the Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici and at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia.

How do you evaluate the survey tool represented by the Eurobarometer? Is it useful? Are other communication initiatives not only desirable, but also essential?

SC: The Eurobarometer is a useful tool to test the opinion of the people, but of course it is not the only one and it is not complete. Presently, I think that there is a lack of communication in Italy compared to other countries such as Germany, United Kingdom and France. Our scientific community should be more involved in the communication of climate change topics to a non-specialist audience. In addition, the Italian media should focus more on high-level science communication programmes about climate, such as the BBC and Discovery Channel ones, which are very good and professional. In general, in our country we have a lack of science information regarding climate and related topics that could affect the results of the Eurobarometer survey.

LM: The Eurobarometer is a tool not really known in Italy, besides some experts. In practice, almost nobody uses it to be attractive to the world of politicians and the media. As a researcher, I would like to learn more about how the sample is determined and who did the survey. Surely, the Eurobarometer should be integrated with other communication initiatives. Since there are already several operators of research and scientific dissemination, we would like to be contacted to give our contribution to these campaigns, using our preferential channel for the dissemination of such information. Furthermore, with the official support of the European Union, I would feel more empowered to do what we are already doing as Società Meteorologica Italiana, which has also the statutory task to spread knowledge.

In particular, in what kind of communication activities are you involved?

SC: As Italian National Focal Point for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I am conducting a lot of outreach activities regarding the recent IPCC reports on climate change, such as the latest Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability and Mitigation of Climate Change. In particular, I spend a good part of my professional and spare time in several dissemination activities, because I believe that a climate scientist can have a great impact on society due to the strong political significance of climate research. It is not enough to do research, but we have also to communicate in an efficient manner our results to the general public. As far as I am concerned, I co-founded the NGO Italian Climate Network, just to make possible a more effective scientific communication.

LM: At the Italian level, the strength of the political decision-makers is not comparable to those in Europe. As a TV popularizer, I could do a good job raising the awareness of the people, but at the political level I saw few results in the development of a strategy. For example, a few months ago, the Italian Ministry of Environment proposed a national strategy on climate change, but the public consultation with the stakeholders was too short to propose some amendments. In addition, many European Union activities often begin, but then they do not remain active for the appropriate time. I wish that soon there will be a permanent taskforce able to value from time to time the information produced by the European Union, with also a communicative power at a national level.

Probably, a good way to mitigate the climate change is to carry out a European energy transition, following the model of the German Energiewende. What are your expectations for the near future?

SC: At the European level, Italy adopted the 2020 climate and energy package. It would be also very positive to have a EU directive on climate science communication to be implemented by all EU Member States.

LM: I am strongly confident that a European energy transition could happen in the next years and, for Italy, I strongly recommend the model represented by Northern Europe for these topics. In fact, you can reach concrete results just on the basis of these former good experiences. We have to work not only on legislative, scientific and engineering aspects of the energy transition, but also the basic education has to be involved. Presently, the school system is not informing on key issues for the future of the new citizens, such as climate change and renewable energies.

Are we ready to benefit from new technologies?

Valentina Daelli — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 07:24:00 +0100

Filling the gap in digital infrastructures might not be enough to put Italy in line with countries that are more mature in taking advantage from new information and communication technologies (ICTs). The real restraint for the country’s ability to develop and exploit its digital ecosystem is the political and regulatory environment, unable to keep up with the opportunities offered by new technologies.

This is what emerges from the 13^th Global Information Technology report produced by the World Economic Forum, which ranks 148 countries according to the “Networked Readiness Index”. This index considers 54 variables that, taken together, may provide a complete and useful measure of ICT access and impacts on economies. The analysis includes the attitude of governments in supporting ICT developments, the efficacy of laws regulating the field, the affordability of new technologies and the social and economic impacts of ICTs.

The digital divide in Europe

Acknowledged by the European Commission as a pivotal factor of potential economic growth and employment creator for Europe, technological progress is not fully realized in all member states. If we have a look to the data, some European countries are up there at the top of the list for the “Networked Readiness Index”, while many others lie far behind. The different level of digitalization in the member states thus highlights a persisting digital divide within the European Union.

Following the broad classification proposed by the report, we can see that Northern and Western countries in Europe show better results than Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. Among the top ten countries worldwide that dominate the rankings, we can find five member states: Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway and UK.

Looking further into the details of the digital divide, the report points out that a lack of infrastructures is not the main reason for the gap between countries. Nor is the cost of accessing ICTs, which is similar in all member states. Driving the digital divide among EU states is mainly the political and regulatory environment, which turns out to affect the capacity of businesses to take full advantage of ICT. Countries that are low-ranked for the “Networked Readiness Index” tend to present an inefficient legal framework with respect to ICT, and laws that do not favor innovation and development in this field. A bulky bureaucracy and long processes required to start new businesses are other elements that hold back low-ranked member states.

The economic and social impacts of ITC tend to show lower levels in Central, Eastern and Southern countries compared to Northwestern ones: the number of patents, the proportion of jobs requiring high qualifications, the impacts on education, environment, health, civil participation, these are all factors that show up as differences between high- and low-ranked member states.

Analyzing the elements that characterize the digital divide in EU could offer useful indications for member governments and the European Commission about the strategies and policies to pursue. Investments in ICT infrastructure would not be sufficient to fill the digital gap; it is necessary for member state, especially for low-ranked countries, to build the political and regulatory environment that can allow and foster the economic and social impacts of ICT.

What is the situation of Italy?

Compared with the condition reported in the 2013, Italy shows a worsening of its position in the ranking, falling from the 50^th to the 58^th position in one year. Excluding Greece, which suffers from a drop of 10 places in the rankings, Italy is the European economy that shows the most severe worsening compared to 2013. It seems that the country failed in progressing fast enough to promote and exploit its digital system.

It’s probably not surprising to note that it is especially the political and regulatory environment that contributes to the situation: the country shows a bad position when considering the effectiveness of law-making bodies and the efficiency of the legal system, lying down in the in the last places of the ranking. The economical environment does not seem to be favorable to innovation for business, and Italy is among the worst countries in the entire sample with respect to venture capital availability, which was rated with a value of only 1.8 in a 7-points scale. The unfavorable environment notwithstanding, personal use of information technology does not appear to be limited in Italy.

As anyone who has ever travelled on an Italian bus or train knows, the country has one of the highest levels of mobile phone subscriptions, and it ranks among the first 50 states for diffusion of computers and internet access at home and on mobile devices. Less widespread is IT usage in business, with a low level of training for staff inside firms. But the prize for the negative result also in this case goes to the government: the report classify Italy al the 144^th place among 148 in terms of success of its government to promote ICT.

The arms race between humans and microbes

Giulia Annovi — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 08:38:00 +0100

A future without effective antibiotics for some infections is possible. Only 70 years ago, penicillin discovery have changed infectious diseases treatment, reducing deaths and illness. However, the high microbial adaptability has appeared few years later drug discovery: already in his Nobel Prize speech in 1945, Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, warned that bacteria could become resistant to these remarkable substances. Between 1940 and 1990, 29 classes of antibiotics with different mechanisms of action have been discovered and designed. Nevertheless, the extensive abuse in both humans and food-producing animals has favoured the selection and spread of resistant bacteria, making these stuffs less effective.

In 2009, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and The European Medicines Agency (EMA) estimated that these infections resulted in 25,000 deaths in 29 countries in Europe (5.1 per 100,000 inhabitants). And the human costs get worst considering health care costs and productivity losses: at least 1.5 billion euros each year.

In 2014, WHO has published the report “Antimicrobial resistance: global report on surveillance 2014”, monitoring the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) worldwide. The most common bacteria showing resistance are reported in the following bar chart, highlighting the worst condition of Italy in comparison with European mean.

On the basis of these data, the most common diseases or conditions that could be at risk of ineffective treatment are community-acquired infections, such as pneumonia, cystitis, infections in neonatal and intensive care; patients receiving cancer treatment or organ transplants; the post-operative surgical site infections therapy.

On 13 May 2014, the European Commission and the American Department of Health and Human Services announced the publication of “Transatlantic Taskforce on Antimicrobial Resistance (Tatfar)”, a report arising from the USA and Europe partnership. In fact, AMR shows a global dimension, and the USA-Europe task has been an answer to the WHO’s resistance surveillance request, underlining the need for an improved and coordinated global effort, including wider sharing of surveillance data for public health actions.

The Tatfar agreement was established in 2009, aiming to spread an appropriate therapeutic use of antimicrobial drugs; to prevent both health care and community associated drug-resistant infections; and to design strategies for improving new antimicrobial drugs. In fact, studies indicate that nearly 50% of antimicrobial use in hospitals is unnecessary or inappropriate and that 53% of Europeans believed that antibiotics kill viruses. The right information and the approach of sharing are critical to preserve the effectiveness of existing antimicrobials. The USA-Europe collaboration covered the years 2009 – 2013, and has expressed 17 recommendations to standardize practices and to understand the best methods to resistance threat.

For the following six years, Europe will take care of the antibiotics resistance with the New Drugs for Bad Bugs (ND4BB) programme, joining forces from international public and private partners to develop antibiotics, since such a task is no longer financially sustainable for pharmaceutical companies alone. The programme will be supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). The Horizon 2020 research will focus on gram-negative bacteria, which are the most resistant because of their external physical barrier called envelope. Not only the double membrane discourages drugs entrance, but the gram-negative microorganisms have also developed several efflux pumps, through which they can pull out substances that could harm them. The project will find solutions for prevention and management of patients with bacterial infections, but will also take on the challenge to discover and develop new drugs. In fact, in the last 30 years only two new classes of antibiotics have been brought to market.

The ND4BB is divided in five topics: COMBACTE, Tanslocation, ENABLE, and two others not yet well established.

COMBACTE: has the aim to create a clinical network, as a big trials benchmark, capable of recruiting sufficient patients. Among COMBACTE proposals there are also the creation of bacterial strains database; the standardization of diagnostic microbiological tests; the collection of baseline data; the establishment of surveillance programmes.

Translocation: rises from the urgent need for a greater understanding of how gram-negative bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics and what molecular mechanisms could be exploited to get through bacterial defence mechanisms. Data sharing and analysis will be precious for knowledge sharing. Translocation involves 34 partners, spread in eight countries, among which there is Italy. Cagliari University will study the bacteria membrane permeability, the genetic modification in resistance progression, and the creation of the InfoCentre platform for internal and external data aggregation, extraction, storage, access, and analytics.

ENABLE (European Gram-Negative Antibacterial Engine): is focused on the development of novel antibiotics against gram-negative pathogens. ENABLE involves 13 countries and brings together 32 partners. The deadline for ENABLE is 2019, fixing the date to have a novel anti-bacterial for gram-negative infections.

By joining this program, universities, research institutes and industries will make a big effort to provide new perspectives and tools for the gram-negative secret understanding.

Digital media standards for improved user experience

Leonardo Chiariglione — Thu, 29 May 2014 10:21:00 +0100

Standards are a vital component of communication. In 1984, while working for CSELT, the research center of what is today Telecom Italia, I submitted RACE IVICO (Integrated Video Codec), a project aimed at developing a European microelectronic technology for digital video in partnership with representatives of most relevant European industries. The project was approved but two years later was terminated because of the jarring differences with the European audio-visual policy of that time (digital audio-video planned to play a role in the first decade of the 21^st century), but also because digital audio-visual was assumed to play a major role in the broadband strategy inside a Telco like Telecom Italia.

A year later, seeing that it was not possible to develop a European microelectronic technology for audio-visual, I decided that an international standard could at least be developed and, in 1988, I established the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), a working group in ISO/IEC JTC 1 Information Technologies.

“Standard” is a well-used and misused word, but not all standards are the same. In the case of audio and video there should not be separate standards for audio and video but unified audio-visual standards for all client industries: Broadcasting, Consumer Electronics, IT and Telecommunications, a single standard for digital representation of audio-visual information separate from potentially different delivery standards. I believe this is the main reason for the success of MPEG standards.

Several definitions of standard can be found:

Webster’s
- A conspicuous object (as a banner) formerly carried at the top of a pole and used to mark a rallying point especially in battle or to serve as an emblem
- Something that is established by authority, custom or general consent as a model or an example to be followed
Encyclopaedia Britannica
- (Technical specification) that permits large production runs of component parts that are readily fitted to other parts without adjustment
My definition
- Codified agreement between parties who recognise the advantage by all doing certain things in the same way

One common claim made against standards is that they are anti-competitive and stop innovation. This may be true in other fields but not in MPEG as can be seen from the performance verification tests carried out in 1995 on MPEG-2 Video, which showed that coding was subjectively transparent at 6 Mbit/s for composite (PAL) and at 8 Mbit/s for components (YUV). The bitrate originally selected for operation was 4 Mbit/s, but today MPEG-2 is typically used at 2 Mbit/s, without changing decoders.

This was possible because MPEG standards specify the decoder (which provides the ability to reach customers) but are silent on the encoder, whose only constraint is the ability to produce conforming bitstreams.

Standards are an important component in the chain that bring innovation to consumers. An innovator is in a position to file a patent that has value per se, but has a greater value if the patent is within a standard. Since the goal of MPEG is to produce standards yielding maximum performance, licences are typically required to exercise MPEG standard. Royalties allow an innovator to continue innovating and filing other patents for use in new standards. Indeed, MPEG standards do not stop innovation.

Many industrial users are concerned by the amount they have to pay to exercise a patent in a standard, but that should not necessarily be the highest concern because often it is not so a matter of “how much” but of “how”.

In the analogue world patent remuneration used to be typically “apiece” and, in the digitised MPEG world of MPEG-2 remuneration is still per piece of “electronics” (but also per piece of “content” on a DVD). In the digital MPEG-4 Visual world remuneration is per piece of electronics but also per hour of pay streamed content. This licence clause has prevented for years adoption of the standard for pay video services on the web.

Use of digital technologies was hampered for many years by the large bitrate involved in digital audio and video as shown by the tables below, which give indicative nitrates:

Video


	VHS	SD	HD	4k	8k
#lines	288	576	1,080	2,160	4,320
#pixels	360	720	1,920	3,840	7,680
Frame freq	25	25	25	50	50
Mbit/s	41	166	829	6,636	26,542

Audio


	Speech	CD	Stereo	5.1	22.2
Sampling freq.	8	44.1	48	48	48
bits/sample	8	16	16	16	16
#channels	1	2	2	5.33	22.66
Mbit/s	0.064	1.411	1.536	4.093	17.403


	Base	Scalable	Stereo	Depth	Selectable viewpoint
MPEG-1	~VHS	-	-	-	-
MPEG-2	2Mbit/s	-10%	-15%	-	-
MPEG-4 Visual	-25%	-10%	-15%	-	-
MPEG-4 AVC	-30%	-25%	-25%	-20%	5/10%
HEVC	-60%	-25%	-25%	-20%	5/10%

Fortunately, there has been a constant progress in compressing digital audio and video while preserving the original quality, as shown by the table below:

In the “Base” column, percentage numbers refer to compression improvement compared to the previous generation of compression technology. The percentage numbers in the “Scalable”, “Stereo” and “Depth” columns refer to compression improvement compared to the technology on the immediate left. “Selectable viewpoint” refers to the ability to select and view an image from a viewpoint that was not transmitted.

In this context, it is interesting to inquire about the bitrate between eye/ear and the brain. There are about 1.2 million nerve fibres connecting the retina to the brain and about 30 thousand nerve fibres connecting the cochlear nerve to the brain. One nerve fibre can transmit a new impulse every ~6ms, i.e. it can generate 160 spikes/s. Assuming that 16 spikes are needed to make a bit we see that one eye sends ~12 Mbit/s and one ear sends ~300 kbit/s to the brain, as depicted in the figure below:

Video can take many forms:

Scalable video gives the possibility to extract different streams at different bitrates from a single bitstream
Multiview video is a signal that is generated by an array of cameras capturing the scene so that a user can see a scene from different viewpoints (possibly by interpolating existing views to create a view that was not captured and transmitted)
Screen content is a type of natural video that is mixed with graphics
High Dynamic Range seeks to extend the maximum brightness achievable on today’s displays beyond the usual not 100 nits (cd/sqm) and go to several thousand nits
Wide Colour Gamut is a system that is capable of reproducing a much larger set of colours that it is possible today
Augmented Reality is the integration of 3D natural and synthetic video and audio (and more)

We have seen that human eyes perform sophisticated processing to convert Pbit/s of visual input information to some output Mbit/s. Compact Descriptors for Visual Search (CDVS), a standard for video search, analysis and detection applications being developed by MPEG tries to do something conceptually similar. Applications for this standards are manifold and extend to mobile, automotive, SmartTV, surveillance, equipment maintenance, robotics, infomobility, tourism services, cultural heritage etc.

On the 10^th of June, from 14 to 17 at Via Sannio 2 Milan, the Italian Institute for standardisation UNI will host an event (http://www.uninfo.it/) titled “ISO/IEC artificial vision standards for new services and industrial applications” and organised by UNINFO, the entity federated with UNI and delegated to handle Information Technologies and their applications.

In conclusion, it is important to remember that standards are (just) enablers because how to benefit from standards is the real issue. In order to address this question, it is important to ask ourselves whether Italy is able to

exploit the Intellectual Property of standards;
capitalise on the standards-enabled (hardware and software) manufacturing;
have a holistic view of the entire process.

I suggest to have a look at how Digital Media in Italia (http://www.dmin.it/) endeavoured to “define and propose action areas that enable Italy to acquire a primary role in the exploitation of the global digital media phenomenon”.

Chasing galaxies. An Italian research story

Gabriella De Lucia — Mon, 26 May 2014 09:07:00 +0100

I am an astrophysicist, and my research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies. In particular, I develop analytical and numerical models that allow us to study the physical processes that drive galaxy formation and evolution as a function of cosmic time, in a cosmological context.

I completed my studies in Physics at the University of Naples in 2001. Soon after, I moved to Germany, where I got my PhD in 2004 from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. After completing my PhD studies, I was offered a post doc position at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, where I carried out my research until early 2009. During those years, I also spent long periods in other institutes, both in Europe and in the United States.

The experience abroad has been significant, both for my personal and professional life. I travelled and worked a lot. I had the opportunity to visit several research institutes and to collaborate with the major experts in my research field. I made many new friends, coming from a different culture and speaking a different language. There were nice and bad moments, like it always happens.

In 2007, the European Research Council was launched, and the very first proposal focused on ERC Starting grants. These aim to support potential “research leaders” who are about to start conducting independent research and to establish their own research group. At the time of this first call, I was almost at the end of my third year of my postdoctoral fellowship. Although it was perhaps somewhat early to start thinking of establishing an independent research group, I decided to try, and to profit of this opportunity to come back to Italy. The very first call for the ERC Starting Grant received more than 9000 applications. The selection process was very long (much longer than it is now): I submitted the first application in April 2007, then a second one in September. I had an interview in Brussels in November, and was finally invited to prepare a grant agreement in May of 2008. I finally moved to Trieste to work on the project funded by the ERC in February 2009.

The project focused on a question very similar to the nature versus nurture debate in psychology: to what extent are the observed physical properties of galaxies determined by processes at play when they become part of special environments (like groups or clusters of galaxies)? And to what extent are they determined by the fact that evolution occurs at a different pace in different environments? The group established thanks to the funding received by the ERC worked on this issue using a combination of theoretical techniques and detailed comparisons with observational data at different cosmic epochs. The project officially ended in January 2014, and achieved most of the goals set in the original proposal (some deviations were foreseen, and are bound to happen in case of long-term projects). Some follow-up projects are still ongoing (led by me or by the other fellows who were hired to work on the funded project).

I have received full support from my host institute (INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Trieste), but carrying out the project in Italy has not always been easy. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy is heavy and sometimes definitely anachronistic. The daily administrative burden on Italian researchers is significant, and the average salary very low compared to other European countries. This inevitably causes delays, complications, and frustration. In addition, while other European countries have supported ERC grantees with, for instance, additional funding or simply by officially recognizing the excellence of their research with promotions and/or salary increases, no similar initiative has been undertaken in Italian research institutes.

Needless to say, the EU grant has been very important for my career. It allowed me to pursue my research projects independently, to set up my own small research group, and to demonstrate that I have acquired the knowledge, expertise, and independence to manage such a group. The success of the project is demonstrated by the large number of citations that our work has received in the past five years, as well as by invitation to present related work at numerous international conferences.

Antimicrobial resistance throughout the world

Cristina Da Rold — Fri, 23 May 2014 07:57:00 +0100

Through the years and the development of pharmacology, Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing public health threat of broad concern to countries. Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) produced a global report on surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in collaboration with Member States. This report monitors the situation worldwide, showing that the percentage of antibiotic resistance to various diseases is growing year after year all over the world, especially in developed countries, and the resistance to common bacteria has reached alarming levels in many parts of the world. It indicates that many of the available treatment options for common infections in some settings are becoming ineffective.

According to those who prepared the report, “a post-antibiotic era—in which common infections and minor injuries can kill—far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the 21st century.”

Particularly, the report focuses on antibacterial resistance (ABR), which involves bacteria that causes many common infections for which treatment is becoming difficult. The main focus of this report is therefore on ABR for which knowledge, support and concerted action are inadequate. The report considers seven types of antibacterial resistance pathologies and their respective drug treatments:

- Escherichia Coli vs. the third-generation Cephalosporins and vs. Fluoroquinolones

- Kleibsiella Pneumoniae vs. the third-generation Cephalosporins and vs. Carbapenems

- Staphylococcus Aureus vs. Methiccilin

- Strptococcus Pneumoniae vs. Penicillin

- Non Typhoidal Salmonella vs. Fluoroquinolones

- Shigella Species vs. Fluoroquinolones

- Neisseria Gonorrhoeae vs. 3rd generation Cephalosporins

The first important finding of the report is that there are many gaps in information on pathogens of major public health importance. In other words, the information gathered highlight the strengths and weaknesses in both the collection of data collected in Member States and their quality, and it seems to demonstrate that a global consensus on methodology and data collection for ABR surveillance is still missing. For instance, data on E. coli resistance to third-generation cephalosporins were obtained from only 86 (44%) of the Member States, while those on the resistance to fluoroquinolones from 47% of the Member States. About Kleibsiella Pneumoniae, data on carbapenem resistance from 71 (37%) of the countries, and, concerning Neisseria Gonorrhoeae, data were obtained only from the 22% of the Member States. Furthermore, data were collected in a non-homogeneous way, which makes it difficult to make comparisons or draw maps. Finally, all the national reports refer to different periods: a single year or a longer period. Nevertheless, it is possible to outline a main trend. Even if the European Region has a good percentage of reporting data (79%) the region with most of the countries that have provided the information is the South-East Asia Region (82%).

Create Infographics

South-East Asia Region

Up to 2011, data reveal that in this area the antibacterial resistance was a burgeoning and often neglected problem. However, three years ago the health ministers of the region’s Member States articulated their commitment to combat AMR through the Jaipur Declaration on AMR. Since that moment, all the 11 Member States have decided to contribute information for a regional database and they agreed to participate in a regional consultative process.

Western Pacific Region

70 percent of the Western Pacific Region provided information concerning ABR. Actually the situation is not uniform: even if in some of the high-income countries there is a long established system for routine surveillance of ABR, there are still gaps in geographic coverage and a lack of surveillance in community settings. In this sense, some Pacific Island suffer the consequences of being isolated and to the lack of human resources.

American Region

The enormous variety of the American continent makes the American Region a very complex area to analyze. Since 1996, the WHO Regional Office for the Americas/Pan American Health Organization (AMRO/PAHO) led ReLAVRA, the Latin American Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network, with the aim of collecting aggregated data provided by national reference laboratories. Moreover, in Latin America is still active, since 1993, the Sistema de Redes de Vigilancia de los Agentes Responsables de Neumonias y Meningitis Bacterianas, called SIREVA II, initiated by AMRO/PAHO to provide a regional monitoring programme for important bacteria causing pneumonia and meningitis.

African Region

Concerning the African Region, the surveillance of drug resistance is carried out in only a few countries and there is not awareness of the consequences of infectious conditions for public health. However, even if we have just few groups of information, available data indicate that the African Region shares the worldwide trend of increasing drug resistance, particularly for several bacteria that are likely to be transmissible not only in hospitals but also in the community.

East Mediterranean Region

Data reveal that the East-Mediterranean Region must achieve several challenges, as the absence of legislation and the disruption of basic health services. However, reports and studies from some countries in the region show the geographically extensive emergence of ABR, especially due to the collection of resistance information from disease-specific programmes, for example TB, HIV and malaria. Finally, concerning the European Region, the following map, based on WHO dataset, shows the situation concerning each Member State. Due to the lack of uniformity in collecting data, the graph shows only data collected in 2011, only in this way we could compare the situation among different countries.

Create Infographics

Another equally important aspect concerns the surveillance of antimicrobial drug resistance in disease specific programmes, especially on TB and HIV programmes. The following map is very clear: the majority of the country worldwide notified at least one case of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) by the end of 2012, in particular, it was estimated that during the same year, on a global level, 20.2% of previously treated cases had multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), especially in Eastern Europe and central Asia.

