Research News

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

Europe’s energy crisis hits researchers

Universities, super computers and accelerator centres struggle with surging gas and electricity prices.

Surging energy prices are hitting Europe hard—and it’s not just households that are feeling the pain. Institutes that operate energy-hungry supercomputers, accelerators, and laser beamlines are also struggling—and they may be coal mine canaries for the rest of science. If prices continue to soar this fall and winter, “The impact for science is going to be significant,” says Martin Freer, a nuclear physicist who directs the University of Birmingham’s energy institute.

The primary cause of the crisis is a rebound from an economic slowdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Power generators that had been shut down could not ramp up in time to meet renewed demand, says Jonathan Stern, who studies natural gas at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February worsened the situation. Both European sanctions and Russian retaliation crimped supplies of Russian natural gas, which powers electric generators and heats buildings, pushing continental European gas prices to more than 10 times their average historical values.

Early science casualties came in January, even before the Ukraine war, when Lumius, an energy contractor in the Czech Republic, declared bankruptcy, forcing many of the country’s universities and research facilities to buy energy at much higher prices from the region’s main supplier. IT4Innovations, a national supercomputing centre, was compelled to run Karolina, its most powerful supercomputer, at one-third of its capacity—creating delays for the 1500 users who used it for climate modelling and drug discovery. ELI Beamlines, a Czech facility that hosts high-power laser beams, had to shut down operations for a few weeks.

By May, the Czech government had agreed to bail out both facilities until the end of 2023, but their fate beyond that point remains uncertain. Roman Hvězda, ELI Beamlines deputy director, worries the government will declare a state of emergency, which could restrict the gas supply that the facility needs to heat its buildings. But the electricity that powers the beamlines themselves is the bigger concern. If supplies are restricted, the facility may have to shut down again, for up to 6 months—which would not only curtail ongoing experiments for hundreds of users, but also delay calls for future ones, he says. “So, you’re effectively losing not 6 months, but maybe 12, maybe even 18 months.”

There’s a similar concern at DESY, Germany’s largest accelerator centre. The centre has bought enough energy in advance to last into 2023, but DESY might not be able to use those supplies if the German government imposes national energy restrictions, says Wim Leemans, who leads DESY’s accelerator programs. Leemans says DESY is exploring options to run its machines at lower energies. For example, it might turn down its synchrotron, a circular particle accelerator that produces bright x-rays for imaging proteins and materials, so that it generates only lower energy

Post BREXIT Britain is becoming less attractive to talented international researchers

With the UK planning to increase R&D spending, questions are being asked about how to attract more people with advanced skills in science, technology, engineering and maths.

The UK government’s plan to increase R&D spending requires a skilled workforce which its universities and research institutes will struggle to assemble, expert witnesses told the House of Lords’ science and technology committee today. “The attractiveness of the UK as a destination for scientists might have decreased in recent years,” said Maggie Dallman, vice president for international affairs and associate provost for academic partnerships at Imperial College London. In a strategy published in March, the UK government renewed its commitment to reaching a public and private R&D spending target of 2.4% of GDP by 2027, in a new five-year strategy.

The strategy says the UK needs to “grow and diversify” its R&D workforce by 150,000 people over the next eight years. Harry Anderson, policy manager at Universities UK, which represents 140 institutions, told the committee the government has not provided any details about how it plans to do this. “My question is, are we actually on that trajectory? How are we going to meet those targets?” he said. Plans for establishing new international science links after breaking away from the EU have not been very successful do date. A visa scheme that aimed to attract leading scientists from around the world has failed to attract applicants. The subtext is that the UK’s reputation as an international science and technology hub has been damaged by the government’s post-Brexit stance on immigration.

Ottoline Leyser, CEO of UK Research and Innovation, the main public funding agency, said the government should give a stronger indication of its political and financial commitment to research and innovation. “It’s absolutely critical that the UK signals really clearly and loudly, with long term commitments from a funding point of view, its intention to drive up research and innovation, investment and opportunity right across the UK economy,” Leyser said. The hearing took place as Liz Truss was being appointed as the UK’s new prime minister. In her previous posting of foreign secretary, she last month announced legal proceedings against the EU for blocking its membership of the €95.5 billion research programme, Horizon Europe, in a move which move could set the scene for an increasingly heated dispute over EU-UK science cooperation.