Even in European Region, the situation seems to be dangerous: we have the highest percentage in the world of multidrug-resistant cases both among new and previously treated TB patients, due to the fact that in affluent countries the percentage of drug treatment is certainly greater than the rest of the countries.

Create Infographics

Concerning HIV the multidrug-resistance has enormous consequences on HIV treatments like Antiretroviral therapy (ART) that slow down the progression of the disease by preventing the virus from replicating and thus decreasing the amount of virus. HIV drug resistance causes ART failure, so minimizing the emergence of HIV drug resistance and its transmission is critical to ensure the continued effectiveness of Antiretroviral therapy.

Scientific issues in the 2014 EU Parliament elections

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 19 May 2014 08:00:00 +0100

In May 22-25^(,) European citizens will decide who will lead the Union for the next five years. Despite being the eighth general elections for the European Parliament since 1979, this time is particularly important. For the first time candidates for the Presidency of the European Commission had been nominated before the elections. And this means a lot.

Political Framework

The Lisbon Treaty (art. 17.7 TEU) says that the European Council “shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members.” Despite (but not against) this clear indications, for the first time six out of eleven European Political parties had indicated their candidates before the elections. This, politically, has a great meaning: the Commission is the unique legislative body of the European Union called to serve only the interests of the Union as a whole; the Council, on the contrary, is called to serve the Union as a group of States. If the citizens have (even indirectly) elected the Head of the Commission, the latter has more political power in facing the single states’ wills. Given that, how much do these six candidates care for science and scientific research? Which fields do they mostly push up? But, above all, did they speak about science in their election programs?

The candidates and science: a general overview

Dealing with science related topics, there are really few differences between candidates. Science has entered the political debate in no more than four general fields, namely environment, agriculture, digital technology and energy. Science seems not to be a politically fashionable issue. Anyway, most of the scientific policies are not on the immediate power of the European Parliament or Commission. Horizon 2020 or the Common Agricultural Policy had already been decided both in general budget and in aims. Nonetheless, the Commission has a lot of power in putting in practice these roadmaps year after year – at least when the Head of Commission will have to decide the Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science. So, let’s have a quick look at every candidate’s stance about science.

Martin Schulz – European Socialist Party

Martin Schulz was born in Germany in 1955. Educated in a private catholic high school, he started is working life in the publishing retail sector. In the early 1990s, he entered the mainstream society of the German Socialist Party, finally accessed the European Parliament and remained there since 1994. He can speak six languages.

He voted for all the most important decisions in favor of European funding for scientific research. But, despite that, he is not particularly focused on science. In his manifesto for the 2014 general elections, he did not use directly the word “science” and used only twice the word “research”, moreover in a very general meaning. He wrote: “to create jobs and relaunch the economy, we will prioritize innovation, research, training and a smart reindustrialization policy, so that amazing breakthroughs discovered in European laboratories and universities can be translated into more jobs for workers in Europe” (point 2) and “we will give opportunities for Europeans to develop their potential by investing in education, skills, childcare provision, life-long learning, culture, student mobility, research, and knowledge” (point 4). Other relevant science-related issues on the manifesto are the one in point 9, where he describes his (general) idea of a “Green Europe” recalling climate change and renewable energies.

“If I am elected @EU_Commission president I will redirect EU funds to science and innovation” @MartinSchulz #EP2014. pic.twitter.com/1ctS55nQZE

— Socialistes Europeus (@EuropaPSC) 20 Aprile 2014

Jean-Claude Juncker – European People Party

Jean-Claude Juncker is one of the most known politician outside his small state: Luxembourg. He attained a Master degree in Law in 1979 at University of Strasbourg, but never practiced as a lawyer. His political career started in 1984 as Minister of Labour in Luxembourg – and he had a prominent role in building the Maastricht Treaty (1992). From 1995 to 2013 he has been Prime Minister of Luxembourg, meanwhile he became President of the European People Party since 2005.

Juncker is one of the most known politician outside his small state: Luxembourg. He attained a Master degree in Law in 1979 at University of Strasbourg, but never practiced as a lawyer. His political career started in 1984 as Minister of Labour in Luxembourg – and he had a prominent role in building the Maastricht Treaty (1992). From 1995 to 2013, he has been Prime Minister of Luxembourg, meanwhile he became President of the European People Party since 2005.

In his “five priorities” manifesto he had an attention on science related issues, as the first two priorities are those regarding a digital agenda for Europe (with an interesting reference to a European open data policy) and renewable energy. He stressed its vision of a high-tech Europe by emphasizing the creation of digital jobs. This general views are deepened in his manifesto, at point 2 (which deals with public private funding opportunities, R&D and small-medium technological enterprises) and point 7 about data protection.

Guy Verhofstadt – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe

Born in Belgium in 1953, Guy Verhofstadt graduated in Law at the University of Ghent. At the age of 29 he became President of the Liberal Party and he was known as the “Baby Thatcher”. He has been Premier of Belgium for almost 10 years (1999-2008), making Belgium the second country in the world to introduce the gay marriage and euthanasia. Since 2009, he is leading the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), the European liberal party.

In his “why vote for me” points, he just makes a quick reference to science by saying that “I want to fix the economy by setting the conditions right for the private sector and by redirecting the EU budget to large-scale, innovative projects with a clear return on investment.” Anyway, his vision is quite clear: private sector can best allocate funding into practical R&D results. Moreover, he presented 4 priorities to digital Europe and took the chance of the recent EU Court of Justice ruling against Google to set up the data and privacy policies in the European Union.

Ska Keller and José Bové – The Greens/European Free Alliance

They are both candidates for the Green Party, after the first ever Europe-wide online process to select leading candidates for the European elections.

Franziska Keller is born in Germany in 1981. He graduated in Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin and speaks six languages. Her main political interests are those related to immigration and youth unemployment.

José Bové is a French no-global leader since years. Son of researchers at Berkeley (he speaks English fluently), he was pushed out of the Jesuit Lyceum in France for being “faithless”. Then, he always merged his anti-militarism and alter-globalist activities (for which he has been imprisoned for 44 days) and his passion for agriculture. In 2009, he entered the European Parliament through the Europe Ecologie French party. He is more focused on scientific topics, such as, of course, GMO, Common Agricultural Policy and non-conventional gas.

Alexis Tsipras – European Left

Alexis Tsipras was born in 1971 in Athens. He graduated in Civil Engineering. Alongside doing research at the University and carrying on its own career as engineer, he joined the Young Communist Society. In 2006, he was elected for the first time at the Greek Parliament as member of Syriza, a far left party. Point 2 of his manifesto deals a bit with science, as it describes a “new model of ecological development”, with strong accent to energy and climate issues.

Scientific misconduct in Europe: a confusing situation

Simone Petralia — Fri, 16 May 2014 09:57:00 +0100

Scientific misconduct is a real problem, although in many countries it is still underestimated. Fabrication or falsification of data, altered images, plagiarism and other bad practices can affect the scientific community, compromising the public’s trust in scientific practice as a whole. Cases of scientific misconduct are increasing worldwide, at a rate much higher than that of global scientific production: according to a report published in Nature, from 2001 to 2011, articles already published in scientific journals and then retracted have increased by about 10-fold, even though the number of published papers has risen by only 44%. About half of these retractions were cases of suspected scientific misconduct.

What are different countries doing to tackle the problem? In United States there is the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), established in 1992, an agency of the Department of Public Health and Scientific Research that has the task to prevent, monitor and report scientific misconduct, and to draw up self-regulation codes. In Europe, something similar has been done very recently: the European Science Foundation presented the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity during the second World Conference on Research Integrity that took place in Montreal in 2010. The Code contains guidelines for good scientific practice, and methods to prevent and control negative behaviors. However, as is specified in the text, “it is not a body of law, but rather a canon for self-regulation” and “it is not intended to replace existing national or academic guidelines, but to represent a Europe-wide agreement on a set of principles and priorities for the research community”. For these reasons, although more and more scientific institutions and academic organizations have put in place structures to promote research integrity, in many European countries the decisions of research integrity authorities are still not legally strong.

A recent study published on The Lancet contains an analysis of the guidelines on research integrity in the 27 countries of the European Union (plus Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Iceland). The study shows a very fragmented scenario: Denmark and Norway are the only two countries to have a specific law on scientific misconduct, while other countries, in addition to not having laws about this topic, have guidelines in which scientific misconduct is defined and judged in different ways. For example, in Sweden carelessness is considered more serious than fabrication of data, while according to the guidelines of Finland is exactly the opposite, and fabrication of data is considered equivalent to fraud. Moreover, in twelve countries, including Italy, it was not possible to identify or analyze any guideline.

In recent years several studies on scientific misconduct have been produced (the most important were published on PLoS ONE in 2009 and on PNAS in 2012), but studies about direct and indirect economic damages caused by scientific misconduct have not yet been conducted. The economic impact, especially in case of fraud carried out for years, may be very large and difficult to quantify. Unfortunately, an article published in April 2014 on European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, significantly entitled Fraud in science: a plea for a new culture in research, says that “despite numerous cases of research misconduct being made public, this issue is still a taboo topic among the scientific community”.

Attention towards scientific misconduct by media, rather than the structural problems mentioned above, concerns isolated cases that arouse the interest of public. One of the first cases to cause a stir was that of Malcolm Pearce, a British obstetric surgeon who in 1994 published two papers in British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology: in the first he claimed to have replanted an embryo of an ectopic pregnancy, stating that this had led to the birth of a healthy child; in the second he said he had conducted a trial of two hundred women with polycystic ovary syndrome treated for recurrent miscarriage. Both studies were totally invented. In 1998, another British surgeon, Andrew Wakefield, published a fraudolent research paper in The Lancet in which he argued that there was a correlation between MMR vaccine and autism. Falsifications and manipulations conducted in biomedical field are more attractive to media: scientific misconduct in this area can have a strong impact on the public opinion. In addition, practical applications based on research falsified or manipulated may involve risks to the health of people. It is the case, for example, of Joachim Boldt, German anesthesiologist. He was considered for years as a luminary in the context of research on colloids; then he was accused of having falsified 89 of 102 published works between 1999 and 2010. The retraction of such a huge amount of work has obviously had a big echo, but also far-reaching effects on clinical practice. In February 2013, JAMA published a meta-analysis that showed that fraudulent studies of Bolt have put at risk seriously ill patients.

What is Europe doing to tackle scientific fraud and to reduce the possibility of other cases like that of Joachim Boldt? The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity has proved ineffective: in the study published on The Lancet cited above, it is pointed out that “the observed heterogeneity in guidelines within and between European countries results in a confusing situation”. Among the projects included in Horizon 2020, this problem is located in one topic within Call for Developing governance for the advancement of Responsible Research and Innovation. One of the ambitious goals of the topic, called Ethics in Research: Promoting Integrity, is “to assess the possibility to unify the codes, principles and methods at EU and international level”. We will see.

Closing the gap between brain and computer

Giulia Annovi — Tue, 13 May 2014 18:53:00 +0100

Our brain could resemble a circuit: 80 billion neurons and perhaps a hundred trillion synapses are interconnected within a complex organ. One of the greatest challenges facing 21st century science is brain whole structures and functions disclosure. While emerging technology are spreading in every field, Europe suggested to associate neurobiological studies to technological knowledge and future improvements.

As already mentioned, some skeptical opinions support the idea that the current technologies are not able to manage brain complexity. At any rate, Europe has resolved to bet on the relationship between brain and new technologies, and to open the research on brain to new partners and collaborators. The European aim was the improvement of data collection, and the development of frameworks and technical skills to organize 6 ICT platforms for the Human Brain Project (HBP). In medicine, this means improved knowledge and better diagnosis, combined with disease and drug simulations. In technology and industries development, the brain research will overcome fundamental limits on the energy-efficiency, reliability and programmability of current technologies, sustaining the development of brain-like computing systems.

Just one month ago, the beneficiaries of €8.3 million competitive European call has been declared. The call attracted a total of 350 eligible proposals, which included 561 organisations from 36 countries. At the end, only 22 projects proposed by 32 organisations from 13 countries were selected. Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK will be partners in this challenge. And in this way, the number of partners in HBP project increased of about 40%. Altogether, these partners will make an effort to build six platforms, in order to assure the future developments of neuroscience.

NeuroInformatic Platform will solve issues related to the elaboration of a standard method to compare brain data from different sources. Data belong to human and mouse gene atlases, but also to structural and functional informations generated from modern experimental methods. Starting from available data, scientist should develop methods to predict the features of neurons, synapses etc. without directly measuring them: current technologies are not able to assay entirely the brain structures nature. This platform will be developed at international level, involving the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF), and the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN).
The Brain Simulation Platform has the objective to create models of neural microcircuits, with a constant comparison with experimental data and the application of key biological rules. EPFL’s Blue Brain Project has already developed algorithms that reconstruct brain models, a sort of virtual specimens for neuroscience, and the Blue Brain Project will be the starting point for future developments. Brain models and simulations allow researchers to predict missing data. The same approach applied to medicine could create simulation for brain diseases, and a benchmark for possible treatments.
The High Performance Computing Platform will use existing supercomputing capabilities at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, the Swiss Centre for Scientific Computing, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, and at the Italian CINECA. With this joint effort, HBP project could count on about 10 Petaflop of peak performance, 800 Terabytes of main memory and 8 Petabyte scratch file system, thus allowing simulation of cellular-level models with 100 million neurons.
The Medical Informatics Platform will integrate data from patients. We have data about neurological and psychiatric diseases, but we lack strategies to integrate informations. Under Horizon 2020 funds, the contribution of nine European hospitals and other datasets will be determinant for data collection and comparison. The huge amount of data could be effective in diseases biological signatures identification.
In a pilot study to disclose the nature of six subtypes of Alzheimer’s disease, the use of two hundred patients’ dataset was crucial.
The Neuromorphic Computing Platform will apply brain behaviours to technology. In fact, brain is able to perform difficult computing operations that have never been reproduced in modern computers. Aim of the present project is to build a single chip able to perform a real-time simulation of neurons and synapses, with low power consumption. From brain will be created the hardware of future.
Throughout Neurorobotics Platform, scientists will test virtual robots connected to different brain models, using capabilities provided by gaming platforms.

Italian researchers will participate as principal investigators in five different sub-projects, facing the issues of brain simulation, high performance and neuromorphic computing, medical informatics and mouse brain data organization. Moreover, Italy has answered to HBP call as the most prolific country: the 64 Italian proposals covered all the eight topics.

Even if many Italian proposals have not be selected, the open nature of HBP project does not exclude researchers from outside the HBP Consortium: the HBP tools will be accessible to scientists, and courses and tutorials will be developed for platforms users. Everybody could have the opportunity to take advantage of such scientific improvements.

When excellence comes home

Cristina Da Rold — Mon, 12 May 2014 09:27:00 +0100

Two aspects remain etched firmly after a talk with Andrea Lunardi and Graziano Martello, two “made in Italy” brains that have decided to return to work in Italy after years of research abroad. First, go abroad tout court is not an essential step; the difference is choosing centres of excellence abroad. Second: a PhD in Italy is a great resource, not to be missed, as long as you choose a good group to work with.

These two young men, 43 years old Lunardi and 34 years old Martello, are certainly not the rule in our country. Two researchers that decide to bring their skills in Italy thanks to two grants from a private foundation, the Armenise Foundation, plus a Telethon grant for Martello, after spending years in centers of excellence worldwide, Lunardi at Harvard Medical School and Martello at the University of Cambridge.

Let us start from the end. What is the focus of your researches and why did you decide to come back?

AL: I am a biologist and in recent years I was involved in research on cancer, particularly prostate cancer, under the lead of Pier Paolo Pandolfi, Director of the Cancer Research Institute at the Beth Israel deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School of Boston. Together with a team of American colleagues, I developed the Co-Clinical Trial Approach, a new translational platform based on the enrollment of faithful genetically engineered mouse models of human tumors in specific treatments that perfectly mirror the clinical trial in human patients. I worked in the United States for years, knowing that I would be back in Italy after a few years, and now I had the opportunity to do so, bringing in my country the skills acquired in a center of excellence like the Harvard Medical School. I then tried to obtain funding and I won the Armenise scholarship, which allowed me to come back. Trento seemed to be the best destination for me at the moment, since it is a dynamic reality that is recruiting many new resources focusing on quality.

GM: My research combines experimental and computational methods to understand what controls the behavior of embryonic stem cells. I decided to return to Italy after four years in Cambridge because it was my desire since I started my activity abroad, and I think that if you want to return, once arrived at a certain moment you should try. I was very lucky because I had the opportunity to go back to the University where I studied, which is an excellent research center at both Italian and international level. The funding I have obtained have been obviously fundamental: I got both the Armenise and the Telethon Scholarships, which will cover my project for five years.

Both of you have obtained your PhD in Italy, and only after PhD you have gone abroad. What were the keystones of your professional success?

AL: Right, my training has taken place entirely in Italy, starting from a degree in Biology and Ph.D. in developmental biology at the University of Pisa. In 2004, however, I began to feel the need to concentrate my research on something more practical and I decided to opt for cancer research. I then moved to another Center in Italy, the LNCIB of Trieste, where I worked from 2005 to 2009 alongside talented researchers as for example Giannino Del Sal and Licio Collavin. During this experience, I learned several techniques that allowed me to begin to think of going abroad.

GM: After graduation, in 2005, in Medical Biotechnology, I did a PhD in the laboratory of Stefano Piccolo at the Department of Histology, Microbiology and Medical Biotechnologies of the University of Padua, where, together with basic research in developmental biology, I joined a parallel project on breast cancer. This work has led to the two publications, the first in Nature and the second in Cell, which in turns led me to Cambridge.

How did you take the decision to go abroad?

AL: In Trieste, I began to feel the need to try to take another step, and in this sense, I had arranged with the University of Singapore. But luck was just around the corner [laughs]. In 2008, I went to Trento for the Pezcoller/AACR symposium, one of the most important international meeting on cancer that takes place in our country, and there my poster was selected along with two others to be presented the next morning. So I did my talk and I was noticed by Pier Paolo Pandolfi, who at the end of my presentation simply said, “you will go to Singapore to say that you will don’t go there. You will come with me to Harvard.” It has been like for a mechanical engineer working in Ferrari! Sometime later I was in Boston and I stayed there for 5 years.

GM: During my PhD, I felt the need to take another step forward in my career, and I thought that the post-doc would have represented a good moment to make the jump and to learn something totally new. The biological question that fascinated me as a student, and is still central to my research, is “how is cell identity established. I realized that stem cells were the most relevant system to address such question. For this reason, I chose Cambridge, in particular the laboratory of Austin Smith at the WT-MRC Cambridge Centre for Stem Cell Research.

What is the most important research you have worked on and what will you bring to Italy?

AL: Certainly, the new approach I mentioned earlier, born from the brainchild of Pier Paolo Pandolfi. What we call prostate cancer can in fact includes 50-70 different types of cancer, genetically different and with different responses to drug treatments. Up to now, we have used only mice in a preclinical phase, while in our laboratory we have tried to use them in co-clinical phase, that is, at the same time to human patients. In this way, by testing drugs on human patients and mice at the same time we can quickly and precisely understand in what kind of tumor genetics a specific drug works better. This would allow to make actionable predictions on the response of patients to the drug, at first, then to rapidly define mechanism of de novo or acquired resistance to the treatment, and, finally, to test new drug combinations in mice in order to by-pass the resistance.

GM: In Cambridge, I worked on embryonic stem cells closely with computer scientists, mathematicians and biologists, in a climate of continuous exchange and comparison. The project is innovative thanks to the fact that a team of people with different academic backgrounds can study a biological problem in a whole new way. In Padua I will apply what I have learned extending my research to human pluripotent stem cells.

Finally, what would you recommend to a young person who wants to pursue an academic career?

AL: Two things: PhD in Italy is not a limiting factor, but you must choose a valid group. In other words, it does not matter where, but with who you work. Second, if you go abroad you have to choose an excellent research center. To conclude, I am very optimistic about the possibility of returning to Italy, and I am a living example of this possibility. In Italy we do have centers of excellence and today, thanks to scholarships such as Armenise or Telethon Careers, it is absolutely possible to go back and do a great job.

GM: The point I would underline is that studying in Italy, even at the doctoral level is a great “business card”, if done in centers of excellence. Personally, I did not find any difficulty once I arrived in Cambridge, compared with my colleagues who came from other countries, and I think that post-doc is a great time for measuring ourselves at an international level. Regarding the possibility to return, surely this it is not a good period for research in Italy, but if you are talented there are many scholarships for funding projects, such as the two scholarships that will support my work, Armenise and Telethon scholarships, which allowed me to get greater funds than those that I would have had in Cambridge. I am just a positive example, and it is important to pass the message that going abroad is a critical step in the career of a scientist, because it allows to learn new techniques working in a different environment. But when I was abroad I realized that the quality of research at good Italian institutions is comparable to that of good international institutions. This is why I decided to come back to Italy.

The Bioeconomy strategy in Horizon 2020

Giacomo Destro — Fri, 09 May 2014 09:40:00 +0100

What the economic crisis has clearly shown is that Europe cannot afford its economic growth with low R&D manufacturing products. Science and enterprises must merge into hi-tech outcomes to become markets leaders. The European Union is pushing a lot on the bioeconomy sector, namely businesses based on biotechnology. But what is exactly bioeconomy? Is it so important nowadays in Europe? And what is the situation in Italy?

What is a bioeconomy

The first public definition of bioeconomy was given by a foreseeing report of the OECD, called “The Bioeconomy to 2030: designing a policy agenda”, published in 2009. In this report, bioeconomy was defined as an economy based on biotechnology. In fact, the report said that “biotechnology offers technological solutions for many of the health and resource-based problems facing the world. The application of biotechnology to primary production, health and industry could result in an emerging bioeconomy where biotechnology contributes to a significant share of economic output”.

While some European countries, such as, for instance, the Netherlands, have a bio-based economic policies since 2005, the European Union started an in-deep thinking about the bioeconomy only during the last years of the Seventh Framework Program (7FP). Finally, on 13 February 2012, it launched a new strategy, “Innovating for sustainable growth: a Bioeconomy for Europe”, where it describes the bioeconomy as “a useful basis for a [multidimensional] approach, as it encompasses the production of renewable biological resources and the conversion of these resources and waste streams into value added products, such as food, feed, bio-based products and bioenergy. Its sectors and industries have strong innovation potential due to their use of a wide range of sciences, enabling and industrial technologies, along with local and tacit knowledge”.

The Bioeconomy Action Plan

As bioeconomy represents the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into food, feed, bio-based products and bioenergy, it involves many operational fields of the European Union policies, such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food, paper production, chemical and biotechnological and energy industries. Given this wide range of operational fields, the official strategy has been summarized into a Bioeconomy Action Plan, with twelve main goals:

- Ensure investments in bioeconomy related research projects
- Increase the share of multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral research
- Promote the uptake and diffusion of innovation in bioeconomy sectors
- Build the human capacity required to support the growth of bioeconomy sectors
- Create a Bioeconomy Panel (see below)
- Establish a Bioeconomy Observatory
- Support the development of regional and national bioeconomy strategies
- Develop international cooperation on bioeconomy research
- Provide the knowledge-base for sustainable intensification of primary production
- Promote the setting up of networks with the required logistics for integrated and diversified biorefineries
- Develop standards and standardized sustainability assessment methodologies for bio-based products and food production systems
- Develop science-based approaches to inform consumers about product properties

Facts, figures and budget

According to official European data, the bioeconomy, as defined above, is already a strong reality in the Union. Bio-based products make an estimated annual turnover of 22 trillion euro per year, employing 22 million people (around 9% of the total EU workforce). Between 2007 and 2013, more than 500 small and medium enterprises (38% of the total entities involved) participated in 7FP funded projects about biotechnology. In total, they receive € 136 million.

A small or medium enterprise (SME) is defined by the EU as an enterprise with less than 250 employees and less than €50 million turnover per year. It is fundamental to push on this kind of enterprise: according to the European Commission, SMEs are the 99% of the European businesses, providing 2/3 of the jobs and contributing to more than half of the total value-added created by businesses in the EU. In other words, the future of the bioeconomy passes through SMEs.

Horizon 2020 is meant to foster the 7FP results. The bioeconomy has been clearly introduced as the second “Societal challenge”, titled “Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research, and the Bioeconomy”. The “Societal challenges” are the third pillar of the Horizon 2020 structure, after “Excellent Science” and “Industrial Leadership”. The “Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine, Maritime and Inland Water Research and the Bioeconomy” societal challenge is expected to have a total € 3.8 billion budget.

This amount of funding needs a clear institutional infrastructure. A Bioeconomy Panel has been established in 2013, with a strong presence of women in the Panel’s board (15/30); members of the Panel have been appointed to serve for an initial period of two years (2013-15). The panel divided itself into three sub-groups: a Contact Group for the Bioeconomy Observatory (the Bioeconomy Observatory had made its first roundtable in February 2013), a “Sustainable Biomass Supply for a Growing Bioeconomy” Working Group and a “Market-making in the Bioeconomy” Working Group.

Tab.1: Technology development in key global markets. Source

Italian bioeconomy

Italy is not a leading country in the bioeconomy sector. Despite a pale attempt made by the CNCSS, a consortium made by the National Research Council (CNR), the National Health Institute and the IRBM Science Park, to give 6 grants of 10,000 each (and only for the health sector), the main interest in the bioeconomy sector dates back 2006. In that year, an official report by the EU, made under the Sixth Framework Program, described a bad situation. “Only a few Italian companies are involved in the production of biotech products”, while “Italy does not have currently a specific funded research program for Industrial Biotechnology” even if “generally, industrial biotechnology oriented calls represent around 10% of all calls”. This is mainly due to the fact that “Italy has not developed specific legislation/regulations to support the development and/or market penetration of bio-based products”.

An attempt was made through the action of the “Commitee of Biosafety, Biotechnology and Life Science” (with a quite strange acronym such as CNBBSV). In 2006, this Committee published a report to map the situation of the “white” biotechnologies in Italy, namely biotechnologies related to chemistry and energy production. It showed a very poor situation, both in terms of real outputs and R&D. After 2006, there has not been any other reference on the industrialization of biotechnologies. Until the most recent updates (2010), the Committee focused its action in defining more ethically sensitive problems such as the biobanks. The new Horizon 2020 policy and funding could be maybe the last chance for Italy to enter the bioeconomy.

Italy and African Countries scientific cooperation

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 07 May 2014 10:44:00 +0100

A specific call of Horizon 2020 promotes cooperation between Europe and Africa for scientific research, funding project for €80 billion between 2014 and 2020: €24.5 billion for strengthening research in science, €22.6 billion for strengthening industrial leadership in innovation and €31 billion addressed to societal challenges, like global warming, sustainable transport, food or renewal energy. Actually, Italy has been active in this field for years, especially in South Africa and Egypt, through programs of bilateral scientific and technological cooperation under the authority of the Unit for Scientific and Technological Cooperation of the Directorate General for the Promotion of the Country System.

South Africa

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under the Programme for Scientific and Technological Cooperation between Italy and South Africa for the years 2014 - 2016, has launched a call for the collection of joint research projects to develop between the two countries, which closed on 28 February. The call was open to researchers, universities and research centers, and included physics, astrophysics and radio astronomy, information and communication technologies, biotechnology, nanotechnology and advanced materials, medicine, health environment, and renewable energy.

Furthermore, since the Europe-Africa cooperation is also one of the objectives of Horizon 2020, preference will be given to projects that are part of multilateral research programs of the European Call. More in detail, the initiative aims at two types of projects: the first group concerning the mobility of researchers, with support for up to three years 2014-2016 and a loan in annual installments, while the last category is about bilateral projects of great importance.

However, this is not the first cooperation project between Italy and South Africa. The first agreement of Scientific and Technological Cooperation with the Republic of South Africa was signed in Pretoria on 15 January 1998 and came into force on 19 February 2000. Then, the fourth session of the Italian-South African Joint Technical Committee held in Pretoria on 29 November 2010 examined the present state and further development of the scientific and technological co-operation between the two countries, and defined the new Executive Programme for the years 2011-2013. During the last two years, the number of projects that have involved Italian and South African researches increased. Concerning physics and chemistry, we have studied the synthesis of porous molecular solids, an innovative way to reinforced plastics, the application of X-rays synchrotron microtomography for non-destructive analysis of paleontological specimens and semiconductor detectors. Related to medicine, we have been involved in researches about antituberculosis agents, bioethanol production from starchy and cellulosic plant biomass and genetic characterization of some Nguni Sheep breads by molecular markers. Finally, we have studied the electrical and hydraulic properties of aquifers, how to improve the efficiency of Public Hospitals and the role of inflammation in HPV11-related esophageal cancer development.

Egypt

But not just South Africa. We are in the middle of the call 2013-2015 for the cooperation between Italy and Egypt, whose origins date back to 1975. Two years ago, on December 2012, the Italian-Egyptian Joint Commission met in Cairo to examine the present state and further development of scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries and decided which step would have followed. As for the cooperation with South Africa, the range of the winner projects, which are active now, is wide: from biotechnological applications of marine sponge-associated microorganism, to smart optical nanostructures for green photonics; from the fertility of buffalo and cattle under heat stress conditions to a project for reconverting the sight to blind people. And then, from archaeological studies to new materials or a scientific new approach to the conservation of printed photos.

Internet of Things and Smart City in Italy

Antonio Pilello — Mon, 05 May 2014 09:39:00 +0100

Recently, the Internet of Things Observatory of the Polytechnic University of Milan conducted an analysis of 116 cities (51 in Italy, 65 abroad) and 258 Smart City applications enabled by Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The concept of IoT, proposed by Kevin Ashton in 1999, refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. As reported by Gildo Seisdedos Domínguez, the Smart City concept essentially means efficiency, which is based on the intelligent management and integrated ICTs as well as the active participation of the citizens. One of the main findings is the gradual shift towards natively multi-functional projects, which can share their technology to many applications. More than 30% of the projects launched since 2012 touches at least two areas of application, 12% at least three. We had the pleasure to speak with Emanuela Pala, Research Fellow at the Internet of Things Observatory of the Polytechnic of Milan.

Emanuela Pala, the term Smart City is a very broad and not merely a technological concept. What are the parameters that allow us to determine if a city is actually smart? For example, mobility, energy efficiency, sustainability, digital participation of the citizens?

From this point of view, the term itself refers to a broad concept with blurred boundaries. A city is smart if it rotates around six areas of smartness: smart-economy, smart-mobility, smart-environment, smart-people, smart-living and smart-governance. Obviously, not all of these dimensions must necessarily be present together. In general, smart refers to the ability of a city to generate competitiveness and sustainability. The latter revolves around important themes such as the energy efficiency and the environmental sustainability.

In this process of transformation of our cities, the role of the Internet of Things is absolutely central and fundamental. Without IoT it would not be possible at all. What are its possible uses in order to improve the quality of life in urban areas?

Yes, absolutely. The Internet of Things assumes a very important role, definitely as an enabler, in other words as a tool that can be used to help cities in the path that leads them to become intelligent. The overlap of the IoT with the concept of Smart City is not complete, but still very strong. The cover and the variability of possible applications’ areas are extremely high. We have identified many areas of possible applications to the Smart Cities. A concrete example is certainly the theme of the viability with the monitoring of urban traffic. There are some possible corrective actions that can facilitate the traffic flow like, for instance, remote control adaptive traffic lights.

The Internet of Things Observatory of the Polytechnic University of Milan conducted an analysis of 116 cities (51 in Italy, 65 abroad). At what point are the Italian cities compared with Europe? Are they somehow connected together?

There are some features in common and some small differences. In Italy as well as in Europe, people are experiencing a lot about this issue. In addition, the themes of mobility and public transport are carriers throughout Europe, with the aim of improving the multimodality, namely the use of means of transportation alternative to the private ones. Instead, we are a little late regarding the issue of funding. There is still a difficulty in the access to public-private partnerships whereas they can play a crucial role to unlock the potentialities of Smart Cities. Currently, one of the main issues to the full adoption of PPP schemes is the correct identification of value drivers and effective business models that could draw private funds. If possible, an important part of the funding should be public anyway, because there are some areas of Smart Cities whose benefit is social rather than economic.

The projects are becoming increasingly multifunctional and across-the-board. Is it a characteristic inherent to the Internet of Things or an inevitable choice due to the economic crisis?

The two things are connected. In fact, the IoT is multi-functional by itself. On the same layer of technology, it allows you to enable different services in a transparent way and with reduced costs. This is an essential feature, especially in a context where there is more and more attention to the items of expenditure.

Does French research system risk to end up like in Italy?

Sergio Ferrari — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 09:16:00 +0100

The Scientific Council of CNRS (Comitè National de la Recherche Scientifique) has raised alert toward the political power and the civil society in France in regard to the risks that the research system is running as a consequence of poor availability of human and financial resources. This appeal/alarm is supported by two publications.

The first one is essentially an analysis and an assessment that alerts over the Country and Politics non-compliance of the commitments subscribed with the EU about reaching an overall level of R&D investments equal to 3% of GDP by 2010. The second documents mostly provides data, statistics and international comparisons with countries such as Korea, Japan, Denmark, Germany, United States etc… in regard to both public and private research investment. Besides, it dedicates an in-depth analysis to the subjects of employees – both researchers and technicians – and university education system.

Overall, the documents produced by the Scientific Council of the CNRS highlight – on the basis of OECD data – that between 1995 and 2011 France moved back to the 15^th place from the 7^th in the worldwide ranking of research funding (measured in terms of GDP), with investments equal to 2.24% of the GDP. This weakness in research funds is directly reflected into employment data – measured in terms of researchers per one thousand working people – where France positioned at the 14^th place in 2011. But since 2009, the balance between entry and exit of personnel in the research sector has become more and more negative. Besides, the diffusion of temporary employment hinders experimental activities, knowledge transmission and professional expectances.

To all this, it needs to be added that “professional opportunities offered to youngsters who achieve the highest degree in the French education system, the doctorate, cannot stop to concern. The unemployment rate for young doctorates is, according to the rare available data, quite high: near to 10% in 2007 already”. These analyses clearly show that “the capability of France of carrying out research at a high level will keep decreasing.” In order to avoid it, the first step should be the announcement of a multi-year plan for scientific employment.

The reference to our Country appears only in a final note on “Consequences for future generations”, where it is stated that “France is very close to take the same path as Italy and Spain with extremely rapid consequences in terms of deep destruction of the research system”. It will be possible to verify this prevision by analysing the data recently published both by Eurostat and OCSE. But this is another story, also because in this case the analyses might stretch beyond the research system.

Follow the money: how to track research funds

Rita Occhipinti — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 08:28:00 +0100

Sixteen digits. Nature has called it “online science passport”. More than half a million researchers have already joined the initiative. The ORCID project (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a wide database of scientists all over the world: it collects names, short biographies, research activities, patents, citations, results, dataset. Citing from the homepage, ORCID provides “a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher”. Scientists can use the code as a second signature when they submit publications (Nature, Science and many other journals, open access or not, are partners of the project), when they cite on the web or when they write on scientists’ social network, always keeping their own work and their own identity sure and recognizable. Advantages seem to be various for attendees and the number of subscriptions is growing.

Now ORCID is asking users a new kind of information: money. Researchers have to insert details about their grants: amount, frequency during the years, source public or private. The more the available data and the numbers of publications, the more metadata are necessary to understand connections and collaborations, and to track funds. The ORCID identifier provides a set of useful metadata on the web: it can follow the money and easily relate it with people and outputs. It is a sort of disclosure 2.0.

The request for information about funds tries to pander to the growing need of institutions, and of funding and regulatory agencies, to have a careful gaze on researchers’ activities. It is quite easy to gather information about funds and ranking of Universities and projects. However, it is not easy at all to associate money to single researchers and, consequently, to their scientific results. They can change affiliation over the years during their career or even during a single project, according to its different phases. For example, Horizon 2020 provides for individual grants (ERC grants, European Research Council): the PI (principal investigator) is free to move to another country, taking the money with him, if his research requires it.

Moreover, ORCID identifiers can reveal which kinds of grant work better, i.e. which ones are mainly ascribable to outstanding results. Individual (those given to the PI) grants or collaborative (those given to the project) ones? The high-risk grants to cutting-edge ideas or the ones consolidating existing projects and basic research? Funding mechanisms could find a new instrument to become more and more efficient and evidence based.

Meritocracy, transparency and efficiency: that is not all. Tracking systems and the other ORCID metadata are strictly related to openness in science. The connection between funds, scientist and achievements can be functional and fast on the web only if publications are accessible and open (in spite of the membership of Nature and Science). Tracking systems seem to be an answer to the new needs of funding agencies, and to the future direction of openness in science.

The rise of physics in China: INFN as privileged partner

Cristina Da Rold — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 10:54:00 +0100

Last December, newspapers around the World have given space on their pages to the Chinese moon landing attempt, which unfortunately failed shortly afterwards, when the rover suddenly failed. Even if the attempt ended in failure, it remains a significant symbol of how much China is investing in scientific research and technological innovation. Moreover, in 2020 China has planned to build the Chinese Space Station.

But not only aerospace engineering. Also particle physics seems to be fundamental in the development program for Chinese innovation and INFN is now one of the major partners in this project. “Italy is a privileged partner for China in the field of particle physics, and Chinese researchers are asking us for years to collaborate on their projects,” says Fernando Ferroni, President of INFN. “For three years there has been an agreement between Italy and China to work together on their scientific projects and this year, on May 17^th, we will meet their delegation to secure future collaborations.”

China is currently working hard to build new satellites and is taking a lot of inspiration from Italian technology like AGILE, a satellite launched in 2007 to explore some of the most violent phenomena of the universe, PAMELA, which investigates cosmic radiation, and FERMI, the NASA satellite mission dedicated to the study of gamma radiation. Furthermore, a recent collaboration between Italy and China was born to study the variability of the electromagnetic environment around the Earth and to realize a sophisticated seismic monitoring equipment to be installed on the CSES Chinese satellite that will be put in orbit in 2016.

The cooperation with Italy took place in an unusual way for China. “They usually take advantage of the experience of researchers who go abroad for university and that, unlike Italians, go back in China after their studies,” Ferroni explains. “This is an usual practice in countries like United States, but certainly not in a country like Italy. We have earned our privileged partnership in another way.” For example, thanks to a first experiment called ARGO, built fifteen year ago and aimed to study cosmic rays, mainly cosmic gamma-radiation. In this case, Italian knowledge had helped Chinese scientists a lot, as regards to the construction of some parts of the experiment.

At the moment, China is working in two directions: one is the building of a Chinese particle accelerator, while the second experiment, which is more important, is located between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and its aim is to clarify precisely the order of the neutrino mass. “In this experiment we participate with a group of researchers from INFN in Milan, who had built the purifier of the Borexino liquid scintillator.”

Italy, and in particular the INFN, are therefore privileged partners in supporting China in its scientific and technological development. But does the reverse also happen? What is the Chinese role in Italian research projects? “Chinese research in the field of particle physics is still in the prototype stage compared to our own,” Ferroni explains, “but their contribution is important to us, especially in the experiments on the search for dark matter. They also have huge funding for research and this is certainly a huge stimulus for us.”

A tour through European scientific governance

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 09:01:00 +0100

European research is fundamental for guaranteeing future competitiveness to our economies, as acknowledged by all EU member States that committed to reach investments in research and development equal to 3% of GDP. Up to date, however, the funds allocated by the 28 Countries of the Union remain below the 2% of GDP and on average do not exceed 0.7% (Fig. 1). Some Nations, however, are reversing their route. In 2000, Germany and France presented similar balance sheets; ten years later, Germany remains the only country that constantly increased public funds. Also Spain and Portugal registered an increase, whilst Italy, since 2007, showed a continual decrease.

Fig. 1 – Investment in research and development.

It is not a surprise that our Country invests in research less than the European average. Much has been written about possible solutions and paradigm shifts. Increasing funds is doubtlessly the first step, but it is also essential to review our governance system, whose management is sub-divided among countless Ministries and Bodies, resulting in inefficiencies, additional costs and discontinuity. As this was not enough, the Italian system is affected by a chronic poor interest in result application and cooperation with industry that, from its side, invests little and find hard to link private research activity with the input coming from the public research centres. Disentangling the many knots that slow down the development of Italian research is challenging indeed because of the high complexity of the system, but the management of such a central sector in the knowledge society does not represent a problem for our Country only. Let’s have a look at some of our European neighbours to see how they have faced the same issue.

Spain

In 2007, Spain approved the “Plan Nacional de I+D+i” (Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica), a 4 year-plan that coordinates priority politics on science, technology and development. Science and technology at the service of citizens, social welfare and sustainable development stand out among the declared aims of the Plan National. Also, the combination of research, technology and development should improve industrial competitiveness and produce new knowledge.

The example of Catalonia is singular: the region is very active in scientific research thanks to the union of public and private investments. Catalonia passed from the allocation of 0.58% of FP3 European funds (1990-1994) to 1.94% of FP7 (2007-2010) and produces publications with the most international impact of all Spain. This result has been achieved thanks to the great flexibility of Catalan research centres on funding management. The Government (Generalitat) of Catalonia also created the excellence network ICREA, for attracting scientific talents, and has a development plan similar to international metropolis that, despite the economic difficulties, allowed the recruiting of 300 researchers (of which 40 were winners of the ERC funds) with salaries at European level.

Is there a centralized agency?

Public funds are managed both by the government and single regions, each with their own rules. At a central level, the Ministry of Science is the most involved, through agency like CDTI, FECYT and GENOMA, followed by the Ministries of Education, Industry, Health and Defence. The National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) is the most important scientific institution in the Country and manages national and European funds for more than 100 institutes.

How are funds distributed?

More than half the budget for research is distribute as loans (a method much criticized by the scientific community), whilst the rest is provided by means of scholarships and grants. A group of scientist, researches and university presidents – the movement Open Letter for Science – required the appointment of an agency for improving the distribution of funds for research.

Evaluation

The Comisión Nacional de Evaluación de la Actividad Investigadora (CNEAI) was appointed in 1989 for the evaluation of university professors and personnel of research centres, and it is based on economic incentives which are provided depending on research productivity measured by books, patents and articles. In this last case, publication on international journals is much encouraged.

Germany

Germany is a Country that offers several kind of research funding, both public – thanks to different institutions and research programs – both from foundations and private centres. The Country has recently reformed public funding of education and research, allowing single institutions to achieve both high levels of autonomy and managerial responsibilities. About one third of research and development expenses in Germany are covered by the government. Bundesland (Federal Government) and Länder (Regions) act independently from one another in regard to research funding, even though coordinated initiatives are also present. There are several funding programmes, based on very competitive grants, such as the German Initiative for Excellence that lasts 5 years and is now at its second edition, paid for 75% by the Bundesland (federal Government) and for 25% by the Länder (Regions). In 2005, State and Region Governments signed an agreement, the German Pact for Research and Innovation, with several research institutions and associations active on the scientific German panorama, which receive support in exchange of further growth in quality, excellence and performance.

Is there a centralized agency?

There is not a unique agency, by several ones, both at state and federal level. The most important sources of national public funding are the ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the big research associations involved by the German Pact for Research and Innovation: the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Max Planck Society, the Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Laboratories and the Leibniz Association.

How are funds distributed?

Ministerial funding, in particular those provided by BMBF, are divided in different research areas and programmes. The distribution of funds among the single Länder is regulated by the Joint Science Conference (GWK) according the Königstein Formula, established in 1949 and calculated on the basis of tax entries and number of inhabitants of each Länder, which determine respectively two thirds and one third of the total.

Evaluation

The evaluation is conducted by the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) by means of performance-based criteria, such as the number of students who graduate in time, the total number of graduates, the amount of external funds and the number of PhD graduates. In regards to research associations, each of them uses different criteria in the fund distribution.

United Kingdom

One of the peculiarity that distinguishes the English higher education system in respect to other European systems, is the tradition of great institutional autonomy of universities; in fact they can receive by law funding from a plurality of sources. However, the most conspicuous entry for the higher education system overall is provided by the Government by means of the unique funding for research and education and it is distributed indirectly by the Funding Council for Higher Education in England (HEFCE). The HEFCE has been established in 1992 with the Further and Higher Education Act del 1992, in order to:

Distribute to universities the UK government funding through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS);
Function as advisor for the BIS State Secretary in regard to the higher education sector needs.

Is there a centralized agency?

The HEFCE is defined as “non-departmental public body”, i.e. a body which has an acknowledged consulting function within the government processes, but is completely independent, since it is not directly administered either by the Government or by the Ministries, even though the latter are responsible for the quality and efficiency of its work in front of the Parliament. The HEFCE acts within the guidelines established by the BIS State Secretary (Business, Innovation and Skills), but it is not part of the BIS itself, since, by statute, it is free from direct political control. The members of the HEFCE managing board are directly nominated by the State Secretary and one representative of the Ministry can participate to the board meetings as evaluator, but cannot take part in the decisional process.

How are funds distributed?

Public funds for research are distributed by a dual support system: the HEFCE covers the structural costs of research centre, i.e. salaries for researchers permanently hired, maintenance and management expenses for buildings, libraries and IT centres, whilst the seven Research Councils, funded by the Department of Trade and Industry, deal with funding the specific research projects. In total, the Government contributes to the higher education sector for 63% of the total (HEFCE, 2009/32); of this percentage, 35% is allocated in one single funding, provided to the universities by the HEFCE, whilst the remaining 28% mainly represents the necessary costs for guaranteeing the right to study.

Evaluation

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the new system for the evaluation of the quality of the research in the UK and will be completed within 2014. It will take the place of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The REF will be conducted unitedly by the HEFCE, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council of Wales (HEFCW) and by the Department for Employment and Learning of Northern Ireland. The next assessment exercise will take place in 2014. Being excellence promotion one of the HEFCE priority, an important part of the funding is selectively allocated based on research quality, measured by periodical Research Assessment Exercises (RAE). The principal evaluation criteria include:

International excellence;
University/industry cooperation;
Researcher supervision.

France

The French system is very different from the British one, since it is not self-managed by researchers in different councils but is centralized by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and the Ministry of Economy. Research is carried out principally by higher education institutes (162), of which 86 universities and French “Grandes Ecoles”. At operational level, the French system is mostly constituted by the following agencies, which are appointed of actualizing politics of R&D and innovation (Fig 3):

Oseo, which offers support for innovation and R&D projects to companies, in particular small and medium ones;
The National Agency for Research (ANR), established in 2007 for funding research projects based on competitiveness;
The Agency for Environment and Energy Management (ADEME), established in 1991 for supporting the Environmental Fund and energy research based on partnership.;
Public research bodies such as the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which also play a part in actualizing this politics.

Is there a centralized agency?

In France there are two different agencies with well distinguished tasks: the AERES, for the evaluation of research institutes (PROS, public research organizations) and the ANNR, for the evaluation of the research projects. The establishment of the ANR reinforced the importance of funding based of competitive projects. About 88% of the total expense for research goes to PROS. Research projects, managed by the ANR, use about 11% of the budget.

Evaluation

French public research institutes have internal evaluation systems for single researches and research units. In order to facilitate this system, in 2006 AERES has been established. This agency assesses public laboratories, higher education, university and institutions. For the evaluation, on the other side, of R&D projects and of research institutes funded with public money, the assessment exercise is carried out by the NCST, established in 2006. This agency is related to the 15 Ministries that support this type of projects and researches.

An overview on the global response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic

redazione — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 10:47:00 +0100

In a review on the New England Journal of Medicine, Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine and chair of an international committee requested by the World Health Organization (WHO), analyzed the global response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, giving particular attention to the function of the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) and the performance of the WHO.

IHR are a set of provisions – activated in 2005 and gone into effect in 2007 – that delineated the responsibilities of individual countries when dealing with public health emergencies and established a leading role for the WHO in declaring and managing such crises. According to the author, some of these provisions proved to be very useful, like the systematic approaches to surveillance, the early-warning systems, and the promotion of technical cooperation and sharing of logistic support. However, only 68% of member states responded to a WHO questionnaire on their state of progress in 2011. Of them, only 58% reported having developed the required national plans and only 10% claimed to have fully established the capacities called for in the IHR.

As stated by the 2005 IHR, the WHO had been assigned the authority to declare a public health emergency of international concern and take a leading role in the global response. In the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the organization managed to detect, identify and characterize the virus in a timely manner, and to monitor the course of the pandemic. It also provided quick recommendations on vaccine target groups and dose, field assistance to affected countries and an efficient distribution of more than 3 million courses of antiviral drugs.

However, Fineberg also highlighted the difficulties and missteps made by the WHO. For instance, the limited budget and the UN personnel-management requirements, which constrained the flexibility that such an organization should have, or its better capacity to respond to focal, short-term emergencies than to global health threats like a pandemic. Fineberg also claimed a lack of a consistent, measurable and understandable depiction of the severity of a pandemic, and criticized the spread-based pandemic phase structure, which he considered unsuitable for operational management. Another issue to be considered, according to the author, is the failure to acknowledge legitimate criticisms – regarding the meaning of a pandemic and the lack of timely and open disclosure of potential conflicts of interest – that undermined WHO credibility.

Given these, and others, problems, Fineberg claimed that, in order to be ready to face another pandemic, the world would need superior surveillance and agreements on virus and vaccine sharing, better antiviral agents and more effective influenza vaccines, with an improved production capacity and distribution.

Heeding the lessons from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was one of the aims of the TELLME project, which performed a detailed analysis of population behavior and communication issues during epidemics, including the swine flu one. By taking advantage from such a lesson, it would be possible to improve the effectiveness of risk communication, which in turns would support the use of those measures necessary to limit the spread of disease.

Brainstorming the research: the future of brain studies

Giacomo Destro — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 09:34:00 +0100

One of the most unknown places, still far from being explored and fully understood, is not (only) the deep universe: it is our brain. That is why USA and the European Union, in the very last years, started two separate, but parallel, initiatives to map the human brain. On March 2014, there has been a public announcement that the two projects will merge. Or will they smash?