Universities and research institutions are having a hard time getting suitable candidates from abroad partly because the UK’s visa system is costly for researchers hired on longer term contracts who want to bring their families with them. As a result, academics have started “asking for shorter contracts,” said Anderson. He gave the example of a Turkish academic who was planning a move to the UK but the upfront cost including the visa, accounted for as much as ten times their salary in Turkey. Some universities do have loan repayment schemes to help cover these costs, but that option is not available everywhere. “I think that’s a real challenge and a real barrier,” Anderson said.

“soft” x-rays. That way it could continue to serve some users, he says. However, DESY’s two large linear accelerators, used to produce laserlike pulses of x-ray light, would need to be shut down completely if the restrictions are severe. They rely on superconducting magnets that need constant power-hungry cryogenic cooling. It can’t be turned down, Leemans says. “We cannot say, ‘Well, we’re only going to run some parts of the machine.’”

Reducing operations would hurt important research, Leemans says. During the pandemic, vaccine maker BioNTech used DESY’s x-ray facilities to reveal the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how it uses its surface protein, spike, to dock on human cells. Other DESY researchers study materials used in solar panels and batteries. “It will have ramifications for slowing down innovations, right at the moment when we need them the most,” Leemans says. Big legacy machines may be hard to restart after a shutdown, adds AnkeSusanne Müller, who heads accelerator physics and technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Turning off vacuums may damage delicate systems, stopping the flow of water in cooling systems may cause corrosion, and older control electronics might not turn on again. “If you suddenly switch a component off, they might not easily come back,” she says.

CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, in Switzerland, is also nervously watching the energy crisis unfold. The organization purchases energy from the French grid years in advance, but now the concern is supply. “For this autumn, it is not a price issue, it’s an availability issue,” says Serge Claudet, CERN’s energy coordinator. CERN uses 1.3 terawatt-hours of energy annually, roughly the equivalent of 250,000 households. French energy authorities might order CERN to not operate at times when the electric grid is least stable–typically mornings and evenings. Depending on the frequency of these requests, CERN’s data output could significantly decrease, Claudet says. He says CERN may have to shut down smaller accelerators in order to fulfil its top priority: maintaining operations for the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful accelerator.

Even with energy procured for the short term, Claudet says CERN’s budgets will be stretched to buy energy for the coming years at such high prices. “This is a financial concern because the energy prices on the market are very high, up to 10 times higher,” he says. Stern predicts it will take at least 2 years for prices to fall to typical levels. Meanwhile, peak prices will depend on the severity of Europe’s winter and whether Asian countries bid against Europe for global supplies of liquid natural gas. Stern says it’s unclear whether governments will keep research labs afloat, or prioritize aiding industrial companies. Smaller research laboratories in universities may be left to fend for themselves, he says.

That could have real-world consequences, Freer warns. He gives the example of accelerators at Birmingham that produce isotopes used in medical imaging—programs that would either need to be suspended, run at a loss, or run with their costs passed down to local hospitals. “It’s going to be a challenging time to get through,” he says. “It may mean, like with COVID, there will be a hiatus in science programs.”

The risk to academic freedom in Eastern Europe

Polish and Hungarian academics have raised concerns over academic freedom, as controls over universities and research institutes are further tightened.

Researchers in Hungary and Poland are continuing to decry curbs on academic freedom, as alarm bells sound about increasing restrictions on universities across the EU. Hungary is viewed as the most extreme case of an EU member state limiting academic freedom, as highlighted in the 2018 ruling by the European Court of Justice that the government violated EU law when the Central European University (CEU) was pressured into moving from Budapest to Vienna. The situation in Poland is seen as less acute, but the conservative government has been accused of leaning on academic institutions to drop courses and research that are critical of government policies.