The Human Brain Project

The first attempt to simulate some parts of the structure of a brain is dated back to 2005, when IBM, in collaboration with the Ecole Politecnique of Lausanne in Switzerland, has started a research program called the Blue Brain project. After just one year, researchers were able to create a virtual but biologically realistic model of a single neuron, thanks to a supercomputer called Blue Gene. In 2008, the Blue Brain project has recreated a cellular neocortical column of 10,000 cells and finally, in 2011, a virtual model of about a million neurons was built.

Given these results, the European Union decided in 2013 to foster the efforts and, thus, to map the entire human brain. Together with the Graphene flagship, the Human Brain Project (HBP) entered the funding program called Future and Emerging Technology (FET). This gave the researchers the access to over one billion euro in ten years. The HBP is still based in Lausanne (even after the recent tensions between Switzerland and the EU) and involves 135 partner institutions from 26 countries.

Briefly, the HBP is supposed to create a virtual but realistic model of the entire human brains. This will not only create a manageable model to study the mostly unknown brain diseases such as Alzheimer, but, through neuroinformatics, it is meant to have implications in neurorobotics and high performance computing.

BRAIN initiative

The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) is partly, but not deeply, different from the European HBP, both in aims and structure. Announced in April 2nd, 2013 by President Obama (who strongly endorsed the initiative), BRAIN will map the activity of every single neuron in our brain. The aim is to give “new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, shows how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space” (as explained in the interim report, which explains the six high priority research areas). The initiative is funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), with a budget of $ 40 millions for the fiscal year 2014. But, for the next year, President Obama has already doubled the funding, from $ 100 millions to $ 200 millions.

Synergies and difficulties

The two programmes will have approximately the same deadlines, the same budget (about 1 billion euro each) and many scientists from the two projects have already begun to collaborate informally, as it occurs, for instance at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. As reported by Nature, US government officials already gave the news of the merging process: HBP and BRAIN will work together. Meanwhile, after settling the political clash with the EU (at least for the moment), even Israel has been involved in the HBP/BRAIN partnership, through the HBP.

Many scientists said it was a natural wedding since, basically, the two programs deal with the same object (the brain) but from different perspectives (briefly: HBP is more focus on creating a “virtual brain”, BRAIN on discovering the interactions between all the brain’s cells). But many other analysts fear that something can go very wrong: skeptics base their criticisms on at least three aspects.

First of all, many scientists say that the paradigm underlying the two projects is nowadays out of date or simply wrong. In other words, they say that the plasticity of the brain activities cannot be “photographed”, even through an incredibly complex virtual model. Then someone threatens a so-called “data tsunami”, as it has been estimated that a complete virtual brain could generate about 300,000 petabytes a year, namely 300,000 thousands billions of data every year. That is almost the same traffic of data the internet generated in 2013 (some analysts calculated it in 32,000 petabytes per month). For comparison, the Large Hadron Collider, once fully working, will generate “just” 15 petabytes. Finally, on the ethical side, shared principles have to be discussed, which is always not easy while dealing with the study of parts of the human body.

EU funding for robotics research

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 09:51:00 +0100

Nowadays, over two-thirds of European workers in manufacturing are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is a considerable percentage that UE must consider in its decision concerning funding for Research and Development. One of the most significant aim of SMEs is to offer a valid answer to changing production needs that are developing more and more quickly in our contemporary society, and robotics represents in this sense one of the major challenges.

Bringing cognitive robotics from vision to reality in a key segment of EU-manufacturing is the reason why SMEROBOTICS, the European Robotics Initiative for Strengthening the Competitiveness of SMEs in Manufacturing, has born. The objective of the project is to propose a work system which covers all phases of the robot life-cycle and through which humans could operate together with robots into the field of manufacture. More in detail the project aims to transfer the concept of cognitive robotics from vision to reality. This is based on a three-year initiative, which will end on 31 December 2015, for developing suitable robots for SMEs that are agile enough to allow companies to modify their productive processes without the intervention of specialists. There is also an Italian group involved in SMEROBOTICS: Comau spa, a company that works in the field of industrial applications and automation technology, based in Turin.

Various automation technologies will be presented in 2014 during a fair called AUTOMATICA: for instance, a lightweight robot for small productions, welding robots controlled by sensors able to learn from a human welder, a robotic cell for general tasks of economic manipulation, as well as innovative software.

SMEROBOTICS is funded by the European FP7 from January 2012 until the end of 2015. The total cost of the project is estimated EUR 18,502,531 and UE has given funding for EUR 12,149,967. Also an Italian enterprise is involved, but he consortium is composed by German, Sweden and Danish enterprises. But SMEROBOTICS is just a little part of the Italian contribution in the field of robotics, starting from universities. And, above all, in Italy robotics is not synonymous only with industrial automation. In this sense the two major research institutes that work in the robotic sector are Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna located in Pisa and Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) based in Genova.

“The cornerstone of our mission,” explains Paolo Dario, Professor of Biomedical Robotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, “is BioRobotics, understood as a combination of science and engineering. In the past, robotics was seen as only industrial sector, or as science fiction. To us today it’s interesting to approach these two fields to understand for example how a fish swims, or bird flight.” The BioRobotic dream at the Scuola Sant’Anna results in four main areas: construction of tools for surgery, prosthetics, rehabilitation and personal care. “Our robotics does not necessarily fall in the field of humanoid robotics. Humanoids are only one of the branches of which we are concerned here. For instance, are humanoids those robots designed to give assistance to the elderly?” The BioRobotics Institute, is the result of a merge between ARTS Lab, CRIM Lab and EZ Lab, and it works in collaboration with Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia (MicroBioRobotics Center) and with other leading universities in Japan and Korea.

Humanoids are one of the most important research areas of IIT. In particular, there are different robotics departments working on an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to humanoid design and control. Examples are the humanoid iCub and CoMan. The iCub is an innovative platform to support research concerning embodied cognition, it has the shape of a 4-year child and is able to interact with the environment by recognizing and grasping objects, using tools, hearing, having the sense of touch and walking. It is developed by IIT and was co-funded by the EU Commission under the 6^th Programme. 25 copies of the iCub robot are currently in use in other research institutes in Italy, in Europe, USA and Japan. It is designed to be a robot companion in the future society and in industrial domains too. iCub and Coman, the other humanoid robot produced at IIT, are involved in EU project Walkman, which aims to enhance the capabilities of existing humanoid robots, thus permitting them to operate in emergency situations, while assisting or replacing humans in civil damaged sites including buildings, such as factories, offices and houses. In such scenarios, the Walk-man robot will demonstrate human type locomotion, balance and manipulation capabilities. The robot will have the ability to walk and balance in unstructured workspaces, ability to walk over rough terrain, in and through cluttered spaces, and among the crowd or crawling over a debris pile.

But not just humanoids. IIT also focuses on technologies into industrial field, for instance microturbines as an energy-harvesting device – Microturbine is actually an IIT start-up company. The target of the research program is to study novel miniaturized power supply systems, with applications to robotics, but also to other fields, including autonomous robotics, mobile systems, and remotely located or geographically distributed infrastructures. They offer an interesting challenge both from scientific and technical viewpoint, for micro-fluid dynamics, high-speed rotor dynamics, mechatronic systems integration and micro manufacturing.

Cochrane and BMJ questioned Tamiflu and Relenza effectivenes

redazione — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 11:27:00 +0100

There is no good evidence about the effectiveness of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir) for influenza prevention and treatment. This is the though claim made by Cochrane Collaboration and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), based on the extended systematic review they just published about the use of neuraminidase inhibitors against influenza.

Their study is entirely based on complete clinical study reports, trial registries, electronic databases, regulatory archives and correspondence with manufacturers, which correspond to more than 150,000 pages of documents; more specifically, the researchers focused on 20 (Tamiflu) and 26 (Relenza) randomized placebo controlled trials testing the effects of the drugs for treatment, prophylaxis, and post-exposure prophylaxis of influenza. Taken together, the trials analyzed involved more than 24,000 adults and children who had confirmed or suspected exposure to natural influenza.

What they found is that, when used for prophylaxis, both drugs reduce the proportion of symptomatic influenza (but not in children, for zanamivir). In spite of such a reduction, their effectiveness in preventing infected people to spread the disease to others remains unproven. Both drugs showed modest effects in terms of alleviation of influenza-like symptoms, but oseltamivir also increased the risk of nausea, vomiting, headaches, and renal and psychiatric syndromes. Whilst zanamivir reduces the proportion of patients with laboratory confirmed symptomatic influenza, no evidence has been found that the two drugs may decrease the risk of complications of influenza, particularly pneumonia, or the risk of hospital admission or death. Evidence also suggests that Tamiflu prevented some people from producing sufficient numbers of their own antibodies to fight infection.

Such a massive review was not possible in 2009, due to a lack of access to available trial data, and this prevented researchers from verifying the claims about the effectiveness of neuraminidase inhibitors against influenza complications, which in turns led to governments’ decision to stockpile these drugs in case of a pandemic. A decision that cost a huge amount of money and that raised many controversies.

The authors of the study concluded that their findings do not support the mode of action of the two drugs proposed by the manufacturers, and raise question about the global stockpiling of oseltamivir and its inclusion on the WHO list of essential drugs as an anti-influenza drug. According to authors, governments took such decisions “on the basis of a published evidence base that has been affected by reporting bias, ghost authorship, and poor methods”.

Women and space: a gender gap issue

Antonio Pilello — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 07:32:00 +0100

European women are currently underrepresented in the aerospace sector. In Italy, as reported by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR), more than 1200 students graduated (bachelor or master degree) in aerospace or astronautical engineering in 2012 but only 15% of them were female students.

We had the great pleasure to speak about this gender gap with Simonetta Di Pippo, the new Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), as well as President and co-founder of the association for Women in Aerospace Europe (WIA-E). UNOOSA is responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. WIA-E is working to expand women’s opportunities and to increase their visibility and leadership in the aerospace sector. We also contacted Cristina Valente, Marketing Strategist at Telespazio and coordinator of the WIA-E local group in Rome, founded in 2013.

Simonetta Di Pippo, the merit has no gender, or rather should not have it. However, women are currently underrepresented in the aerospace sector. From this point of view, what role can the association Women in Aerospace Europe play? Your recent appointment as director of UNOOSA is certainly a good thing and it could represent a model for the girls who have to choose which faculty to attend after high school.

Indeed, merit should be independent from gender. That’s unfortunately not true, or at least, not yet. Women in Aerospace Europe has been founded in 2009 with two main goals: on the one hand, to support women to find their career paths in the aerospace sector; on the other hand, to advocate space activities in general as a driving sector for social and economic benefits. What we seek for is to reach a balanced representation of genders since we believe that, the aerospace professional environment being still dominated by males, we need the ignition of a virtuous mechanism to allow more women to be in the loop. My recent appointment as Director of UNOOSA shows that merit counts and this stands as a concrete result of extreme value for the youngest.

Another positive model is the ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who graduated from the Technical University of Munich, with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and a specialisation in aerospace propulsion. What are your expectations for the Futura mission?

In my previous capacity as Director of Human Spaceflight at the European Space Agency, I had the privilege and the honour to select her, together with other five young Europeans, to become an astronaut. In that case, ESA got 8413 applications, and about 13% were from women. At the very end, we got one woman out of six selected candidates. Still a lot to do!

The association for Women in Aerospace Europe, which you chaired and co-founded, was established in 2009. Currently, there are about 350 associates and 15 corporate members. In practical terms, how do you plan to increase the presence of qualified women in the aerospace industry at all levels?

When I was a young astrophysicist, and I just started my career, I was convinced that each and every individual has to get his or her own position in the professional environment on the basis of his or her skills, abilities, commitments, in other words, on the basis of his or her merit. In our real world this is not practically happening, mainly due to an unconscious discrimination between genders. Therefore, I got convinced that we need to establish a virtuous mechanism to allow this balance to occur and I also got convinced that, as a temporary measure, introducing quotas is the way to go. Women in Aerospace Europe is also mainly providing a platform for exchanges of views and experiences, and offers a high value network which happens to be of extreme usefulness when it comes to the need of solving issues in your own professional set-up and even more, it helps to develop new ideas and start new businesses and partnerships. I also have the dream to federate all this kind of associations in a World forum, through the creation of a big network of women in the aerospace sector. With my new role at the United Nations, I hope to bring this issue up at world-wide level, to help women in developing countries to build up their own capacity. It’s such a challenge, but I’m sure highly rewarding.

Is the situation in Italy similar to that of other European countries or are the Italian women further penalized? If yes, what are the main reasons for this evident “waste of talent”?

Italy is not a champion in gender balance, but also other European countries are not so good in this. It is for sure a waste of talents and exactly at the same time of the explosion of what is called “the war of talents”, which is more and more of an impact with emerging countries that are using all the tools they master to become leaders in innovation. To use a parallelism with a team sport, the habit of leaving half of the team in the locker rooms or, at best, on the bench, will not be rewarding, or at least, not anymore. We need a change in paradigm.

Cristina Valente, many WIA-E local groups were established in 2013, such as the units in Paris, Friedrichshafen, Darmstadt, London, and Rome. How important is it to have a constant local presence, with frequent meetings and training workshops?

The WIA Local Group aims to deepen the knowledge of members and creates a comfortable relationship to share information, achievements, knowledge, tips and much more. In addition, it becomes easier to meet frequently.

In particular, what are the main activities and services offered by the group of Rome? How many people are involved? The next meetings should be with Claudia Zesch (ESA) and Alessandra Farese (Telespazio).

Yes, I am very happy because the Rome Local Group has grown rapidly and is composed of several young women, professionals and experts in the sector of industry, research, universities and institutions. The next meetings are focused on two aspects: the first is to help you understand how to approach a job interview whilst the second is to listen to the experience of a woman who has made a nice career in a male dominated world like the technic-operating sector. We are working to deepen roads in order to support younger girls for training opportunities and courses.

Simonetta Di Pippo, what can the association Women in Aerospace Europe offer to a girl who decides to pursue a career in the aerospace industry? For instance, mentoring programmes, awards, grants, training workshops, local networking groups.

We offer indeed mentoring programs, awards and grants, training. We also offer a growing network, which has been often much underestimated in power in the past. To summarize, actions and goals of Women in Aerospace Europe can be described through a famous Latin motto, also at the roots of the European Union: In varietate concordia (United in diversity). Thus, building up a world forum is for me the next logical obvious step. United in diversity, when no difference will be noticed anymore between genders, and not only genders. That’s my goal, that’s my life, that’s my passion. And as Director of UNOOSA, I do hope to be able to give my imprinting to this process.

Italian research as a leading standard to fight HIV/AIDS

Giacomo Destro — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:54:00 +0100

Africa is not the most rapidly growing HIV epidemic region: it is Eastern Europe. Out of a total 2.2 millions people living with HIV in Europe, more than 60% of them are living in the East. Before 2002 this figure was stable, but in just seven years it has increased by two thirds.

In 2011, a Report by the World Health Organization (WHO) has found out that over 60% of the new infected people in the geographical region from Belarus to Russia are people who inject drugs. But WHO defines “key population at higher risk” as “people who inject drugs and their sexual partners, men who have sex with men, transgender people, sex workers, prisoners and migrants”. In order to face this alarming situation, both the WHO and the European Union activated themselves.

The WHO Action Plan

The WHO launched an “European Action Plan for HIV/AIDS 2012-2015”, based on four guiding principles: equity in health (in the European Region, key populations at higher risk have the poorest access to health services), community participation, human rights, evidence-informed policies and ethical public health approaches. With this background, the European Regional WHO offices aimed to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV in Europe by 2015 by achieving universal access to comprehensive HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2015. Further WHO’s goals are to contribute to the attainment of Millennium Development Goal 6 and other health-related Millennium Development Goals (3, 4, 5 and 8), particularly those referring to the incidence of tuberculosis in Europe.

The European Union Action Plan

Due to the proximity, the migration from East and the free movement of people within the Union, also the EU took action against HIV/AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe. In March 14^th 2014, the European Commission put forward an enhancement of the 2009-2013 Action Plan against HIV/AIDS (here a 2012 interim report of this Action Plan). The enhancement will be valid through 2016. Tonio Borg, Commissioner for Health, said that “the fight against HIV/Aids remains a priority for EU health policy. We must reach out to the citizens who are most at risk, fight all forms of discrimination, and foster access to diagnosis and treatment”. Generally speaking, the 2014-2016 plan (as the previous one) is meant as a policy instrument to complement Member States’ policies. In particular, through this decision, the EU fosters and coordinates different funding mechanisms and instruments such as the EU Health Program, Horizon 2020 (funding for HIV and Tuberculosis research had been in H2020 first calls) and the Global Fund to Fights AIDS.

Italian successful researches to fight HIV/TB

Italy has been one of the leading country in the effort to fight HIV/AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe, as showed by the database of EU funded projects against sexually transmitted deseases.

Some EU funded projects run by Italian entities became a world-leading standard, such as, in particular, the Sialon I and II. The project is run by Dr. Pier Paolo Benetollo of the Azienda Ospedaliera Universitaria Integrata Verona (Verona’s University Hospital) with partners from 13 different countries. Funded through the EU Health program, it is backed by the WHO, UNAIDS and the Italian National Institute of Health.

The Sialon II project is aimed to enhance the previous Sialon I, by fostering “the capacity building in combining targeted prevention with meaningful surveillance among men who have sex with men (MSM)”. In addition, the project aims to create a network of institutions working with the ECDC to implement new tools for sexually transmitted diseases surveillance with integrated HIV prevention strategies. Technically, this means to develop and disseminate innovative surveillance methodologies for hard to reach populations like MSM (time and location sampling, respondent driven sampling, HIV testing). The project, thanks to the participation of UNAIDS and WHO, will be implemented, using the same methodologies and prevention strategies, in both EU (Italy, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Slovak Republic, Spain, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Slovenia, Romania, United Kingdom) and neighboring countries (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova).

Other relevant projects run by Italian entities have been the Im.pac.T by the Ngo Fondazione Villa Maraini, aimed to improve the access to HIV/TB tests in marginalized groups and finalized in 2012; the H-Cube by University of Sassari, focused on adolescents in Eastern Europe; Sunflower by ANLAIDS, aimed to collect the best practices on HIV prevention among young people.

A help desk for small and medium enterprises in Horizon 2020

Cristina Da Rold — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:09:00 +0100

As part of the European programme Horizon 2020, which has allocated € 70 billion for research and innovation, Sapienza Innovazione, a promoter of high tech companies born in 2006, and Management Innovation, a society founded in 2008 that works in innovation consulting, have recently set up a SME (Small and Medium Sizes Enterprises) help desk in support of SMEs that want to innovate. This help desk is called Sportello PMI, and it accepts the European definition of SME: it must be independent, engaged into economic activities, it must have less than 250 employees and have an annual turnover less than 50 million Euro or a balance sheet total under 43 million Euro.

Unlike previous programming, the European Commission has sought to promote Small and Medium Enterprises reserving these for as much as 20% of the total budget. Actually, there are two main sources of funding for SMEs. The first consists in a specific budget for all projects involved in Horizon 2020. SMEs can participate in collaborative projects with Corporations, Research Centers or Italian and European universities and Europe gives them the 13% of the budget. A second opportunity is given by the so-called SMEs Instrument, which allocates 7% of the entire budget of H2020 only to SMEs. It consists of 2.8 billion euros for SMEs in the 2014-20 programming, and enterprises can also submit proposals on their own and not necessarily in cooperation with other European SMEs.

However, even if European Commission encouraged SMEs innovators, a good idea is not enough. Projects, not ideas, make the difference. This is the reason why SMEs help desk was born: to led companies that want to innovate towards the realization of their project.

The help desk has several objectives: first of all, it wants to help small enterprises to identify innovations that will improve their competitive position; secondly, developing strategies for the medium/long term perspective in order to increase companies’ business. Furthermore, through this tool, enterprises can integrate their skills with other companies through the Association of Enterprise Networks, which allows them to learn about financial resources to fund themselves.

Companies could submit their proposals about several topics: from Aerospace ICT technologies to Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials for biomarkers and diagnostic devices; from the eco-food production to low carbon energy systems, up to innovative systems in transportation.

After the application, the partners of the project will provide the best available resources to implement the proposals to the European Commission, and they accompany SMEs during all stages of submission of the grant application. All for free. Because “Innovation is not just technology”, argues Emilio Sassone Corsi, from Management Innovation. “Innovation is culture”.

There are three phases of the SMEs Instrument, and they follow this path: idea – business coaching – market.

Phase 1: Concept and feasibility assessment. During this phase, which represents 10% of the budget, companies build their first business plan where their idea takes place for the first time. It can last up to six months and aims to study the strengths and weaknesses of the idea, in order to build the second version of the business plan.

Phase 2: Research & Development, demonstration and market replication. This period, which lasts between 12 and 24 months and uses 88% of the whole budget, is devoted to test and scale up the prototype, in order to make the project ready for the commercialization.

Phase 3: Commercialization. During this last phase, which represents the 2% of the funding, companies are supported to promote their project and to facilitate access to private finance.

The open call of the Phase 1 and 2 started on March 1^st but the work will proceed until the end of 2015. The topics of the calls expiring in 2014 are the following:

• Space-SME-2014-1: SME Instrument

• PHC-12-2014-1: Clinical validation of biomarkers and/or diagnostic medical device s

• SFS-08-2014-1: Resource-efficient eco-innovative food production and processing

PLATO: looking for habitable planets

Antonio Pilello — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 08:22:00 +0100

PLATO 2.0 (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) has recently been selected for European Space Agency’s (ESA) M3 launch opportunity (2022/24). It is a medium class mission within the framework of the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. PLATO 2.0 will discover many potentially habitable planets. Presently, more than 1700 exoplanets with secure identifications are known and many others are unconfirmed planet candidates. PLATO 2.0 consists of 32 telescopes operating in white light and two additional fast cameras with colour filters. This multi-telescope design will allow a large photometric dynamic range. The mission lifetime will be 6 years, with a possible extension of 2 years. In total, about 50% of the sky will be covered.

The involvement of our country, especially in the fields of electronic systems and optics, is very relevant. The Italian contribution is funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), which also provides a segment of the PLATO Data Center, managed by the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC). Italian researchers contribute to the PLATO Mission Consortium, providing the scientific coordination of two important elements of the Payload – the Telescope Optical Units (TOUs) and the Instrument Control Unit (ICU) – and participating to the Science Preparation Management (PSPM), i.e., the activities required for the preparation of the scientific programme and the assessment of the mission performance. Almost a hundred of Italian scientists, mainly working at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), are involved in the project.

We had the great pleasure to speak with Isabella Pagano (INAF Catania), member of the Mission Consortium Board (PMCB) and scientific responsible for the INAF participation in PLATO 2.0.

Dr. Pagano, what are the main Italian research centres involved? What are their duties and responsibilities?

The Italian collaboration includes several INAF research institutes, together with the Universities of Padua and Florence. Roberto Ragazzoni (INAF Padua) is the scientist responsible for the delivery to the PMC of the opto-mechanics of the 34 telescopes, the so-called TOUs. His team includes scientists and engineers from INAF Padua, Catania and Milan. In Catania we are doing the analysis of the scattered light inside the telescope and the TOU project management, in which I am involved personally. The INAF Brera (Milan) contributes the thermal and optical materials analysis, while INAF Padua is responsible for the optical design, the system engineering, the design of the integration and testing procedures and carries out all the necessary prototyping activities. The Instrument Control Unit, i.e., the on-board computers devoted to process and compress digital data inputs, will be delivered to the PMC under the responsibility of Rosario Cosentino (INAF, Telescopio Nazionale Galileo), who coordinates a team based at INAF Rome and University of Florence.

From the scientific point of view, Giampaolo Piotto, the second Italian member of the PMCB, is now coordinating the important selection of the stellar fields and the individual targets to be observed. Together with Roberto Ragazzoni, he will also be appointed in the PLATO Science Team. Many scientific contributions to PLATO preparation will be possible thanks to all the INAF research institutes. For example, here in Catania we will study the stellar activities, which can influence the signal we want to measure.

What is the contribution of ASI, not only economically, compared to that of other European countries?

The TOUs and ICU are very important parts of the Payload. These will be contracted to companies selected by ASI. Together with the ASDC involvement in the PLATO Data Center, the whole ASI contribution makes our country one of the three main partners of the PMC with Germany and France.

For the youngest Italian astronomers, how important is the participation in this wide-ranging project together with their European colleagues?

The participation of young people, such as graduate students and post-docs, is very important in all stages of the project. They will be involved during the definition and implementation phases, and after the launch when data will arrive, and they will be both scientists and engineers. In addition, the data will be available to the whole scientific community, not only to us preparing the mission, as soon as they will be validated scientifically. Only a small fraction of the sample will be of exclusive competence of the Consortium, about 1000 stars, but only for one year. In addition, the data will be also used for many stellar physics research projects.

Will there be some exchange programs between the astronomers of the involved countries?

Yes, this is already the case, for example during the doctorate. In any case, working remotely in Europe is now a daily activity, almost as if we were all in a sort of permanent meeting. Normally, I work on the management from Catania, but most of the group’s members are in Padua. From this point of view, the technology is very useful and it makes possible our operations at a European level.