According to the latest edition of the Academic Freedom Index, published in March 2022 by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität ErlangenNürnberg, academic freedom has declined substantially in Hungary and Poland. But while these two are singled out as the worst examples, members of the European Parliament and university representatives are concerned about creeping restrictions across Europe as a whole.

Limitations on academic freedom can take many forms, from selfcensorship of individual academics to government interventions in the operations of academic institutions. Earlier this year, German MEP Christian Ehler said a decision by Humboldt University Berlin to cancel a lecture by biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht is another example of universities not defending their staff against activists. Meanwhile, in Romania, a hotly contested new higher education law could allow rectors to hold more than two mandates. In 2020, EU research ministers signed the Bonn declaration on academic freedom, a document that proposed the establishment of a monitoring system on academic freedom in Europe. But MEPs want to go further and are calling for academic freedom to be enshrined in EU treaties, meaning governments could be held to account for limiting university autonomy and freedom to do research. Liviu Matei, former provost of CEU, and since March this year professor of higher education and public policy at King’s College London, says Hungary is by far the worst in the EU in terms of curbs on academic freedom and university autonomy. “In fact, it might be as bad, if not worse, than countries ‘officially’ recognised as undemocratic, like Turkey or Russia.

According to the 2021 law, the new foundations are to be managed by government appointees and to receive public funds. Eva Fodor, professor of gender studies at CEU said all members of foundation boards are loyal to the government. “They have full control over the universities and replaced legitimate university bodies, such as the university senates,” she said. Universities led by public-private foundations may appear independent, but in fact are not independent at all, Fodor said. Fodor believes the European Commission is unlikely to take a stand on the issue because the reform does not breach any EU laws. “On paper, a kind of university governed by the board is fine, except that this is a board of political loyalists,” she said. Hungary has C status on the Academic Freedom Index, below Guinea and Ethiopia and just above India. This is much lower than Poland, which is ranked A. However, academic freedom in the country has been declining in recent years, a downward trend that started in 2015 when the ruling party Law and Justice won power, according to the index

Marcin Pałys, former rector of the University of Warsaw, says academic freedom in Poland is in relatively good health but not stable in the longer run. There have been cases of pressure being exerted on academic institutions to refrain from activities that are critical of government policies. As one case in point, in October 2020 education minister Przemysław Czarnek criticised universities that cancelled classes to allow students to join protests against Poland’s ban on abortions. Czarnek pointed to his authority to distribute funding for grants and said he would take universities’ actions into account when doing so.

Pałys says such cases undermine public trust that the political authorities accept the idea of academic freedom and that they are going to uphold it. In addition, Pałys, claims the government limits academic freedom by politicising the funding decisions of government agencies, especially in the social sciences. “Those agencies are getting more dependent on decisions of the minister, mainly through the change of leadership and appointing to the leading functions people that are well-linked to the government,” he said.

The government denies any attempts to limit the autonomy of science. On the contrary, a spokeswoman for the ministry of education said in a statement that the government passed a law last year to counteract threats to the freedom of teaching and research.

The argument for this new law was that there were violations of freedom of expression in universities which needed to be addressed.

EU issues a new plan to nurture ‘deep tech’ and other innovation

European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel outlines the goal of this new agenda.

Innovation is critical to navigate the twin green and digital transitions and to secure the EU’s strategic autonomy. The New European Innovation Agenda, adopted by the Commission in July, aims to unlock Europe’s innovation potential, and ensure its leading role on the global innovation scene, so that it becomes a place where deep tech innovation creates cutting-edge solutions across the continent. This is the result of close cooperation with our stakeholders – innovators – who are willing and able to lead the new wave of innovation: “deep tech innovation”, based on substantial scientific or engineering challenges. They are telling the world that Europe has the competitive advantages to become the global powerhouse for deep tech innovations and start-ups for the next generation of researchers, founders, and innovators to create and scale-up in Europe.