Coastal floods: a tool for risk management

Giulia Annovi — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 09:00:00 +0100

The trend of natural disasters has increased during the 20^th century. In particular, hydrological disasters have acquired big dimension with the beginning of 21^st century. According to the international disaster database EM-DAT, regions in European continents paid a huge cost – about 8 billion of Euro between 2010 and 2013 – for general floods. And the future could be worse than the past. Climate change is causing a global sea-level rise, which is expected to accelerate over the 21^st century: the predictions foresee a mean sea-level rise of up to 1.35 meter by 2090-2099. This means regular and maybe even permanent flooding of low-lying areas as well as coastal erosion, and an increased risk of catastrophic flooding.

The European Union’s coastline extends for more than 17,000 km across 21 of 28 Member States, and coastal areas cover about 2 million km². According to the European Communities Commission on the flood risk management, the total value of economic assets located within 500 meters of the European coastline was estimated at between 500 and 1,000 billion Euro in 2004. Moreover, several million people live in these areas. Providing new approach to counteract the effect of sea and river level rise has an economic, social, technical and environmental value.

Theseus project

Management of coastal erosion and flooding could not be improvised, it needs a careful planning with sustainable defence strategies. Traditional methods aim to keep the water out of coast, with environmental and socio-economic implications. For the future, Europe needs to assure the coastal economic development together with the inhabitants’ safety, but also sustainability for environment. “Making space for water” will be the future maxim of flood protection.

An integrated answer to the overall problems originates from the THESEUS project, led by an Italian team. THESEUS starts from a high dynamic library, connecting economy, equity, efficiency, sustainability, environment and society, in order to find mitigation measures for European coasts. THESEUS has three main objectives: 1) to assess the risk throughout the European coasts; 2) to elaborate response strategies; 3) to set feasible applications. All these target are developed taking into account best practices and innovative solutions.

THESEUS is an EU-funded project of the 7^th framework programme in environmental sub-programme area, covering the period between December 2009 and November 2013. The development of THESEUS has cost 8,534,149 Euro, and Europe has sustained the project with 6,530,000 Euro. THESEUS has been coordinated by Bologna University, but has involved 31 partners from 18 European and extra-communitarian nations.

The project started from the evaluation of present risks in eight different sites and the creation of scenarios for the future, taking into account the economic, demographic and climatic developments of each area. Chosen sites are located near estuary or delta of rivers, where freshwater mixes with open or closed sea water. For each site, data were collected from a huge time lapse and forecasts have been made until year 2100. Data are public and available here. Researchers have completed studies in these areas, combining experiments, numerical models and field observations.

Credits: http://www.theseusproject.eu/wiki/

The second step of the project was the development of innovative hard and soft technologies for mitigation of flooding and coastal erosion hazard. These coastal engineering solutions were assessed in the eight European sites chosen for this study. THESEUS proposed strategies are based on improvement of existing defences (i.e. natural reefs) or on building of new barriers (i.e. littoral drift, floating breakwaters). Also, the role of natural habitats in coastal protection, associated with the costs control, has been estimated. Moreover, the aim of THESEUS project was the development of innovative techniques, such as wave energy converters or artificial reefs. Finally, THESEUS investigated spatial planning policies to minimize the net cost of coastal defence, considering the cost of risk management in comparison with the costs of insurance schemes or land use planning. During this phase, urbanization, insurance programs, evacuation plans and risk communication have been analysed in depth.

The contribution of Italian team was mainly on the development of standard integrated practices, after the estimation of their engineering, environmental and socio-economic effects. It is a multidisciplinary approach: starting from the scientific outcomes of previews studies, the Italian team has created guidelines for defence design, and a free THESEUS software tool for coastal risk assessment and management. The THESEUS Decision Support System (DSS) tool is able to perform an analysis of different variables related to a risk area (social, economic, psychological, engineering, meteorological, ecological aspects) and the effects of climate change. The introduction of all the conditions affecting an area allows the tool to identify the short (2020), medium (2050) and long-term (2080) effects of building or developing within coastal communities. The spatial scale is accurate: it has an order of magnitude from 1 to 100 km. DSS represents a precious mean for decision makers, for communication, training, forecasting and experimentation.

THESEUS has returned 24 multidisciplinary publications, and all documentation is available into the THESEUS open archive. 56 are the end users of DSS tool and guidelines. The next step will be the year 2015, when governments will take adequate and coordinated measures to reduce this flood risk.

Environments and other tools for policy makers

Europe gives its contribution in the field of climate mitigation and economic impact with other tools and projects, which will be completed during the next years. IndiSeas developed an integrated method for marine ecosystems evaluation. Mareframe will identify indicators of good environment status for seas within 2017, and the new tool and dataset will support fishery.
For weather forecast and flood prevention will be developed under the Italian coordination within 2015 DRIHM, with models and observational archives for the study of severe hydro-meteorological events. World Water Day has just been celebrated and the request for water threat control has been forwarded. The integration of research, modelling and digital platforms could be a possible answer.

The “right to silence” in modern science

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 07:11:00 +0100

The world of research today is a highly competitive environment, similar to a liberist market. Researchers are under pressure for several aspects: the scarcity of economical funds, the rising number of scientists and the political pressure that national asset have put on them in a wild competition to emerge from anonymity. In this race, one of the best key of success for a researcher is networking. Since the beginning, scientists have been called to share, discuss and link their professional life. But now networking seems to have become the main task for a scientists, rather than pure research.

The web had amplified the network capability, making it a lot easier, while creating a problem of agenda. In other words, often the scientists have to decide which aspect of scientific work must be performed first, laboratory or social feedback. This movement towards sharing scientific lives is often tagged as “open science”, a traceable way of doing science from the original idea to publishing. Despite the democratic impact of this idea, some questions are becoming more and more important: is strictness still the main skill for scientists? Or is it social marketing? In other words: do scientists have to claim for a “right to silence” and meditation?

The quality of silence

Scientists are called to share as much as they can, from lab notebook to dataset, from draft to published papers. This continuous pressure to share their work leaves little time to scientists to meditation and reflection, activities that have been central in the production of science during the centuries. That is why some analysts started to talk again about the quality of silence, meant as absence of direct contact with others, as an essential moment for researchers.

The issue of the quality of the silent time during research has emerged in a post on the “Political Science” blog on the Guardian website. Felicity Mellor, senior lecturer in Science Communication at the Imperial College, commented the openness policy of the forthcoming Crick Institute in London, as following:

Collaboration is clearly a key component of modern science and the Crick Institute is not alone in prioritizing cross-disciplinary interaction. The rhetoric of openness is also widespread, with calls for public engagement and open data further extending the demands on scientists’ communications. (…) Historically, the pursuit of knowledge was characterized as an activity conducted in, and requiring, silence, symbolically located in solitary spaces – whether the garret of the writer or the study of the intellectual. Newton was famously reluctant to engage with others and his theory of gravity came to him whilst sequestered in Lincolnshire, remote from the hubbub of London. Darwin, too, withdrew to Down House and held off publishing for as long as he could.

Actually, Darwin’s attitude towards openness cannot be affordable nowadays – and we should not forget that he do communicate through letters while staying apart from humanity. But the Darwin example is clear: often researchers are fought between the need of silence and the need of feedback and publish. The question is: what are the main skills a scientist must have to be a good scientist? Strictness in experiments? Communication skills? Social promoting? Which is the right mix of these skills?

The feedback hyperloop

Is difficult to have an answer to these questions, as the web 2.0 society is overwhelmed by the imperative of sociability. During the past years, a number of web-based tools have been created to foster research network, such as the academic social media Mendeley (that has interesting figures about its users). The rising of this web based social infrastructure, and the complexity of managing it, has brought to what some analysts call a “feedback hyperloop”, meaning a self-catalytic pressure on sharing and giving/having feedback. This continuous need of having feedback, even while fostering the research, has severe aspects of widening the geopolitical and personal gaps among scientists.

For instance, scientists in the developing world have urgent basic and practical needs to solve: while web-based networking tools are an easy way to connect with peers, is it ethical to ask them to take time giving/having continuous feedback, while they have more urgent things to do? Or, in the Western world, is probably more important for a scientist to know and meditate on the research rather than to dominate the various policies and rules of the social side of the web. Is it a sign of healthy environment the anxiety that dominated the debate on Plos magazines’ new policy on open data?

A right to silence, meaning a recognized (by peers) period of time in which a scientist is called to focus only on her/his research, could help researchers in prioritizing their duties, and not to be overwhelmed by the fear of losing trends and feedback.

Animal experimentation: Italy’s fine mess

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 09:05:00 +0100

The legislative decree recently approved by the Council of Ministers for the implementation of EU 2010/63 directive is full of holes. The European dictate that it has been quite “mistreated” by the Italian Parliament Commissions – which he had the misfortune to encounter – in particular for two “memorable” cheap shots. Poor figure apart, many are asking now if the Italian law is ready to be thrown away yet, perhaps by appealing to the European Court of Justice. Whatever the ending, however, the new law makes the practice of animal experimentation in Italy more uncertain, as the plausibility of international investments in Italian labs.

We asked Gaetano Di Chiara – neuropharmacologist of the University of Cagliari and vice-president of Gruppo 2003 – to comment the critical points of this new law.

The new law allows testing on alive animals. Biomedical research continuity seems therefore guaranteed.
The legislative decree for the implementation of EU 2010/63 directive, just published, allows the use of non-human vertebrates and cephalopods (yes, octopuses and squids), but forbids, Art.5, comma 2, studies in vivo for substances of abuse and xenotransplants.

Is it so important to experiment substances of abuse on animals?
Matarese et al., in their commentary of Trends in Molecular Medicine (18, 439, 2012), which is significantly entitled “In vivo veritas, in vitro artiphicia” explain why in vitro studies must be validated in vivo.
In regard to substances of abuse, there is not even the dichotomy between in vitro and in vivo, since these studies are based on behavioural paradigms where the animal voluntarily self-administer the substance or carries out complex cognitive tasks. There are no models, in vitro or in silico, that can exactly reproduce the mechanisms used by human or animal brains: if they existed, we would have a thoroughly understanding of the brain. But there is no need to be neuroscientists to realize that we are still far, far away from this goal.

Studying substances of abuse if fundamental for the comprehension of the neurobiological mechanisms which are at the base of natural gratification; on the other side, the study of abuse properties of centrally-acting drugs is necessary for developing new treatments for drug addiction, for verifying the abuse potential of new recreational drugs (that continuously appear on the market) and of centrally-acting drugs developed for the treatment of psychiatric conditions, for which it is necessary to exclude the capability of inducing addiction. Therefore, researches on substances of abuse pertain exactly to the legitimate use of animal experimentation as attested by the decree. This is the most paradoxical aspect of the ban of in vivo studies for substances of abuse: the contradiction, without any explanation, of the Art.1 comma 3a, 3b of the same decree that allows the use of animal (vertebrates and cephalopods) for in vivo studies in basic and biomedical translational research.

In truth, the law forbids this experimentations, but a temporary regulation (article 42) allows the suspension of the ban until December 2016. Therefore it will be possible to conduct these experimentations up to that date, won’t it be?
The irrationality and the contradictory nature of this decree are so macroscopic that they had to be noted by the legislators, in this case the various Parliament Commissions, first at the Senate then at the Chamber of Deputies, which the implementation of the EU directive has being passing through.
However, this long procedure did not manage to cancel the ban on substances of abuse, which proceeded “unharmed” by the delegation to the government process and then the Council of Ministers. Therefore, in order to kill this legislative monster, they created a new one, similar in size: the temporary regulation, included in the Article 42, the last one, clearly added in extremis. This regulation states that bans on substances of abuse and xenotransplants are suspended until December 31, 2016 and that, after that date, their realization will be subject to the Zooprophylactic Institutes of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna Regions, which will consider if alternative methods to in vivo studies are available. If by June 2016 these Institutes will assess that no alternative methods exist, the ban might be cancelled.

Then…
Then everything should continue as before, but always with the uncertainty that something may change according to the “animalist” majority in the Parliament. Conditional is a must, because the same article does not say what might happen and it is easy to foresee, based on previous similar cases where medicine and politics have been merging (the case Stamina is a clear example), that anything might happen.
In the best hypothesis, the most obvious since studies on substances of abuse are largely of behavioural ones, it will be declared that there are no alternative methods to in vivo studies and the ban will be suspended for another 3 or 4 years and so on. It is clear that even in this case, however, the destiny of an entire research sector will be affected, since none is ready to fund or do research on such a short-term and with such an uncertain future. In certain cases, for extremely innovative researches, three years are the necessary time for just developing the methodology.

Xenotransplants seems quite exotic. Are we experimenting those as well?
Of course. Despite their name, they are not unusual at all. This term, in fact, does not refer to transplants of animal organs into humans only (usual practice for cardiac valves), but also to the realization and use of in vivo animal models for the development of anti-cancer drugs.

Why do you think they attacked just the substances of abuse and xenotransplants?
The animalist lobby wanted to hold back in vivo research and they succeeded in the two areas where ignorance and mystification could grip best. In the case of substances of abuse they played the card of drug-addiction being more a social problem than a healthcare or medical one, stating that pharmacological therapies are not effective, which is completely false and intellectually dishonest.

But these bans – though cancelled by the suspension – were somehow present in EU directive too?
The EU directive not only has no trace of ban for the use of animal for research on substances of abuse, but does not contain any prohibition in general. The legislation, in fact, does not forbid the use of animals for experimentation, but establishes a series of rules that researches must follow in order to reduce animals’ suffering to a minimum.
The ban on substances of abuse, like the one on xenotransplants, makes the Italian law dissimilar, because it is more restrictive than the UE directive, and therefore breaches the Article 2 of the directive itself. This article establishes that, in matter of animal testing, the Member States cannot adopt more restrictive rules than those stated by the same directive, unless these rules had already been in operation by 2010. The last laws on animal experimentation in Italy are dated 1988 and 1992, but there is no trace of the bans now present in the new decree. The Article 2 has been clearly included by the EU directive in order to protect research and avoid that the implementation of the legislation could offer the excuse to introduce more restrictive national rules.

The Italian law could then be not legitimate?
Of course. We know for sure that scientific societies and patient associations are appealing to the European Court for the cancellation of the ban.

Are there any other questionable points in the decree for the implementation of the EU legislation?
We could list all the slip-and-fall accidents of this law, from the administrative complications to the obstacles for the so-called transgenic animals, to the non-repeatability of chronic experiments and so on.
But I think this is the time to fight against these absurd and illegitimate bans, appealing to the European Court of Justice by using the Paragraph 2 of the EU directive.

Western Balkans get ready for Horizon 2020

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:58:00 +0100

Although the scientific performance of the Western Balkan countries (WBC) has improved in recent years, the lack of human resources, research funding and facilities, as well as a weak regulatory regime, are the main obstacles to an improvement of the situation. At the same time, in 2012 the Western Balkans have required 38 patents in the United States, compared to an average of 25 patents for universities and leading research institutes in the U.S.

The conference “Towards 2020: New Horizons for RTD and Innovation in the Western Balkan Region”, which will take place on 27 and 28 March 2014 in Vienna, is the final step of a huge project named WBC – INCO.NET. This project is funded by the Seventh Framework Programme and supports international cooperation activities through bi-regional platforms, for instance providing a database of all the calls of proposals (400 calls in the database covering 2009-2014). Balkan countries involved are 10: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Slovenia and Turkey. The final cost of the project was EUR 3,496,584, with EUR 3,048,470 of UE contribution.

The conference will host a brokerage event to promote the creation of networks and partnerships within Horizon 2020, focusing on calls in selected areas for energy technologies, information and communication safe. The conference will bring together about 200 policy makers of science, scientists and industry representatives in the region of the Western Balkans, South-East Europe (SEE), the Danube and other EU countries. It aims to provide scientists with a platform for networking and promotion of projects dedicated or innovative products in their selected fields.

“The project started six years ago and it will finish at the end of this month,” says Monique Bossi of APRE (Agency for the Promotion of European Research), one of the partner of the project. INCO.NET is coordinated by ZSI (Centre for Social Innovation) based in Wien, but it involves a considerable amount of partners from all European countries, like APRE for Italy. Actually, the European group is composed of government and research institutes, while the group of the Balkans consists mainly of government agencies.

At the moment, the project counts more than 1800 organisations and projects, 120 research infrastructures, more than 4000 different news published and almost 2000 events. Furthermore, it supports two Steering Platform meetings every year, 12 in total. “Now we are at the end of the project and our efforts seem to bear fruit,” Bossi says. “Cooperation is getting stronger and WBC are always eager to be involved in EU projects.” For instances, in 2011 Slovenian researchers were involved in 98 projects with a total value of 32,401 million euro, while Croatian scientists have been working on 57 projects worth EUR 18,5429 million and those in Serbia and Montenegro on 36 projects worth EUR 9,773 million.

“The main results we have achieved with our project are three,” Bossi explains. “First, we got a good integration of this region into the European activities through dialogue platforms among researchers, particularly in terms of calls for proposals. Furthermore, we have opened a newsletter that counts 10,577 subscribers and that promotes the excellence in terms of scientific research. Then, we have built a real database that allows an initial mapping of the areas of European research. Finally, a third objective, carried out by APRE, is related to the second and concerns infrastructures: we have created a first map of research infrastructures, important research facilities and research equipment in the west Balkan countries. Now we are well under way, and this is currently an open invitation to continue this activity in the future”.

The Big Bang gravitational echo

Filippo Bonaventura — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 07:22:00 +0100

A real earthquake has been shacking the international scientific community over the last few days.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics of Boston announced last week, with a very laconic press release, that a “major discovery” would have been presented during a press conference on Monday, March 17^th. No clues, however, were given on the nature of it. This media strategy, similar to that one used by CERN for announcing the discovery of Higgs boson, has paid off: among the unavoidable rumours and outbursts of enthusiasm from one side or scepticism to the other, suspense has been quite thick for days.

At the press conference stands out John Kovac, cosmologist head of the BICEP2 experiment (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2) in Antarctic: a microwave telescope that measures temperature and polarisation of the cosmic background with great accuracy.
Kovac announces that, after three years of work, his team has detected within the cosmic background radiation the effect of the gravitational waves produced immediately after the Big Bang; besides, this effect represents a direct and unequivocal evidence of cosmic inflation. In other words: we saw the very first “wail” of the universe, the “gravitational echo” of the Big Bang, and we also demonstrated for the first time that a fundamental cosmological theory is valid.

This astonishing announcement – at least for a physicist – has been immediately reported has a sensational result: “Besides finding life on other planets or directly observing the dark matter, I cannot imagine a more important discovery in astrophysics in the short term for improving our understanding of the Universe” comments Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist of the California Institute of Technology. Someone already talk about the Nobel Prize. But what has been discovered, precisely? And why is it so important? Let’s go in order and draw an overview of situation.

CMB, INFLAtion and GRavitational waves

It all started in 1964, when the US physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered, by chance, a weak radiation in the range of microwaves coming from any direction of the sky in a particularly homogeneous way and without any evident source. Later it was discovered that the source is the Universe itself: that radiation, then named “Cosmic Microwave Background” (CMB) represents the first electromagnetic imprint of our Universe. A sort of photography of the cosmos when it was “only” 380,000 years old. Before that, matter and radiation where so entangled that the Universe was completely opaque, unable to release any light.
The CMB became an incontrovertible evidence in favour of the Big Bang theory, which states that the Universe and the space-time had an origin, about 13.8 billion of years ago. However, the CMB also gave some troubles. For example: why is it so homogeneous? Why all the regions of the “child” Universe seem to have agreed for the same temperature (and then the same density)? A possible answer to this question was proposed in 1981 by Alan Guth, then researcher of Stanford University.
Guth’s idea is really simple: at a certain point the Universe started expanding faster than light, and stopped after a while. Now, we don’t need to understand why it did it; but in that period of accelerated expansion, called “inflation”, the Universe’s dimensions changed from those of a subatomic particle to those of a fruit within an infinitesimal fraction of a second. This huge “cosmic stretching” levelled everything: as if a cubic centimetre of air into a room expanded until occupying it all, making the temperature and the density uniform in the all room. According to the theory of inflation, this is more or less what happened to the Universe between 10^–35 s and 10^–32 s after the Big Bang.

However, despite the inflation being quite efficient, the density of the primordial universe cannot be completely uniform: Heisenberg uncertainty principle imposes the existence of unavoidable quantum fluctuations, that inflation should have amplified and “frozen” on macroscopic scale. These quantum fluctuations are visible in the CMB that in fact shows extremely small inhomogeneities of the order of one part per 100,000: as if the surface of a 10 m deep swimming pool had 0.1 mm high waves. Thanks to the slow and patient action of gravity, from those extremely small density perturbations were originated galaxies, planets, stars and, then, in a way, also us.

Now, the obvious question is: can we find traces of inflation in the CMB? The answer is: yes! And here we need to talk about the gravitational waves. Foreseen by Albert Einstein one century ago from the general relativity, gravitational waves are ripples in the space-time that propagate at light speed, compressing and dilating the space-time at their passage. The theory of inflation predicts the emission of high quantity of gravitational waves that in their cosmic journey can interact with the photons of CMB leaving their “imprint”. This track is just what has been observed from the BICEP2 team, and for this reason it represents an incontrovertible proof of inflation: “Finally – comments Giovanni Bignami, President of the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) – we have an idea of how the Universe got so big so quickly. Everybody always believed that the theory of inflation was the only possible solution, but to have an observational evidence, even though indirect, it’s great”.
But how is it possible to distinguish between the perturbations caused by quantum fluctuations and those due to gravitational waves? We need to observe the CMB polarisation, i.e. the oscillating direction of the electric field of the electromagnetic waves that constitute the cosmic background radiation. Polarisation perturbations caused by density fluctuations (called “scalar”) produce radial or circular polarisation patterns: “E-mode” for the physicists; perturbations caused by gravitational waves (called “tensor”) can produce E-mode or “swirly” patterns named “B-mode”.

Towards quantum gravity?

Kovac and his team observed exactly the presence of B-modes within the CMB polarisation, which can be reasonably ascribed to gravitational waves. CMB B-modes had already been observed recently by two “rival” instruments: the South Pole Telescope (SPT) in Antarctica and PolarBEAR in the Atacama Desert (Chile), but at angular scales too small for ensuring that they were caused by primordial gravitational waves and compatible on the other hand with the gravitational lensing effect of galaxy clusters. Instead, BICEP2 observations show B-modes at angular scales of about 1° (about double the apparent diameter of the full Moon), exactly as predicted by the theory of inflation.
The B-modes observed by Kovac and his team are much more intense than expected. Physicists describe the “force” of CMB polarisation by means of a parameter called r, which represents the ratio between the intensity of scalar and tensor perturbations. Before this discovery, there was a certain consensus around a value of r = 0.1. The measurements carried out by BICEP2, however, are compatible with r = 0.2: about double the intensity. Meaning – according to the physicists – that the energies involved when these gravitational waves were produced were around 2 · 10¹⁶ GeV (gigaelectronvolt). An enormous value, about one billion times higher than what can be obtained by the Large Hadron Collider* *(LHC) of CERN, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.
This huge level of energy, according to the most accredited physics models, corresponds to a phase of the Universe where the fundamental forces of nature (electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear, excluding gravitational force) were unified.

Kovac and his team’s observations would therefore confirm that also gravity has a quantum nature. Max Tegmark, physicist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has no doubts: “This is the first experimental evidence of quantum gravity”.

Waiting for confirmations

But how solid are Kovac’s team analyses? According to the data they presented during the press conference, quite a lot: statistical significance of observed B-modes is 5,2σ, which means that the chance of being mistaking is less than one over 3,500,000. The most delicate point remains being reasonably sure that the observed effect is produced by primordial gravitational waves: this is not 100% guaranteed, but the sky zone observed by BICEP2 (named “Southern Hole” by the astronomers) is well known for being particularly “clean”, i.e. without dust or other materials that might disturb the CMB polarisation; besides, the observed polarisation characteristics are definitively different from those obtained by the interaction of CMB and cosmic dust.

According to the first responses, the data seem to be valid from a statistical point of view. Naturally, their solidity will need to be tested too, which means that they will need to be compatible with independent measurements. In other words, the discovery will be confirmed only if similar experiments will provide similar results. Marc Kamionkowski, physicist at the John Hopkins University, ensures that “It will be quite easy to rapidly assess if this is a real or fake discovery”: several research groups all over the world are in fact ready to get independent measurements. In particular, there is a lot of expectation for the results of the satellite Planck, of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 2009 and able to measure very accurately the CMB polarisation. These data are at the moment under analysis and should be released by next year.

In conclusion, Kovac’s discovery awaits for the evaluation of the international scientific community. Some scientists strongly hope in this result (Alan Guth in primis) and others are already picking holes in the BICEP2 team’s papers. It might happen that the discovery was revealed incorrect: as in September 2011, when the OPERA experiment of Gran Sasso announced the discovery of superluminal neutrinos, and then it was revealed that the measurements of their speed were affected by a systematic error. But if confirmed, Kovac and his team’s discovery will play a crucial role for several reasons:

for the first time a signal produced after the Big Bang has been observed;
this result represents the first observational direct evidence of the theory of inflation;
it supports the idea of the unification of fundamental forces and in particular of quantum nature of gravity;
it opens a new door for the observation of the cosmos.

Primordial gravitational waves are a new land to discover, that can provide us with fundamental information on the very first instants of our Universe.

Filippo Bonaventura

My reasons in favour of the Golden Rice

Ingo Potrykus — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 07:41:00 +0100

Dietary micronutrient deficiencies, such as the lack of vitamin A, iodine, iron or zinc, are a major source of morbidity (increased susceptibility to disease) and mortality worldwide. These deficiencies affect particularly children, impairing their immune system and normal development, causing disease and ultimately death. The best way to avoid micronutrient deficiencies is by way of a varied diet, rich in vegetables, fruits and animal products.

The second best approach, especially for those who cannot afford a balanced diet, is by way of nutrient-dense staple crops. Sweet potatoes, for example, are available as varieties that are either rich or poor in provitamin A. Those producing and accumulating provitamin A (orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes) are called biofortified,* as opposed to the white-fleshed sweet potatoes, which do not accumulate provitamin A. In this case, what needs to be done is to introduce the biofortified varieties to people used to the white-fleshed varieties, as is happening at present in southern Africa by introducing South American varieties of orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes.

Unfortunately, there are no natural provitamin A-containing rice varieties. In rice-based societies, the absence of ß-carotene in rice grains manifests itself in a marked incidence of blindness and susceptibility to disease, leading to an increased incidence of premature death of small children, the weakest link in the chain.

Rice plants produce ß-carotene (provitamin A) in green tissues but not in the endosperm (the edible part of the seed). The outer coat of the dehusked grains—the so-called aleurone layer—contains a number of valuable nutrients, e.g. vitamin B and nutritious fats, but no provitamin A. These nutrients are lost with the bran fraction in the process of milling and polishing. While it would be desirable to keep those nutrients with the grain, the fatty components are affected by oxidative processes that make the grain turn rancid when exposed to air. Thus, unprocessed rice—also known as brown rice—is not apt for long-term storage.

Even though all required genes to produce provitamin A are present in the grain, some of them are turned off during development. This is where the idea of the Golden Rice thath me and Peter Beyer (University of Freiburg) had, comes into play: we figured out how to turn on this complex pathway again with a minor intervention.

The shocking fact is that, far from reaching the envisaged Millenium Development Goals, more than 10 million children under the age of five are still dying every year. A high proportion of those children die victims of common diseases that could be prevented through a better nutrition. This number has been equated with a Nutritional Holocaust.

It is unfortunate that the world is not embracing more readily a number of approaches wih the potential to substantially reduce the number of deaths. It has been calculated that the life of 25 percent of those children could be spared by providing them with diets that included crops biofortified with provitamin A (beta-carotene) and zinc. Golden Rice is such a biofortified crop. Those involved in the project are hopeful that in a near future Golden Rice will be growing in farmers’ fields and helping to improve the diets of millions of people.

Golden Rice grains are easily recognisable by their yellow to orange colour. The stronger the colour the more ß-carotene. While a yellow rice is still unfamiliar to most of us, it is hoped that the pleasant colour will help promote its adoption. Would you believe that once upon a time carrots were white or purple? Orange-coloured carrots are the product of a mutation selected by a Dutch horticulturist a few hundred years ago, because it was the colour of the Dutch Royal House of Orange-Nassau!

* *

*Bibliography
*1-*Welch RM and Graham RD (2004) Breeding for micronutrients in staple food crops from a human nutrition perspective. J Exp Bot 55:353-364.
*

Are we safe online? Looking for answers with Horizon 2020

Antonio Pilello — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 07:39:00 +0100

In a world of 1s and 0s… are you a zero, or The One? Every year, as reported by the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes, 200 million of Europeans buy things online. Furthermore, the web economy generates a fifth of the growth in the European Union. Therefore, it is now important to apply the fundamental rights online as well as offline. Presently, the European Commission is seeking to develop trustworthy Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions, which can guarantee a secure and reliable digital environment in Europe. Funding is already available for cyber security and online privacy under Horizon 2020.

The European Commission will invest 85 million Euro this year and at least 500 million Euro until 2020. Six projects involving research institutes, SMEs and large firms are already helping people to be safe online. ABC4Trust works on personal credentials and test the Attribute Based Credentials (ABC) protection of privacy, which allow users to provide only the information required for authentication, but without revealing the full identity. SECURED is a project that aims to design antivirus, firewall and parental controls to protect the devices from online threats. HINT has the objective to make impossible to clone or modify the hardware of a device. PCAS tries to develop a device that allows users to store and share their data with trusted applications. Trust in Digital Life is a community that encourages industry to develop innovative and reliable technologies and that allows users to judge if their devices, applications and services are sufficiently reliable. Advanced Cyber Defence Centre is a pilot project that aims to develop a European centre focused on advanced cyber defence botnet.

On 10^th March 2014, Neelie Kroes spoke at the Cyber Security Conference of CeBIT, the world’s largest and most international computer trade show, which occurred in Hanover (Germany) every year. In general, the vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda is optimist about technology, but also realist. According to her vision, online trust has many aspects. It is about parents knowing their children are empowered and protected online. It is about businesses knowing their cloud data is safe. It is about having resilient critical infrastructures. At the moment, all our businesses are under attack: for instance, Deutsche Telekom reported 800,000 attacks a day on its networks: 10 per second, all day, every day. Each incident can cost up to 50 million Euro. However, security is not only about damage control, but it also concerns our sovereignty and can be a competitive advantage in a world that is seeking security.

Unfortunately, at the same time, Internet is not a service for all yet. According to a new Eurobarometer survey, as of 27^th February 2014, 24% of European Internet users were prevented by their providers from watching videos, listening music or using other applications. In particular, 41% of people experienced problems watching a video on a mobile device and 37% on the fixed connection at home due to speed limitations, 23% could not listen to music on their mobile device, 23% did not upload contents on websites, blogs or forums through their mobile device, 19% did not play online games at desk computer, 9% could not use Internet-delivered phone calls. Effectively, the speed connection did not match the terms of the contract for 26% of the European customers and 40% of all respondents experienced an internet connection break down.

Regeneration is better than substitution

Giulia Annovi — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:05:00 +0100

In Europe, people aged more than 50 years old are about 150 million. Prevention, care and cure regarding aged people are core concerns for European Commission. Among the chronic pathologies, osteoarthritis is the second disease in Italy. It has high prevalence in the population older than 65 years, but the prevalence in younger age groups appears to be on the increase.

In Italy, osteoarthritis affects 16.4 percent of people with more than 65 years. According to the “Annuario statistico Italiano 2013” an ISTAT survey, 30.4 percent of women older than 65 years and 50% of men have ingested drugs to counteract osteoarthritis in 2012. As reported by the “Expert’s consensus paper from the European Society for Clinical and Economic Aspects of Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis (ESCE) the economic cost of osteoarthritis is considerable. The total expenses relating to the treatment of osteoarthritis are estimated at between 1% and 2.5% of the gross domestic product (GDP) for westernized countries. Moreover, according to Piscitelli paper, loss of working days in patients aged less than 65 years was estimated between 805,000 and 1 million days. Osteoarthritis is associated with productivity losses in individuals who are employed. The growing demand for elective surgery for joint replacement, particularly from relatively younger age groups, drives the need for more long-lasting solutions.

OPHIS deals with osteoarthritis

Creating a biomaterial able to substitute and then regenerate damaged bone and cartilage. This is the OPHIS “composite phenotypic triggers for bone and cartilage repair” project ambition. OPHIS was designed with the aim to develop new engineered biomaterials for the repair and regeneration of both osteochondral and osseous tissues, when degenerative articular or bone diseases – as osteoarthritis or osteoporosis – Impair the mechanical and physiological function.

The Institute of Science and Technology of Ceramics (ISTEC-CNR) is leading the project, starting from 25 years of experience in biomedical devices creation. OPHIS has been granted from FP7-NMP of the 7^th European Framework Programme, with 3,939,708 euros. European funds, covering a period of four years, sustained the work of 18 researchers in different subjects engaged: physics, chemistry, material engineering and biology. The ISTEC project involves Italian partners (Rizzoli Institute, UCSC and Fin-Ceramica Faenza), but includes also French, German, English and Swiss research centres.

Biomaterials created by OPHIS are generated starting from collagen fibres self-assembly associated with a biomineralization process, mimicking that occurring during bone formation. “In comparison with previous materials created by our laboratories,” highlights Anna Tampieri, the project coordinator, “the new scaffold is able to beckon cells into the 3D structure without any external stimulus. Cells recognize the injected material as a self and natural substrate. Thus cells colonise and mould material, to restore natural tissue within one year.”

Using constructs with cells originated from patients guarantees the highest regenerative capacity. However, the national and European laws discourage the clinical use of materials carrying stem cells. Thus, the body cells attraction is now preferred. In ISTEC laboratory specific growth factors and chemical or biochemical cues has been assessed, bound to new polymers to achieve an excellent cell attraction and differentiation. The simplest OPHIS material has been already developed and tested to osteoarthritis treatment. Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease and is characterised by the progressive deterioration and sclerosis of articular cartilage and sub-chondral bone. A basic scaffold has been tested on 100 patients spread in different European centres with surprising regenerative capacity.

However, the present research improved both the functional molecules and the polymeric scaffold with cellulose, alginate and chitosan polymers. “We have already made a request for Horizon 2020 funds, to perform clinical tests,” adds Anna Tampieri. “In fact the last developed materials promise more mechanical stability, and more cell-homing capacity.”

The future of osteoporosis

The OPHIS study offers a second perspective: the osteoporosis treatment. Osteoporosis is characterised by decreased bone mass and bone mineral density, leading to bone fragility. Osteoporosis, with osteoarthritis, has a significant economic and societal impact in elder citizens. In Italy, osteoporosis is the fourth chronic disease. 7.4% of people older than 65 years suffer for this pathological condition. According to EU27 Report, due to the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations (EFPIA), 22 million women and 5.5 million men were estimated to have osteoporosis. The economic burden of incident and prior fragility fractures was estimated at € 37 billion. And the costs are expected to increase by 25 % in 2025.

Vertebral bodies are the first damaged by an osteoporosis degeneration. In the year 2000 there were an estimated 9 million osteoporotic fractures world-wide of which 1.4 million were clinical vertebral fractures. The modern medicine tries to offer solutions, but tissue replacement is not able to restore completely the patient’s mobility. The most common solution- acrylate cements - stalls full movements and induces necrosis and other vertebral bodies fracture. The new material created in Tampieri’s laboratory is a biomimetic scaffold, able to host cells. The materials are conceived to set and harden in contact with physiological fluids in short times (less than 20 minutes). The ceramic pastes are highly injectable in aqueous media. In rabbit, bone regeneration occurred within 3 months, thus with a high speed strengthening capacity. With Horizon 2020 funds, experiments will carry on greater size animals. Moreover scaffolds, when doped with Strontium, exhibited in vitro bioactivity. Thus their potential use could be the development of biomedical devices with anti-osteoporotic functionality.

The final goal of this research could be the substitution of metallic prosthesis. If scaffold reaches a greater mechanical stability, bone will be regenerated and not only substituted. “We built these projects on our activity, interest and business”, Anna Tampieri concludes. “This assures a tight-knit team and the target achievement”.

How to regenerate a broken heart

Cristina Da Rold — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 08:39:00 +0100

The epidemics of heart failure (HF) represents a challenge for the National Health System: despite advances over the past 30 years, the prognosis for patients who are admitted to hospital with HF remains poor, with a 5 year mortality that is nearly 50%, worse than that for patients with breast or colon cancer. The incidence of HF is dramatically increasing at an unanticipated speed emphasizing the need for novel strategies aiming at the identification of the cause of this devastating disease.

In the last few years, the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Policlinico A. Gemelli, directed by Prof. Filippo Crea, contributed with original research programs in this field. Therefore, the Department has joined the European consortium that designed the clinical trial BAMI (The Effect of intracoronary Reinfusion of Bone Marrow-derived Mononuclear Cells on All Cause Mortality in Acute Myocardial Infarction ), and it will conduct the study as a coordinating center for Italy and European leading center for substudies.

Moreover, as the population continues to age, the demand for costly, age-associated health care will increase rapidly, since elderly individuals are at highest risk for HF. The European program “Horizon 2020: Health, demographic change and well-being” indicated the development of new therapeutic strategies that can bring a benefit in terms of survival and a reduction in the rate of hospitalization in patients with heart failure as an inescapable challenge. In recent years, therefore, regenerative medicine has been seen as a possible resource that can provide a convincing answer to this important socio-medical problem.

BAMI partners come from all over Europe and in Italy the poles are two: the coordinator for Italy the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, and a second team comes from University of Pavia and Hospital “San Matteo” and it is led by Massimiliano Gnecchi.

What is the state of the art in the study of the consequences of myocardial infarction? We talked with Domenico D’Amario from the Catholic University team. “According to recent statistics,” says D’Amario, “in the United States each minute a person dies due to heart diseases. They are now the first cause of death in the western countries, and the estimates predict that costs to treat them will rise in the next 10 years by 120%.”

However, although the problem is becoming more and more important, “no current therapeutic option is focusing on answering the basic question: how to protect the surviving myocardium and possibly regenerate the part of the heart damaged by a heart attack, reversing the resultant dysfunction and ventricular remodeling,” D’Amario says.

In the setting of myocardial infarction, the immediate reopening of acutely occluded coronary arteries via primary angioplasty (PPCI) is the treatment of choice to salvage the ischemic myocardium. However, the sudden re-initiation of blood flow, can lead to a local acute inflammatory response with further endothelial and myocardial damage.

The BAMI project will try establishing the therapeutic value of this approach to stem cell therapy. In detail, the aim of BAMI is using trans-coronary infusion of bone marrow-derived progenitor cells to reduce the mortality rate by 25% and the re-hospitalisation rate by 15%.

In Europe, the entire clinical trial will involve 3000 patients suffering from myocardial infarction, 125 of which will be treated in Italy between the Policlinico A. Gemelli and Policlinico San Matteo. “Patients with successful acute reperfusion therapy within 24 hours of symptom onset and left ventricular ejection dysfunction assessed by quantitative echocardiography 3 to 6 days after reperfusion therapy” explains D’Amario. They will be randomized to the best hospital treatment or treated with the same state of the art therapy plus intracoronary infusions of adult autologous cells from the bone marrow. The recruitment will start in April in Italy and it will last 3 years. After this period, patients will be followed for other 2 years.

“The BAMI trial is the first and unique large scale clinical trial to test if bone marrow derived progenitor cells can lead to a significant reduction in all-cause mortality. If this is the case, we can use this new powerful tool in all patients affected by ischemic heart disease,” concludes D’Amario.

European and Italian research in food and agriculture sector

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 09:00:00 +0100

“The food and drink industry is the largest manufacturing industry in the European Union, generating turnover of €956 billion in 2010”, as claimed by the European Union itself. More than four millions Europeans work inside one of the 310.000 food enterprises (both primary and transforming). Nonetheless, 95% of these firms are composed by small or medium enterprises, which have less than 20 workers. In other words, they are too small to carry on strategic R&D policies: investments in the food R&D sector represent just 1.05% of the entire net turnover.

Despite being fragmented and investing so little, since 2010 the European Union is a net exporter of agricultural products, mostly final products. We have a profitable food industry, but with low investments in R&D. Moreover, experts say that a large amount of greenhouse gasses production comes from the food sector. Given these figures, the European Union is trying to solve this paradox through Horizon 2020. Will Italy take the opportunity?

Horizon 2020

The European Union has prospected to invest €248 million in 2014 and 2015 in food and drink industry through Horizon 2020, the new research investment program. At first sight, €248 million could seem an enormous budget. But actually, looking at the figures, it is not: the EU will spend just 5% of the 2014 budget in food and agricultural researches.

Anyway, the food issue is housed in the Horizon 2020’s “Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy” program. The program’s aim is to “contribute to securing sufficient supplies of safe, healthy and high quality food and other bio-based products, by developing productive, sustainable and resource-efficient primary production systems, fostering related ecosystem services and the recovery of biological diversity, alongside competitive and low carbon supply chains. This will accelerate the transition to a sustainable European bioeconomy, bridging the gap between new technologies and their implementation”. The effort is based on the fact that most of the entire supply chain in food industry is made by small and medium enterprises, which suffered the most from European economic turbulences. Someone could say that Horizon 2020, in this sector, is another way to subsidize agriculture and food industry – an issue that has always created problems with non-EU partners.

Italy between European grants and the Milan Expo 2015

Will Italy take advantage of Horizon 2020? Looking at past experiences, the answer would seem to be “no”. Italian food industry reflects the average European situation: 96% of the business is carried on by small and medium enterprises (similar to France, but higher than UK and Germany). Often, in Italy, the food issue is linked with cultural matters: Italian traditional cuisine is famous all over the world, and is known for being particularly healthy. But consumers’ habits are changing, as 26% of Italian teenagers (5-17 years old) suffer a form of obesity. Biotechnology and other innovation in the sector could improve business performances and fight obesity, but actually the efforts of the Italian institutions towards these two goals are weak.

The Italian participation in the food sector of the 7^th Framework Program had been very frail. The success rate of Italian coordinators’ approved proposals had been just 9%, putting Italy as the fifth country after UK, France, Germany and Netherlands. Universities have been the 66% of the winning coordinators, underlying the fact that small enterprises cannot or do not want to carry on research in food industry: as a matter of fact, none of the Italian enterprises in the sector have won a grant as coordinator.

As said before, Italy is the place where food and agriculture are the baselines of the national identity. Rejecting the advantage of this great tradition during H2020 will be not only a missed opportunity for Italian researchers, but a heavy loss in terms of health, innovation and economical revenues. The new Minister of the Agriculture Policies, Maurizio Martina, has a great opportunity to make the difference. Especially now, as Milan will host the Expo 2015, which is focused on the food issue.

The crystallography Manifesto. Interview with Paolo Radaelli

Michele Bellone — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 10:11:00 +0100

A century has passed since the Nobel prizes in physics in 1914 and 1915 were awarded to recognize the importance of X-ray diffraction experiments on crystals. This year, the International Year of Crystallography will commemorate this event. In such an occasion, at the end of January, Nature published a comment by Paolo Radaelli, Head of Condensed Matter Physics and Associate Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, about the current situation of this field of knowledge. In order to further discuss some of the points he highlighted, we asked him for an interview.

You described crystallography as a world rich in diversity, a trait that once was a merit and now could have changed into a flaw. It seems that crystallographers still have to decide if they want to join the Big Science club – together with disciplines like neurosciences or particle physics – or remain a fractioned and local community. In your opinion, what should be done to overcome this issue?

Traditionally, the scientific unions and learned societies representing crystallography, such at the International Union of Crystallography and the British Crystallographic Association, have kept well clear of politics and have refrained from giving opinions and instigating reports on Big Science project because of the political implications. I am afraid this is no longer an option. If crystallographers want to have a say in their future facilities, they must “get their hands dirty” and accept a degree of political involvement and confrontation.

You claimed the necessity of a CERN-like institution for crystallography, in order to develop a common road map and gain political weight. How would you do that? What steps should be taken at first?

CERN is quite unique in the international scientific landscape, and it simply not possible to replicate it in other fields. The reason for this is that CERN fulfills several roles at once: it provides community governance, drives the consultations to prioritize and specify facilities, acts as an interface with the politicians on behalf of the community and hosts the actual facilities.Importantly, a large tranche of the funding for new accelerators, both capital and running costs, comes directly from CERN, paid from the contributions of the CERN member states. In the field of international multi-disciplinary facilities, these roles will have to be shared to some extent. To start with, there is already a network of national-scale research facilities such as third-generation medium-energy synchrotrons. The largest facilities, such as the European Spallation Source and the European XFEL, are too expensive for an individual country, but there is no single site that can host them all. The closest we have in Europe to a CERN-like site is the Polygone Scientifique in Grenoble, which hosts two major facilities (the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and the high-flux neutron reactor at the Institut Laue-Langevin), but the Polygone does not have any space left to grow further. We are therefore stuck with a model in which international facilities will be hosted in different countries, which clearly exacerbates the political dimension of the problem. In my comment on Nature, I suggest that we should take all the other functions (community governance, prioritization, siting, negotiation and a major slice of the funding pie) out of the hands of the national politician and consolidate them in a single European body, most credibly under the aegis of the European Research Council.

You wrote that Europe may play a significant role for the development of large-scale facilities for crystallography. Within Europe, which countries could lead such a process? Can Italy, in particular, become a major player in this contest?

*Italy is already a major player, for example, in the field of facilities based on electron accelerators, such as free electron lasers (FELs). There are currently two national facilities, the compact FEL in Frascati and FERMI@Elettra (under commissioning), and further proposals for machines to be built in Frascati (SPARC, SPARX). Italy is also a significant contributor (at a 4.5% level) to the XFEL project in Hamburg, both in cash and in kind. Italy has also made significant contributions to the development of neutron instrumentation both at ISIS and at the ILL, although the lack of a competitive national neutron research facility has somewhat hampered progress, particularly in limiting the size of the community. There are significant problems with the current model used to prioritize and site international multi-disciplinary facilities: for example, siting decisions do not always favor or even involve existing centers of excellence and expertise, and the growing trend of encouraging “in kind” (rather than “in cash”) national contributions means that those offering such contributions are not always in the best position to deliver. *

What is going on in countries like Brazil, India or China? Are they investing in large-scale facilities for crystallography?

Emerging countries have made large investments in these facilities. China has a modern 3^rd generation synchrotron (the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility) and Brazil is building one (SIRIUS, under construction at Campinas University campus near São Paulo). India is planning to build one within the next decade. As far as neutron sources are concerned, China has built a modern research reactor (the China Advanced Research Reactor in Beijing, now in commissioning) and is planning a spallation source (the China Spallation Neutron Source, which is being built in Dongguan, Guangdong province) with operation planning to start in 2018. Many of these countries have active research programs in X-ray and neutron sciences, which are also being pursued through a web of collaborations with Facility in Europe, Asia and America.

Public consensus may be important to drive the attention of politicians. According to you, how is crystallography perceived by the general public? Is its importance – as you highlighted it in your article – recognized by citizens?

Undeniably, the sciences of materials in general and crystallography in particular do not have the public allure of other scientific endeavors, such as astronomy and high-energy physics. The sociological reasons for this have perhaps not been thoroughly explored, but in essence the “big questions” – where do we come from, what is our place in the universe – are perceived as more relevant and inspiring for the lay persons than other equally profound questions about the world around us, in spite of the fact that the latter have a much greater potential for changing our lives for the better. I do not believe this should be a source of envy between different fields of science: inspiration and public understanding may be biased towards certain areas, but the beneficiary is science as a whole. It is crucial, however, to disseminate the results of research in crystallography and related field and to clarify the link with technology and innovation, so that the general public appreciates how worthwhile and cost-effective public investments are, particularly for the in large-scale facilities I have been discussing in my piece.

The Twitterfly effect

Antonio Pilello — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 09:03:00 +0100

Do you remember A Sound of Thunder, a short story by Ray Bradbury published in 1952? During a time travel’s safari, the unintentional killing of a butterfly causes several changes at present-days. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is a phenomenon whereby a minor change in circumstances can cause a large change in outcome. Today, after many years, we could probably speak about the Twitterfly effect.

According to the report Twiplomacy 2013, the governments of 78% of the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) have a presence on Twitter: personal accounts of heads of state, heads of government and ministers of foreign affairs. Presently, 68% of world leaders have mutual connections with their peers. Microblogging is a formidable broadcasting tool and an indispensable communication channel for international organisations to amplify their messages to a global audience.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (@CERN) announced its major science discovery, the Higgs boson, via Twitter. The Nobel Prize committee used Twitter when it was unable to place a phone call to the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize winner, which is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (@OPCW). In times of epidemic outbreaks, the World Health Organisation (@WHO) can use Twitter alerts to inform directly the population. In this case, the retweets can amplify the messages or the advices, probably keeping alive many people. The most effective international organisations in terms of number of retweets are @CERN, the United Nations Children’s Fund (@UNICEF), the United Nations Organisation (@UN), the World Wide Fund for Nature (@WWF), @Greenpeace and @WHO.

What about our country? At the end of 2013, the number of Twitter users in Italy was approaching 10 million. However, it is interesting to note that only 35% of them (3.4 million) were monthly active users. Furthermore, 64% of active users log on to Twitter using a smartphone or a tablet. We tried to analyze the use of microblogging in some important institutions such as the public universities. As stated by the ranking drawn up in June 2012 by the Ministry of Public Education, the best Italian public universities are Politecnico di Torino (@PoliTOnews), Politecnico di Milano (@polimi), University of Venice Ca’ Foscari: (@CaFoscari) and University of Bologna (@UniboMagazine). Is it the same in Twitter? According to its Application Programming Interface, we could read the last 3200 tweets for every account.