The New European Innovation Agenda emphasises our determination to seek solutions to the most pressing societal and economic challenges. Its economic, business, and social impact will be felt everywhere because deep tech ventures aim to provide tangible solutions to our most complex challenges.

Successful deep tech ventures use a mix of talents to tackle a challenge, including scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs. They are at the centre of a complex innovation ecosystem that also includes governments, academic institutions, venture capital and big enterprises. In 2020, the team of BioNTech and Pfizer brought the first COVID-19 vaccine from genetic sequence to market in less than a year, demonstrating the strength of this ecosystem. Even while these companies accomplished remarkable achievements at an unprecedented rate, they benefited from the efforts of numerous others in the ecosystem.

As shown by the fact that 97% of deep tech ventures contribute to at least one of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, their focus is on deep, fundamental challenges. This is why they are called ‘deep’ innovations. Typically, they generate physical goods rather than software. In fact, 83% of deep tech start-ups are developing physical items. They are transforming the innovation equation from bits to atoms, bringing data and computational power into the physical world.

The New European Innovation Agenda represents a significant advancement in the innovation ecosystem of Europe. It makes it possible for the EU to act decisively with five “flagship” initiatives, made up of 25 concrete actions. The first flagship initiative concentrates on attracting private institutional investors to build welldeveloped financial and capital markets by expanding the European Scale-Up Action for Risk Capital (ESCALAR), proposing a Listings Act, and implementing specific measures to support women investors.

The second flagship is focused on supporting deep tech innovation through experimentation spaces and public procurement. Experimentation facilities at universities could be utilised in collaboration with deep tech start-ups. The proposed regulatory sandboxes will help the EU to keep up with the rapid evolution of technology, allowing deep tech breakthroughs to be evaluated and then marketed in the EU.

The third flagship aims to accelerate and strengthen innovation in a genuine pan-European innovation ecosystem across the EU, as well as bridge the innovation gap. It will establish and connect regional deep-tech innovation valleys in up to 100 regions, establish Innospace as a one-stop shop for all European innovation ecosystem players, double the number of hydrogen valleys in the European Union, as well as launch Scaleup 100 initiative to help the 100 most promising deep-tech start-ups become “unicorns”, a term for innovative ventures each worth more than $1 billion.

The fourth flagship initiative ensures the development and movement of vital deep technology talent inside and to the EU. It will develop one million high-tech experts in fields such as new materials, batteries, synthetic biology, aerospace, and quantum. It will support female entrepreneurship and attract global talent through an innovative matching tool. In addition, new mechanisms, such as the European Network of Innovative Higher Education Institutions, which was recently launched at the Education and Innovation Summit, will be used to ensure close ties between education and innovation.

The last flagship effort focuses on the production and utilisation of comprehensive, comparable data sets and a common data repository that may inform EU-wide policies at all levels. The initiative will also develop European definitions for startup, scale-up, and deeptech innovation. We are looking for close cooperation between the Commission and the member states so that European innovation takes a leading role in addressing present and future global challenges. This agenda is a call for action and we are determined to make it concrete.

We encourage all member states and regions to build on our proposals and work with the European Commission and stakeholders to mobilise investments, ensure favourable framework conditions and implement necessary reforms. We also invite universities, at the crossroads of research and innovation, to take an active role in its implementation, especially through the promotion of horizontal and entrepreneurial skills.

From our side, we will continue engaging innovators, entrepreneurs, and citizens more actively in the discussions, enabling them, promoting ideas, and being more responsive to societal demands. It is crucial that every region in Europe benefit from it. Only together will we be able to achieve the objectives of the New European Innovation Agenda for establishing a truly pan-European innovation ecosystem, where no one is left behind, by using Europe’s unique talents, intellectual assets, and industrial capabilities in a united effort.

Droughts in Europe this Summer have affected over half of European territory

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre have published the “Drought in Europe - July 2022” report, an assessment of Europe’s drought situation.