As of 27^th February 2014, the first account had 4598 followers with 682 tweets (0.92 per day from 17^th February 2012). The user mentions were 154 (0.23 per tweet) and the replies were 55 (8%). The higher these numbers, the more this user interacts with others. Furthermore, 232 tweets (34%) were retweeted for a total of 594 times (2.56 per tweet) and 88 tweets (13%) were favorited for a total of 137 times (1.56 per tweet). The higher these numbers, the more this user is considered a valuable source of information by others. @PoliTOnews used 447 hashtags (0.66 per tweet): #polito (99), #politecnico (38), #orientatialfuturo (32), #giorniairc (16), #scienceandthefuture (11), #smart (9), #torino (7), #terremoto (7), #openarchipolito (7), #orientamento (7).

@polimi had 13867 followers with 2890 tweets (2.64 per day from 28^th February 2011). The user mentions were 1633 (0.57 per tweet) and the replies were 668 (23%). Furthermore, 1375 tweets (48%) were retweeted for a total of 3948 times (2.87 per tweet) and 581 tweets (20%) were favorited for a total of 877 times (1.51 per tweet). This user used 1413 hashtags (0.49 per tweet): #polimi150 (297), #youtube (137), #inaugurazionepolimi (113), #opendaypolimi (66), #architettura (56), #mypoli (49), #design (34), #ricerca (21), #studenti (19), #giocoestate (18).

@CaFoscari had 7774 followers with 3192 tweets (2.89 per day from 21^st February 2011). The user mentions were 571 (0.18 per tweet) and the replies were 80 (3%). Furthermore, 971 tweets (30%) were retweeted for a total of 1994 times (2.05 per tweet) and 397 tweets (12%) were favorited for a total of 647 times (1.63 per tweet). This user used 1345 hashtags (0.42 per tweet): #cafoscari (540), #ricerca (41), #cfdw13 (39), #artn12 (37), #artnightvenezia (37), #venezia (37), #cafoscari13 (16), #venetonight (13), #video (12), #ca (12).

@UniboMagazine had 5874 followers with 3200 tweets (8.99 per day from 9^th March 2013). The user mentions were 93 (0.03 per tweet) and the replies were 25 (1%). Furthermore, 931 tweets (29%) were retweeted for a total of 1637 times (1.76 per tweet) and 534 tweets (17%) were favorited for a total of 759 times (1.42 per tweet). This user used 1657 hashtags (0.52 per tweet): #eventiunibo (1230), #unibo (275), #5permilleunibo (55), #aungsansuukyi (23), #destinazioneunibo (9), #nobel (8), #almaorienta (8), #careerday (8), #ff (7), #pace (5).

Europe vs Switzerland. The struggle over the H2020 program

Giacomo Destro — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 09:59:00 +0100

It happened again: after the Israeli case, Horizon 2020 is anew in the middle of a political clash. This time the situation is even worse than the Israel one, both because it is within the European geographical region and because Switzerland had been a key player in the previous Seventh Framework Program. Roughly, the question is: is it fair towards EU citizens that European institutions that are based on the “free movement of persons and ideas” gives their moneys to a Country that refuted this ideal? On the Swiss side, traditionally the referendums are strong and powerful tools to bind political decisions to citizens’ will. For that reason, the February 9^th Referendum is a non-returning point. On the European Union side, otherwise, it is a matter of giving money (a lot of money) to a country that is refuting the freedom of movements of its citizens. This is a clear case of diplomatic fight, an intricate but meaningful example of how science and diplomacy are strictly linked.

From EU-Swiss agreements to the Switzerland performance in 7FP

As been part of the EFTA, the free trade area of the European continent (an organization backed by the US to support European integration), during the 90s Switzerland had signed ten bilateral agreements with the European Union. Two agreements deal respectively with the free movement of citizens and the access of the Swiss research institutions to European grants. On these bases, Switzerland entered enthusiastically the Seventh Framework Program, with great performances (see figures above, in the infographics). A negotiations session for the participation of Switzerland in the Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+ programs had been scheduled for mid-February, but then, after the Referendum, almost frozen.

Switzerland as part of the european scientific community Swiss partecipation to erc funds | Create Infographics

The referendum “against mass immigration”

Out of doubt, and despite political considerations, Switzerland is part of the European scientific community. As shown by the infographics, many scientific researchers working in Switzerland are not Swiss nationals: for this reason they couldn’t vote for the Referendum about migration policy in the Confederation. Briefly, the Referendum, called “Popular initiative against Mass Immigration” was backed by the Swiss People’s Party, and gained success particularly in the Ticino canton. The Referendum has passed with 50.3% of positive votes, underlining strong differences between the Cantons and, mainly, between the ruling class – which endorsed a rejection of the Referendum – and the majority of the Swiss population. The referendum imposed quota on immigration into the Confederation borders, with no distinction for what purpose the migration is aimed, such as work, study, research or humanitarian. No one can say what will be the real effects of this decision, as Swiss economy and culture are strongly linked with the rest of Europe. Great concerns are based on a clause of the referendum stating that “international treaties opposite to this article cannot be signed… International treaties that contradict Article 121a should be renegotiated and adjusted within three years after the adoption of this article”.

(source)

The Croatian issue

Due to these two clauses, Swiss authorities couldn’t widen the free circulation agreement to the newly entered Member State of the European Union, Croatia. This had been taken by the EU institutions as the first practical results of the validity of the referendum. The EU has immediately frozen all the negotiations with the Swiss Confederation, including those relating to H2020 and Erasmus+. Anyway, insiders said that “the EU legislative machine and deal-making with Switzerland will continue on the institutional framework as normal until the Swiss government puts forward its anti-EU migrant bill”. And they were right.

What will happen

On February 25^th, the Swiss State Secretariat for Education Research and Innovation announced that an agreement had been concluded with the EU. The result is that the Confederation will be considered as a third country in applying for Horizon 2020 calls. This means that “researchers in Switzerland may continue to take part in partnership projects [but they are] no longer able to take part in individual projects due to its third country status”. Meanwhile, a group of European scientists promoted a petition to stop this political clash (and the results of the referendum).

INFN goes overseas

Cristina Da Rold — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 08:45:00 +0100

Between 5 and 6^th February, INFN met the delegations from the American Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in order to establish a new scientific cooperation among Italy and USA. We talked about this meeting with Antonio Masiero, the INFN Deputy Director. “The collaboration between these two countries is excellent,” says Masiero, “and at the moment it involves four research projects, which are the topics we have discussed two weeks ago in Washington.”

The first project concerns the neutrino physics and takes place at Fermilab. It is composed by two experiments involving Italian physicists: a short baseline experiment and a long baseline experiment, which are respectively the first and the second phase of the project. The American interest in a collaboration with INFN is due to the Italian knowledge around liquid argon and its use as a target for particle detectors. “In Italy we have worked largely with liquid argon at Gran Sasso Laboratories, under the guide of Carlo Rubbia,” explains Masiero. “Our experiment is called ICARUS and it represents the best example of using liquid argon as a target for particle detectors. Thus, Americans need our know-how.”

The second context that attracted the American interest, especially the NSF participation, are the Gran Sasso Laboratories themselves. In particular, these laboratories work with American teams in four experiments: BOREXINO, CUORE, XENON and DARK SIDE. BOREXINO studies neutrinos, in particular solar neutrinos and geo neutrinos, which come from the Earth’s crust. The second one, called CUORE works on a special type of radioactive decay, named double beta decay. “This experiment is very important concerning the fundamental research,” says Masiero, “because it tries to answer the question on the nature of the neutrinos mass, in detail if they have Dirac mass or Majorana mass.”

But not only neutrinos interest American researchers. XENON, the third experiment involving both Italy and USA, explores the mysterious world of dark matter, trying to discover the role of WIMPs, which are one of the main candidates as dark matter components. “XENON is the second more detailed experiments in the world concerning dark matter,” explains Masiero. “The first place is occupied by the American LUX.” As suggested by its name, this experiment uses xenon as target, instead of liquid argon. Until now, researchers have used a 10 liters target of xenon and 100 liters, but the goal is using a 1T target. Finally, the experiment called DARK SIDE is related to WIMPs detection too, but differently from XENON, it uses a liquid argon target.

The third field that has been discussed two weeks ago in Washington is space, and the projects involved are two. The first is called FERMI, which is a satellite for studying gamma-rays, but it has also the role of antimatter detector. “Space offers a great advantage if compared to the Earth because we have not the filter represented by the atmosphere,” says Masiero. “Even if at the same time on Earth we can make observations on bigger surfaces and for a longer time.” FERMI is working for three years but it has already achieved a significant goal: it confirmed the results of a previous experiment, PAMELA, on the unexpected behavior of positrons over a certain energy. In fact, if the energy increases, the number of positrons on space would be expected to decrease, but actually this number seems to increase too. “Is it caused by dark matter annihilation?” asks Masiero. “We don’t know yet, but the incoming results are suggesting us a new scenario.” This hypothesis is confirmed also by AMS experiment, led in collaboration with NASA, which is focused on antimatter, in particular on the positron flux. AMS shows the same results concerning the increasing number of positrons at high energy – while for antiprotons it has not been observed any anomaly – thus scientists are studying the possible astrophysical origin of this phenomenon.

The last topic that has been presented in Washington meeting was the international cooperation on big projects like the LHC upgrade or AUGER, an experiment built in Argentina for studying cosmic radiation and cosmic swarms that by hitting the atmosphere produce sets of particles that can be studied on Earth.

Even if good results are more, we cannot ignore the difficulties that this kind of international cooperation must suffer in this historical moment. “We are living in a difficult moment for basic research in most Western countries like US, Italy, but also France and UK, where scientific research is traditionally recognized as a valuable asset,” says Masiero. “In countries like the US or Italy, it is hard to make a medium or long-term planning of the research activities since we have to rely on annual budgets which may vary, hence making uncertain the destiny of large projects that require significant investments in terms of human and financial resources.”

Another problem that emerged is represented by globalization in cooperation on big projects. “On one hand such a need for global efforts in major scientific enterprises in our field represents an opportunity, since it obliges different communities from different countries or continents to make a common effort finding an important synergy in their work; on the other hand, globalization in scientific research dictates new rules and demands a different way of approaching the scientific, technical and economic issues. It is a formidable challenge that we have to face and to win.”

Space. The final frontier is closer... to Europe

Antonio Pilello — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 07:58:00 +0100

Space, the final frontier. The first series of Star Trek started in 1966, following the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew on board of the space ship Enterprise. Today, after almost 50 years, this frontier is closer to Europe. In fact, as reported by the Eurobarometer 403 survey, the majority of Europeans thinks the space sector is a source of growth and a contributor to scientific progress.

According to 58% of respondents, the space activities could contribute to employment and innovation in the EU. Investing in human space exploration could lead some medical progress (57%) and the space technologies could have a role in avoiding threats such as collisions with asteroids, comets and space debris (62%). Furthermore, energy sector (37%) and environment (33%) would be the areas where space activities will play an important role within the next 20 years.

Educational programs including subjects linked to space activities would encourage students to choose careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (73%). As far as mobility concerns, 48% of people would be ready to use automated vehicles guided by satellite systems. In addition, future sub-orbital flights are expected to be most useful for travelling (34%) or for transporting urgent or valuable goods (30%). Observations from satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles could also improve security in the EU (37%), however 25% of citizens think this will be a threat to privacy.

Finally, 47% of respondents think that further investment in space exploration is necessary to develop and test new technologies (63%) and to make unexpected scientific discoveries (53%). On the contrary, 46% of them do not think that further investment is really important because there are other more pressing issues due to the current overall socio-economic context.

In spite of everything, a general optimism of the EU citizens towards space exploration certainly increased in the last years also thanks to the hard work and the social media activities of the Shenanigans, the new class of European astronauts announced in May 2009 by the European Space Agency (ESA). They are Luca Parmitano (Italy, Volare mission), Alexander Gerst (Germany, Blue Dot mission), Samantha Cristoforetti (Italy, Futura mission), Andreas Mogensen (Denmark), Timothy Peake (United Kingdom) and Thomas Pesquet (France).

As regards Italy, the Major in the Italian Air Force Luca Parmitano spent six months between May and November 2013 on board the International Space Station (ISS) as a member of the Expeditions 36/37 crew. He conducted several experiments in the station’s laboratories and also worked outside the ISS throughout the course of two spacewalks. The Captain in the Italian Air Force Samantha Cristoforetti is currently training for her long-duration mission on board the ISS. She will be a Flight Engineer for Expeditions 42/43 between November 2014 and May 2015.

Our astronauts are both very active on the social media, especially Twitter. Samantha, for example, updates the #SamLogbook on Google Plus almost every day with a lot of interesting posts and pictures. Furthermore, she uses the account @AstroSamantha on Twitter to interact with her followers and inform them with latest news about Futura mission. According to Twitter’s API rules, the hashtags more used by Samantha in the latest 3200 tweets are #iss, #samlogbook, #diariodibordo, #soyuz, #orlan, #shenanigans09, #spacewalk, #dragon, #volare and #eva. Instead, @astro_luca used these keywords: #volare, #iss, #italy, #spacewalk, #australia, #italia, #cygnus, #atv4, #biolab, #shenanigans09.

Italian Life in Quantum

Fabio Sciarrino — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 09:59:00 +0100

I am researcher at the Physics Department of the University La Sapienza of Rome. With the present contribution, I would like to witness on how a young researcher can carry out scientific and technological forefront research in Italy by exploiting both Italian and European opportunities.

My research field is quantum information, a novel science recently introduced by the merging of classical information theory and quantum physics. Its main objective is to understand the quantum nature of information and to learn how to formulate, manipulate and process quantum information by using physical systems that behave according to the principles of quantum mechanics.

According to my experience, the possibility for a researcher to grow and make a career in the Italian system resides on a proper combination of efforts devoted to pure scientific challenges and of capabilities of creating synergies at local, national and international level.

After the degree in physics in Napoli, I moved to Rome to work, as a PhD student, at the Physics Department of La Sapienza, under the supervision of Francesco De Martini, a pioneer in the field of quantum information who, at that time, had just demonstrated for the first time the quantum teleportation of a single photon state. The doctorate was a crucial training experience: from the beginning I had strong responsibilities and the opportunity to succeed or fail in experimental quantum optics.

After five years of post-doctoral fellowships, I was recruited as assistant professor at the Physics Department of La Sapienza. Since my appointment, I started several new profitable collaborations, in particular the synergy with the Nonlinear Optics of Liquid Crystal Group of the University of Naples “Federico II”, which led to several publications and to the successful application – as a coordinator of the Rome Unity – for an European Project on the Future Emerging Technologies initiative. The involvement in an European project with worldwide leader groups represented a unique growing opportunity with the possibility to continuously discuss and compare any aspect of science. Almost simultaneously, I received an Italian grant for young researchers (FIRB – Future in Research) as principal investigator in collaboration with the University of Florence. This project has been the first occasion for me to fully manage my own research with a commitment that ranged from the pure scientific investigation to the quite heavy bureaucratic duties.

Shortly after, our research group started a new research line on integrated quantum photonics. Also in this case, the synergy with the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the CNR and with the Polytechnic of Milan was the fundamental ingredient to achieve relevant scientific results in a short time. In 2012, I was awarded an ERC Starting Grant – Consolidator on “3D Quantum Integrated Optical Simulation” (http://www.3dquest.eu). At last, I had the chance to tackle one of my main objectives: the possibility to create and motivate a qualified workgroup. Indeed passion, synergy and enthusiasm are the driving forces of our collective research activity. This achievement represented the turning point of my scientific career, inducing a stronger visibility and a larger international recognition. Therefore, both national and international collaborations have been largely strengthened by opening new collaborations with Brazil, Chile, UK and USA. More recently, from September 2013, I am the Coordinator of a Marie Curie Training Network on integrated quantum photonics (www.picque.eu). The management of a project involving 18 partners is quite a challenge: again synergic interactions and the willingness to work together to achieve ambitious goals are the key elements.

Semantic phylogenesis of H3N2 viruses

Riccardo Scalco — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 07:49:00 +0100

A deep understanding of the relation between genetic mutations and immune system response of the attacked organism is vital for the development of effective vaccinations for specific variations of the influenza virus.

The formulation of a theory that associates immunological response to phylogenetic evolution of the virus stands on the definition of a genetic distance – calculated between aminoacid sequences – able to quantify antigenic diversity among the corresponding pathogens.

Despite the wide scientific success that present models obtains in studying the dynamic of viral infections, in many cases the methodology stands on genetic distances that only count the number of mutations, neglecting their position in the aminoacids chain. Several ideas, on the other side, aim at recognizing the modular schemes in the mutations and expressing the genetic distance based on the semantic variation brought at a global level by the single point mutation.

An example will clarify the concept. Let us imagine talking about words instead of aminoacids sequences, and about meaning instead of viral pathogens. Let us consider, for example, the words “cane” and “pane”. According to the classic genetic distance, these two words have distance 1, since there is only one mutation that distinguishes them. Now, let us imagine causally changing the order of the letters in the words, in the same way in both, obtaining the two new words “aenc” and “aenp”. The classic genetic distance is still 1, since this distance does not change if the order is modified and it is therefore unable to acknowledge that the two words are now meaningless.

It is important to formulate a genetic distance able to detect meaning variations (i.e. in the virus structure) starting from the variations in the letter sequence (i.e. aminoacids).

The chart shows haemoagglutinin (HA) genetic evolution of the influenza virus belonging to H3N2 family (click on the chart to show the detailed study).

Haemoagglutinin is an antigen glycoprotein present on the virus surface and it is responsible, together with neuraminidase, of virus adhesion to cells. For this reason, it is recognized by the immune system and it is the most subjected to genetic drift. This analysis is based on the theory developed by Riccardo Scalco, Mario Casartelli and Raffaella Burioni, University of Parma.

Different aminoacids sequences, from GISAID database, have been compared using a genetic distance defined by Shannon mutual conditional entropy between partitions of abstract probability spaces. It is assumed that this distance can observe biologically relevant changes in the amino acid redisposition proposed by the virus evolution. The evolution emerging by the proposed analysis showed already to be in optimal accordance with the epidemiological history of the viral pathogen.

The chart’s interpretation is the following. Every HA aminoacid sequence, associated to an isolated virus (i.e. a virus extracted by a patient’s blood) is identified as a coloured dot. The position on the abscissa axis indicates the isolation date, whilst the position on the ordinate axis allows grouping together isolated viruses belonging to the same subfamily (according to the used genetic distance). In other words, isolated viruses belonging to different subfamilies have different positions on the ordinate axis. The colours have the only visual function to allow easier recognition of the subfamilies.

It is then possible to make some important observations. First, every winter several subfamilies are present: one is usually predominant, while either the others are subfamilies already appeared in the previous years – and gradually disappearing – or they are subfamilies never appeared before. The analysis also suggests searching for the predominant virus of the following season within the new subfamilies. It is in fact easy to observe that the principal subfamily of a certain season has often precursors in the previous seasons.

- Burioni R, Scalco R, Casartelli M. Rohlin Distance and the Evolution of Influenza A Virus: Weak Attractors and Precursors. PlosOne 2011. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0027924

Pybus O, Rambaut A. Evolutionary analysis of the dynamics of viral infectious disease. Nat Rev Genet 2009; 10: 540–550.
Recker M, Pybus O, Nee S, Gupta S. The generation of inuenza outbreaks by a network of host immune responses against a limited set of antigenic types. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2007; 104: 7711–7716.
Hamming R. Error detecting and error correcting codes. Bell System Technical Journal 1950; 29: 147–160.
Khinchin A. Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory. Dover, New York, 1957.
Study website

Which future for ICT?

Antonio Pilello — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 07:49:00 +0100

Presently, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector represents 4.8% of the EU economy. According to the forecasts, the investments in this field will increase by about 25% under Horizon 2020 compared to FP7. This year, for instance, more than 1 billion Euro will be available. Research and development (R&D) in ICT technologies can produce concrete benefits for the citizens.

Recently, a report highlighted the importance of Unlocking the ICT growth potential in Europe, especially as regards mobile broadband, cloud computing, Big Data and Internet of Things. As reported in the document, four scenarios show that ICT could be a major source of growth for the EU, which was estimated by The Conference Board in 2013, but also using the paper of van Ark et al. (2013).

The first scenario is the digital savannah. A fragmented EU market makes it difficult for firms to grow beyond EU borders. Many companies can also be eventually acquired by US or non-EU (above all Chinese) multinational corporations. The prices remain high in spite of the niche opportunities created by the fragmentation of the markets. GDP growth in Europe does not accelerate much beyond 1.1%, with limited ICT’s effects (around 0.2%).

The second one is the digital rainforest. An integrated EU market leads nation-based firms to venture across borders. EU-based global firms can compete in a growing global economy. The prices are quite low with a discreet choice for products and services. European GDP growth accelerates to 2.5% with a significant ICT contribution (1.5% point).

The third one is the digital desert. A slow global economic growth of 3% leads to a contracting economic environment. The firms can prosper beyond national borders and part of them may be acquired by non-EU multinational corporations. GDP growth in Europe drops to 0.8 %, with ICT effects limited to less than 0.1% in absolute terms.

The last one is the digital glasshouse. The EU market is integrated and nation-based firms can operate also across borders, competing in a glocal market. However, because of a slow growth, the citizens have more difficulty accessing highest quality goods and services at lowest prices. Finally, EU’s GDP growth does not accelerate at more than 1.1%, despite the ICT effects increase to (0.4% point).

Recently, Paul Timmers, Director of Sustainable and Secure Society in DG Connect, spoke about the funding opportunities in ICT for societal challenges in the Horizon 2020 framework programme. His video was the first of a series of seven, each one explaining the funding opportunities for different societal challenges.

What about Italy? As reported by SIRMI on February 6^th 2014, the market of Digital Technology in our country is still in decline in all its components, showing a decrease of around 4% in the fourth quarter of 2013 and 5% for the full year. The decline invests in similar measure ICT and the field of telecommunications (TLC), which decrease respectively of 4.3% and 4.0%. In the first sector, the hardware component suffered a decrease of 4.0%, more than the software unit (-2.6%). In the other field, the mobile component was much penalized (-5.0%), more than the fixed telephony services (-2.6%).

The data show that the evolution of the ICT market was heavily influenced by the economic and financial crisis, the processes of spending review, the programs of rationalization and consolidation as well as the down pricing competition due to the non-EU multinational corporations. However, SIRMI predicts for 2014 a reduction in the percentage decrease, which will increase from -5% in 2013 to -2.3 % in 2014. In particular, the IT market is expected to rise from -4.1 % to -1.0% while the TLC will increase from -5.4 % to -3.0% approximately.

CIVIS project: cities as drivers of social change

Cristina Da Rold — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 07:35:00 +0100

The University of Trento is leading the CIVIS project, with the aim of raising awareness on energy saving through the active participation of the community. CIVIS has received a grant of 2.9 million Euros for three years under the call “ICT-Smartcities” of the 7^th European Framework Programme. The aim of the project is to reduce CO₂ emissions by focusing on citizen empowerment and the involvement of non-economical values such as collaboration and sharing, in order to communicate with the traditional providers and to build a new form of participated energy service.

Three pilot sites in Italy – Trento city and the nearby municipalities of Storo and Stenico – and other two in Europe – Stockholm, Sweden, and at the Otaniemi University Campus in Helsinki, Finland – will be the first to test CIVIS. In these pilot sites, the various districts involved will be an active part of the research project and the project itself will be developed depending on the context in which it is placed.

“Until now,” says Matteo Bonifacio, the project’s creator at University of Trento, “the way of producing energy has led to the evolution of our society. The big question we must answer is therefore how society will look like, now that we are heading towards distributed and complex energy systems. The first response comes from the web. Today’s society does not coexist with the web; it is the web. A form of participated energy use must therefore draw inspiration from the web to achieve social objectives. Energy is our currency, thus, a social revolution of technology is necessary.”

This project goes beyond the scope of renewable energy and the reduction of CO₂ emissions. “So far, the debate focused mainly on two points that we have questioned,” says Bonifacio. “First, that people’s energy-related behaviors can be influenced only through economic incentives and, second, that most processes take place on an individual basis in terms of producer and consumer relationship.”

In fact, CIVIS is at first a new way of thinking about energy. The project does not include the existing energy networks, but it operates on users’ awareness of being citizens, that should collaborate to transform the energy into a way to provide services for people. “A good use of energetic power should help poor people, build retirement homes for elderly people, or organize public spaces for children into the city,” explains Bonifacio “and not only through the community pressure on the energy providers, but also through a partnership with them. What matters is producing green energy for social objectives.”

“We are just at the beginning,” says Giacomo Poderi, researcher for CIVIS project at University of Trento, “the official start of the work was in October 2013 and, at the moment, one of our main effort is to better structure the collaboration with the pilot sites stakeholders, and to plan their involvement in the project. By June or July we hope to have the “ok” for a plan to work with stakeholders and by the end of September 2014 we aim to pose the groundwork for the collaboration itself. This objectives are our milestones. By the end of the second year (September 2015) we should have concluded the data collection and built the models for the analysis, which will be used to validate CIVIS model by the end of the three years of the project.”

The working groups are nine and involve 12 partners, all working in parallel: 4 Italian and the other divided between Sweden, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, UK and Portugal. One group focuses on the system infrastructure, another on the development interfaces for users as apps for smartphone and other groups are studying the social issues of community building, and the impact of this ecosystem on the energetic system.

One of these work packages works on case studies, i.e. the three pilot sites in Europe. “The project in fact does not work on the energy infrastructure, but on the possibility of a dialogue between the community of users and providers”, says Bonifacio. This characteristic is a potential of the project, because it makes it easily adaptable to any kind of context. “It’s like having a full meal, appetizer main course and dessert, wherever I go.”

Horizon 2020: now's the time

Rita Occhipinti — Fri, 14 Feb 2014 08:33:00 +0100

Horizon 2020 finally goes into the executive phase. It is the new European funding system for research and innovation, that is now replacing the seventh Framework Programme (FP7), ended in December 2013.

Therefore, European research has to face new opportunities as well as new rules, new issues and new administrative and normative challenges. With about 30 research institutions located in its territory, Trieste is a peculiar site in Europe both for basic research and for innovation and technology transfer.

This is the reason why on 5^th February SISSA (the International school for advanced studies), located in Trieste, together with APRE (Agency for the Promotion of Research in Europe) organized a seminar for scientists and administrative staff about Horizon 2020. The unique speaker was Manuela Schisani, National Contact Point for the ERC (European Research Council) programme. “There has been a continuing and increasing erosion of national funds for research,” says the director of SISSA Guido Martinelli opening the meeting, “so we need to enhance our access to the European ones. It’s important to understand the mechanisms of this new funding system in order to gather the best advantage from it”.

SISSA researchers are usually supported by their scientific secretariat while they prepare their proposals for funds, but when there are new rules, an external help can be necessary. APRE (Agency for the Promotion of Research in Europe) has a ten-year collaboration with SISSA, which is, together with many other research centers and Universities, one of the APRE members. The agency gives support and expert advices about funding normatives and procedures, organizes training courses for scientists and project managers, information days throughout Italy, such as the one at SISSA.

Horizon 2020 supports two kinds of projects: research projects and innovation projects. The programme, finally announced last December, is composed by three pillars: Excellent Science, Industrial Leadership and Societal Challenges.

Horizon 2020 pillars (source www.apre.it)

The Excellent Science framework includes bottom-up and excellence-driven projects that will be distributed through four programmes. Among them, the European Research Council (ERC) is the one focused on basic research and the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)¹ is something new with respect to FP7. The main difference is that all programs have a duration of two years

ERC has the highest budget, almost 12 billion euro, against the 7 about of the Seventh Framework Programme. Each grant can go from 1.5 to 2.5 million euros. ERC projects must be cutting-edge ideas in new and interdisciplinary fields of knowledge, with high risk and high gain. They are individual grants, nominally given to the Principal Investigator (PI) who has to demonstrate his competence, awareness, enthusiasm and personality. The PI also has to demonstrate his indipendence from his Institute: the grant is individual and he is free to move to another place in Europe if work conditions require it.

FET funds, on the contrary, are not individual. FET are the real newness. They are designed to promote collaboration among research centers in Europe (the collaboration of three entities at least is explicitly required). These new calls aim to overcome the current fragmentation in applied research and to create a shared and inarguable European leadership in the field of emerging technologies. The total budget is € 2.4 billion, 1.5-2 million for every project. A part of the budget is expressly addressed to dissemination and communication activity, which must occur in respect of the open access regime.

Unlike the ERC and the previous calls, there are no specific evaluation panels, divided by area of research. The FETs are evaluated by a unique panel and the projects are all against all. “Open is open” is the slogan: there are no thematic restrictions. All visionary technologies that have never been included in industrial or research roadmaps are well accepted. Actually, risk is well accepted.

Thus, just to cite the last slide: “keep calm and prepare your proposal”.

Scientific research: Italy calls Europe

redazione — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 12:53:00 +0100

Introduction

Who and how many are the protagonists of Italian research in Europe? Scienceonthenet aims at defining the geography of Italian research by analysing the data of the 7^th Framework Programme of the European Commission, available up-to-date. The database Italian Research Map (IRM) collects the data relative to FP7 projects to which more than 2,000 Italian contractors participated, up to Devember 2013. Possible limits and incompletenesses should be referred to the official source.

Programme	Total projects	Projects to which Italy participates	Percentage of participation	Coordinated projects (% on implemented projects)
FP7-COH	25	4	16,0	25,0%
FP7-COORDINATION	1	0	.. %	..%
FP7-ENERGY	331	151	45,6	25,2%
FP7-ENVIRONMENT	469	251	53,5	17,1%
FP7-EURATOM-FISSION	133	61	45,9	11,5%
FP7-EURATOM-FUSION	4	2	50,0	..%
FP7-GA	25	6	24,0	16,7%
FP7-HEALTH	995	465	46,7	17,8%
FP7-ICT	2205	1109	50,3	26,6%
FP7-IDEAS-ERC	3877	237	6,1	89,9%
FP7-INCO	150	70	46,7	12,9%
FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES	338	222	65,7	19,4%
FP7-JTI	542	150	27,7	39,3%
FP7-KBBE	477	297	62,3	12,5%
FP7-NMP	805	484	60,1	19,6%
FP7-PEOPLE	9615	918	9,5	61,2%
FP7-REGIONS	79	30	38,0	20,0%
FP7-REGPOT	195	14	7,2	50,0%
FP7-SECURITY	247	139	56,3	24,5%
FP7-SIS	166	89	53,6	25,8%
FP7-SME	936	392	41,9	25,0%
FP7-SPACE	211	101	47,9	22,8%
FP7-SSH	211	131	62,1	19,1%
FP7-TRANSPORT	615	351	57,1	18,5%
Totale	22652	5674	25,0	31,1

Limits and prospects of the study

The results we are presentig are still preliminary, based on the data provided by the European Commission . In this first release, we considered universities and research centres only, without looking in detail at departments and institutes.Besides, we did not considered for the moment the economic size of the projects, nor we normalised the amount of projects for every centre or university by the number of researchers or other parameters.These will be the next steps of the Italian Research Map project, that will be implemented by the portal Scienceonthenet by the end of this year, in order to provide a complete and accurate snapshot of the protagonists of Italian research and their connections in Europe. The dataset has been published at http://irm.scienceonthenet.eu

European countries by comparison

The 173 Countries admitted to FP7 research programme hold more than 100,000 project partecipations altogether. Contractors at the first 20 places in the ranking boast more then 1,000 participations each and they are all UE Members except Israel, the only non-European Country in the top20, with 1,786 participations to FP7 projects. In this picture, the first relevant data for Italy is its position in respect to other bigs of European research. With 10,619 participations, about 10% of the total, Italy gains the 4th place after Germany, United Kingdom and France and before Spain. These five countries cover altogher almost 50% of the total amount of projects. Italy is then well positioned, even though among the lower places in the top ranking, and quite close to France.


Countries by amount of participations
Country	Participations
Germania	16.164
Regno Unito	15.442
Francia	11.181
Italia	10.619
Spagna	9833
Paesi Bassi	7027
Belgio	5124
Svezia	4016
Svizzera	3966
Grecia	3335
Austria	3068
Danimarca	2438
Finlandia	2300
Portogallo	2038
Polonia	2011
Norvegia	1913
Israele	1786
Irlanda	1735
Ungheria	1451
Rep. Ceca Rep.	1290


Countries by amount of projects coordinated
Country	Projects coordinated
Regno Unito	4.441
Germania	2.828
Francia	2.377
Spagna	2.112
Italia	1.767
Paesi Bassi	1.440
Svizzera	911
Belgio	846
Israele	702
Svezia	656
Grecia	623
Austria	615
Danimarca	441
Irlanda	402
Finlandia	321
Norvegia	318
Portogallo	300
Turchia	263
Polonia	223
Ungheria	197
Rep. Ceca Rep.	106

Nations’ weight by themes

Fourth in participation, Italy is however better positioned in regards to some of the 24 significant themes, such as ICT, Space and Environment, where it gains the third place behind Germany and United Kingdom, and Regions and JTI , where it is even first and second, respectively.


Programme	Germany	UK	France	Italy	Spain
FP7-COH	4	16	8	6	10
FP7-COORDINATION	1	0	0	0	0
FP7-ENERGY	506	318	311	305	327
FP7-ENVIRONMENT	803	779	477	508	458
FP7-EURATOM-FISSION	238	166	301	133	137
FP7-EURATOM-FUSION	8	7	6	5	5
FP7-GA	17	8	16	8	23
FP7-HEALTH	1.647	1.630	1.029	910	630
FP7-ICT	3.409	2.123	1.946	2.118	1.708
FP7-IDEAS-ERC	644	1026	549	284	240
FP7-INCO	108	33	115	94	63
FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES	676	591	467	416	331
FP7-JTI	390	273	300	331	246
FP7-KBBE	755	758	592	572	569
FP7-NMP	1.806	1030	823	1059	1005
FP7-PEOPLE	1.983	3505	1.764	1.288	1.526
FP7-REGIONS	91	62	63	100	100
FP7-REGPOT	11	3	18	18	28
FP7-SECURITY	307	327	335	321	254
FP7-SIS	143	182	105	121	95
FP7-SME	844	1227	431	771	1251
FP7-SPACE	267	217	272	233	150
FP7-SSH	223	290	145	190	110
FP7-TRANSPORT	1.283	871	1.108	828	567

Italian comparison

On about 2,300 Italian contractors admitted to FP7, the top ranking goes, as expected, to the most important universities and research centres, like CNR (National Research Council, at the first place), FIAT Research Centre, ENEA, Agency for the Promotion of Research in Europe (APRE), D’Appolonia, Italian Istitute for Technology Foundation, STMicroelectronics and National Institute for Nuclear Physics. Not far behind, also the National Institute for Astrophysics.

The first five positions in the ranking of Italian contractors cover the 10% of projects. CNR, in particular, participates to a large part of FP7 Italian projects.

Italian organisations by amount of participations
Organisation	Participations
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche	631
Alma Mater Studiorum-universita Di Bologna	226
Politecnico Di Milano	221
Università Degli Studi Di Roma La Sapienza	186
Centro Ricerche Fiat Scpa	180
Politecnico Di Torino	176
Università Degli Studi Di Padova	172
Università Degli Studi Di Firenze	134
Università Di Pisa	130
Agenzia Nazionale Per Le Nuove Tecnologie, L'energia E Lo Sviluppo Economico Sostenibile (ENEA)	128
Università Degli Studi Di Milano	128
D'Appolonia Spa	108
Università Degli Studi Di Torino	103
Università Degli Studi Di Genova	101
Università Degli Studi Di Trento	96
Università Degli Studi Di Napoli Federico II	94
Agenzia Per La Promozione Della Ricerca Europea	91
Ospedale e Università San Raffaele	90
Istituto Nazionale Di Fisica Nucleare	85
Università Degli Studi Di Roma Tor Vergata	84
Stmicroelectronics Srl	81
Fondazione Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia	80
Istituto Superiore Di Sanità	75

It is also very interesting to examine the contractors with at least 10 projects, positioned in the middle of the ranking, and discover that small and big research centres are more numerous than universities, whilst below 10 projects it is interesting to observe the quantity of small-medium companies that managed to grab European projects: these data draw a significant map of Italian innovation and knowledge that, if adequately supported by the public administration, might aim at achieving even better results for Horizon 2020 (see list in the Appendix).

Ordering the European organisations by participations, CNR ranks at the fourth place among those with more than 200 participations each.


European organisations by amount of participations (at least 200)
Organisation	Participations
CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE	1.401
FRAUNHOFER-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FOERDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG E.V	1.042
THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE	650
CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE	631
THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD	623
MAX PLANCK GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FOERDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN E.V.	617
IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE	585
AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS	583
COMMISSARIAT A L’ENERGIE ATOMIQUE ET AUX ENERGIES ALTERNATIVES	518
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON	518
KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN	501
ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE	468
DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUER LUFT - UND RAUMFAHRT EV	377
INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE (INSERM)	370
DANMARKS TEKNISKE UNIVERSITET	361
NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK - TNO	353
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH	352
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT	351
TEKNOLOGIAN TUTKIMUSKESKUS VTT	348
THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER	343
KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET	302
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON	298
FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION	291
KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN	289
LUNDS UNIVERSITET	287
KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FUER TECHNOLOGIE	279
THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM	279
JRC -JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE- EUROPEAN COMMISSION	269
STICHTING DIENST LANDBOUWKUNDIG ONDERZOEK	269
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD	269
UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL	266
THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM	259
UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS	247
FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY HELLAS	246
KING’S COLLEGE LONDON	246
UNIVERSITEIT GENT	246
EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZURICH	245
INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE AGRONOMIQUE	243
AARHUS UNIVERSITET	241
CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLA AB	240
UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID	240
EIDGENÖSSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZÜRICH	233
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN	233
UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT	232
THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM.	231
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM-UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA	226
UPPSALA UNIVERSITET	226
UNIVERSITAET STUTTGART	222
POLITECNICO DI MILANO	221
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE	220
RHEINISCH-WESTFAELISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE AACHEN	218
HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO	215
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN	215
UNIVERSITAET ZUERICH	215
STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT	214
INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE EN INFORMATIQUE ET EN AUTOMATIQUE	213
UNIVERSITE DE GENEVE	213

Who participates? Which projects?

It is also interesting to estimate the most covered themes (see Appendix) by Italian contractors, such as ICT, People, Health, Transport, Environment (except Euratom-Fission, on nuclear fission, where our centres are tail-end).

ICT
For the ICT theme, CNR, Politecnico of Milan and Turin, other universities, STMicroelectronics, Telecom and FIAT Research Centre establish themselves very well. Besides, some non-academic contractors stand out too, such as Bruno Kessler Foundation, Txt, HP srl, Alcatel.


Organisation	Participations
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche	127
Politecnico Di Milano	74
Stmicroelectronics Srl	59
Telecom Italia Spa	52
Centro Ricerche Fiat Scpa	50
Università Degli Studi Di Trento	45
Politecnico Di Torino	44
Alma Mater Studiorum-universita Di Bologna	43
Scuola Superiore Di Studi Universitàri E Di Perfezionamento Sant’anna	42
Fondazione Bruno Kessler	42
Università Degli Studi Di Roma La Sapienza	40
Engineering - Ingegneria Informatica Spa	39
Università Di Pisa	37
Fondazione Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia	35
Università Degli Studi Di Padova	30
Università Degli Studi Di Genova	27
Create-net (center For Research And Telecommunication Experimentation For Networked Communities)	26
Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario Per Le Telecomunicazioni	23
Txt E-solutions Spa	18

Health
In regards to the theme Health, research projects are mostly distributed in the cities of Northen Italy, with several universities, CNR and those institutes involved in medical research by nature and vocation: Italian National Heath Institute (Istituto superiore di sanità), San Raffaele, Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, Telethon Foundation. Bruno Kessler Foundation and Italian Institute for Technology are once again well positioned.


Organisation	Participations
Ospedale e Università San Raffaele	43
Istituto Superiore Di Sanità	38
Università Degli Studi Di Torino	25
Università Degli Studi Di Milano	24
Università Degli Studi Di Padova	21
Università Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore	21
Istituto Di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri	21
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche	21
Università Degli Studi Di Siena	20
Università Degli Studi Di Firenze	20
Università Degli Studi Di Roma La Sapienza	18
Alma Mater Studiorum-universita Di Bologna	17
Università Degli Studi Di Roma Tor Vergata	14
Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesu	13
Fondazione Telethon	13
Alta Ricerca E Sviluppo In Biotecnologie Srlu	13
Università Degli Studi Di Verona	12
Cf Consulting Finanziamenti Unione Europea Srl	12

Environment
The picture slightly changes for the environmental sector of FP7 projects: besides CNR in first position, non-academic centres now gain the top positions for participations – linked to environmental and energetic themes – such as the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Changes, ENEA, Amra to which follow La Sapienza, Alma mater Bologna, Padova, Tuscia e Firenze as the best positioned universities.
In this case, besides the small and medium industry research, in the second part of the ranking we can find ARPA Agencies, council and provincial institutions, absent in other themes.


Organisation	Participations
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche	60
Centro Euro-mediterraneo Sui Cambiamenti Climatici Scarl	20
Università Degli Studi Di Roma La Sapienza	14
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei	14
Alma Mater Studiorum-universita Di Bologna	11
Università Degli Studi Di Padova	10
Istituto Nazionale Di Geofisica E Vulcanologia	10
Amra - Analisi E Monitoraggio Del R Ischio Ambientale Scarl	10
Agenzia Nazionale Per Le Nuove Tecnologie, L’energia E Lo Sviluppo Economico Sostenibile (ENEA)	10
Università Degli Studi Di Firenze	8

IDEAS-ERC
Italian participation is very low in the important programme IDEAS-ERC dedicaded to basic research.


Organisation	Participations
Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche	23
Università Degli Studi Di Roma La Sapienza	14
Università Degli Studi Di Roma Tor Vergata	13
Università Degli Studi Di Padova	12
Università Commerciale ‘Luigi Bocconi’	12
Università Degli Studi Di Trento	10
Ospedale e Università San Raffaele	10
Alma Mater Studiorum-Università Di Bologna	10

Italian regions and cities

Let us now consider the regions to which contractors belong. For all themes, the regions with the highest presence in the top five positions are Lazio, Lombardy, Liguria, Piedmont, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. Lazio displays the highest number of top positions (more than 10 on 24 themes) also because CNR and other research centres have their legal residence in Rome, despite having numerous other institutes in other Italian Regions, which were not considered by the EU statistics. Puglia, Campania, Sicily, Trentino-Alto Adige and Umbria follow and sometimes appear within the top regions (for example Campania for Transport and JTI; Puglia for Space and Environment). Despite the firm prevalence of Northen Regions, the presence of some virtuos regional cases is particularly clear for the themes Environment, Energy, Infrastructure, People, Region. It is therefore possible to hypothise that territitory characteristics might favour specific vocations in universities and research centres. For the theme Health, Lombardy overtakes Lazio, despite the bias previously discussed for this region.


Infrastructures: participations by region
Region	Participation
Lazio	232
Lombardia	33
Friuli-Venezia Giulia	28
Toscana	25
Emilia-Romagna	24
Liguria	12
Piemonte	11
Campania	10
Veneto	10
Sicilia	7
Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol	7


ICT: participations by region
Region	Participations
Lazio	455
Lombardia	438
Piemonte	234
Toscana	229
Emilia-Romagna	198
Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol	139
Liguria	118
Veneto	99
Campania	47
Friuli-Venezia Giulia	41


Health: participations by region
Region	Participations
Lombardia	291
Lazio	172
Toscana	110
Veneto	68
Emilia-Romagna	55
Piemonte	45
Liguria	29
Campania	27
Friuli-Venezia Giulia	23
Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol	17
Puglia	15

Another interesting data concern concentrations by city: Rome and Milan have the highest participation rate.


Cities	Participations
Roma	2.533
Milano	1.336
Torino	602
Genova	514
Bologna	363
Pisa	289
Firenze	276
Padova	234

The European Commission data allow to highlight the peculiarity of Milan that, despite having 1,000 less participations than Rome (due to the already mentioned presence of the legal residence of research centres), is among the ten European cities with the most projects, after Paris, London, almost equal to Berlin and just before Zurich – and without including the contribute of Milan branch of CNR and other national centres (for further discussions on Milan data please consult the first part of the IRM database).

ICT, Health, People, NMP, Transport are the first themes for Milan, exacly as for Berlin (with the same participation distribution) and Zurich, where on the other side the presence of IDEAS-ERC is stronger than Transport.
But also Munich has a particular connection with Italian research: on the whole German territory (Germany is the country where Italy has the highest number of partnerships, abour 8,000) the Fraunhofer Institute in Munich holds more than 500 participations with Italy, and the Max Plank Institute about 200.

IRM project’s next steps

The projet Italian Research Map by Scienceonthenet aims at drawing a map of Italian research in Europe. The next steps will analyse single institutes and departments in detail, describe temporal trends, normalise the data by parameters that allow the correct performance-evaluation of the contractors, report in maps and data visualisation the European collaboration network for straightforward interpretations.

IRM’s ultimate goal is, from one side, to become the thermometer of Italian research internationalisation, allowing reinforcement strategies to be based upon solid knowledge of present situations and, from the other side, to offer valid guidance to Italian and foreigner contractors when choosing the right parner.

The portal scienceonthenet.eu, by Gruppo 2003 and Zadig, in collaboration with CNR and with the support of MIUR, aims at disseminating the results of Italian research at European level. Data analysis and visualisation of Italian research’s quality and quantity are among the principal characteristics of the project.

FP7 themes

ENERGYCOH (Support to the coherent development of research policies)
COORDINATION (Coordination of Research Activities)
Environment
EURATOM-FISSION
EURATOM-FUSION
HEALTHICT (Information and Communication Technologies)
IDEAS-ERC (European Research Council)INCO (International cooperation)
INFRASTRUCTURES
KBBE (European Knowledge Based Bio-Economy)
PEOPLE
REGIONS
SECURITY
SIS (Science in Society)
SME (Research for the benefit of SMEs)
SSH (Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities)
TRANSPORT

Analysis are based on CORDIS data, updated at December 2013. CORDIS dataset contains some imprecisions, which have been reduced with a further elaboration, although their absence cannot be excluded. Data correction is still ongoing, to inform about mistakes write to: irm@scienceonthenet.eu

irm.scienceonthenet.eu database is based on CORDIS data, updated at September 2013. A further update is planned during the course of 2014. Data analysis
Francesco Aiello, Michele Bellone, Luca Carra, Sergio Cima, Marco Milano

Data visualisation
 Emanuele Conti, Carlo Toccaceli Blasi

Developer www.irm.scienceonthenet.eu
 Paolo Griselli

We thank the European Commission and the CORDIS database.

Scienza in rete

My Portrait of Anthony Fauci

Italy and Cuba: the right to health is a common founding principle

Cuba

120 Family Doctor Plan

Italy

Community Homes

Italy and Cuba

Cuba: Now it’s time to go

The same impacts of a war

Know how to do it, but can’t

Dramatic contradictions

University Admissions and Talent in China: What Can Italy Learn?

Historical Roots

Today’s Gaokao System

What Does a High Gaokao Score Mean?

What About Italy?

But Are There Side Effects of High-Intensity Exams?

Beyond the Gaokao: China’s “Youth Classes”

Two Extremes: Jack Ma vs. Liang Wenfeng

Italy’s Political Elites: An Alarming Picture

Conclusion: The Future of Talent in China and Italy?

Karen Hallberg, on peace and science

Europe’s Freedom of Research: €100 Billion for ReBrain Europe

AI Agents as assistants in scientific research

AI-based Research Agents: Agent Laboratory

AgentRxiv: Towards Autonomous Collaborative Research

AI Scientist-v2 and AI Co-Scientist

Empirical Benefits of AI Agent Collaboration

President Trump reshapes US research landscape

Energy and climate: a paradigm shift

Reorganisation of scientific agencies

Horizontal measures and impact on research

The Log and the Speck: The True Causes of Wildfires and Floods

The Acceleration of Climate Change

Obstacles to Political Decisions

Individual Actions

No, the wildfires in California are not "ideological"

Ideological Nature

Ideological Climate

Discovered a New Carbon-Carbon Chemical Bond

Why have neural networks won the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry?

Learning from data

Toward modern neural networks

Scienza in rete Newsletter

Neural networks for science

Why science cannot prove the existence of God

Some Coordinates

Scientific Proof is Not Suitable for Theology

Mathematical Demonstrations

Scientific Proofs

The Rejection of Chance

Improbability: Use with Caution

References

How far has scientific culture come in Italy in the last twenty years?

"We did not do a good job in explaining how flexible biology can be, " interview with Frans de Waal

Is 1.5 degrees still a realistic goal?

COP28: It's Up to the Oil Tycoon to Say Goodbye to Fossils

The Commitments

Let’s leave with a transition away, not a phase out

Lunar Goals

Approved the law for the restoration of European nature, but it's a half victory

The Indi Gregory case: some questions for reflection

Responsibility for the damages caused by climate change and attribution science

The path to recognizing the damage

The attribution science

The embarrassing Covid

Neanderthal genes made Covid more severe

The genes responsible for 15% of deaths in the province of Bergamo

Confirmed the relationship between Covid severity and Neanderthal genes

We cannot archive Covid-19 yet

Europe votes on the new air quality directive

Stricter limits to reduce health and environmental damage

The new limits

Who opposes the new directive’s more ambitious political options?

Mission impossible? It doesn’t seem so

The case of the Po Valley

Notes

These are: particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM₁₀), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂, including NOx), ozone (O₃), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), benzene (C₆H₆), benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni).

Healthy Lungs for Life: lung health starts with clean air

These are: particulate matter (PM_2.5 and PM₁₀), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂, including NO_x), ozone (O₃), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), benzene (C₆H₆), benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), nickel (Ni).