The drought in much of Europe is critical as the winter-spring precipitation deficit (19% of the 1991-2020 average across all warning areas in EU+UK, and 22% in areas under drought alert) was exacerbated by early heatwaves. River discharge in multiple countries is severely affected, with stored water volumes also depleted. Altogether, this may require extraordinary water and energy management measures to be taken in affected countries. The lack of precipitation means soil water content has reduced significantly. This has made it harder for plants to extract water from the soil, leading to widespread stress on vegetation — namely in the Italian lowlands, in southern, central and western France, in central Germany and eastern Hungary, Portugal and in northern Spain.

Multiple countries are exposed to very high drought levels. Water and heat stress are driving crop yields down from a previously already negative outlook for cereals and other crops. France, Romania, Spain, Portugal and Italy will need to deal with this reduced crop yield. Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia are also impacted. In Italy, the Po River basin is facing the highest level of drought severity . Drought emergency has been declared in five Italian regions and insufficient water availability has led to multiple use restrictions across municipalities. Similar measures to restrict water use have been taken in France. The situation is also difficult across the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, volumes of water stored in reservoirs are currently 31% lower than the 10-year average. In Portugal, hydroelectric energy stored in water reservoirs is at half the average of the previous seven years. Both countries are experiencing conditions conducive to wildfires.

Energy production from run-of-river plants until the beginning of July was lower than the 2015-2021 average for many European countries, notably in Italy (-5039 GWh compared to the average), France (-3930 GWh) and Portugal (-2244 GWh). The same decrease is true for hydropower reservoir levels, affecting countries such as Norway, Spain, Romania, Montenegro and Bulgaria, among others. This lack of water is also reducing or suspending hydroelectric and thermoelectric power production operations across countries. In summary, drought conditions and water scarcity are affecting energy production and reducing crop yield.

The unfavourable forecasts for the coming months may compromise the water supply and will likely keep the competition for this resource high. Integrated water resources management in line with the water acquis is vital in ensuring sustainable quantity of good quality water for all water users and the environment in a given river basin. While drought mitigation strategies are of the utmost importance now, so is tackling the root cause of the problem: climate change and its disruption of the planet’s water cycle. Further efforts are needed also for preventively adapting to the changing weather patterns by climate-proofing energy supply and applying sustainable solutions in agriculture.

The 31,000 year-old-skeleton discovered in a cave in East Kalimantan, Borneo Indonesia, is photographed at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, Sept. 1, 2022. Credit: Tim Maloney/Griffith University via AP

Ancient Borneo skeleton indicates amputation surgery 31,000 years ago

Scientists reveal the patient survived another six to nine years after the operation.

According to scientists, a skeleton found in a remote area of Borneo rewrites the history of ancient medicine and provides evidence that amputation surgery was successfully performed some 31,000 years ago. The earliest known amputation, a 7,000-year-old skeleton discovered in France, was previously thought to have only occurred in developed agricultural communities.

The discovery also implies that East Kalimantan in Indonesia’s modern province of the Stone Age hunter-gatherers had extensive medical knowledge of anatomy and wound care. Tim Maloney, a research fellow at Australia’s Griffith University and the project’s principal investigator, said the findings “rewrite our understanding of the development of this medical knowledge.”

The skeleton was discovered in 2020 in the massive Liang Tebo cave, which is famous for its 40,000-year-old wall paintings. Scientists painstakingly excavated sand to reveal an astonishingly well-preserved skeleton, which they did while being surrounded by bats, terns, and swiftlets and occasionally interrupted by scorpions. Only one conspicuous feature was absent: its left ankle and foot. The ankle and foot were likely purposefully removed because the base of the leg bone had an unusual form with knobbly regrowth over an apparent clean break.

A fall, animal assault, or injury from crushing would have resulted in bone fractures and healing that were different from what was observed in the skeleton’s leg. The skeleton is at least 31,000 years old and belonged to a human who passed away at roughly 20 years of age, according to a tooth and the surrounding silt. Based on the recovery of the leg bone, they appear to have survived the terrible trauma of amputation six to nine years after the procedure and did not experience any significant post-operative infections.