Winners of £50K Franklin research residencies announced
Three of the UK’s brightest life science companies have been awarded research prizes by the Rosalind Franklin Institute in collaboration with the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), a part of UKRI. These research prizes will enable the winners to benefit from the Franklin’s top-level technologies and support to move their work forward.
Winning biotech companies Neuro-Bio, Oxford Target Therapeutics and Hypha Discovery will each spend a residency of 12 weeks at the Rosalind Franklin Institute, allowing them to investigate, respectively, a potential early diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease, a promising therapy for Triple Negative Breast Cancer, and new technologies for determining the chemical structures of small drug metabolites.
Oxford Target Therapeutics plans to use the Franklin’s serial focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy to find out for the first time exactly how its treatment acts on a micromolecular level on both breast cancer cells and healthy cells. Victor Bolanos-Garcia, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, said: “Without this opportunity, we wouldn’t be able to fund the cost of this work ourselves as we have too many competing priorities. But it is instrumental for us, so the Franklin’s offer of funding and expertise will really fill a vital gap.” The results of the research will help the company plan more effective strategies to treat Triple Negative Breast Cancer, one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of the disease.
Neuro-Bio aims to measure how a peptide biomarker that may indicate pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease can be accurately detected from saliva samples. The company will use the Franklin’s liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) technology to analyse the biomarker, known as T-14. The project will allow them to see how the amounts of the peptide biomarker in saliva correspond to the different stages of the disease, by analysing hundreds of samples donated by patients living with Alzheimer’s. Sara Garcia Rates, Chief Scientific Officer of Neuro-Bio, said: “We’ve previously done a very limited pilot study in-house, but this work with the Franklin will allow us to validate the test, greatly increase our throughput and enable the quantification of T14. This transformational step will enable us to progress from a very lab-based project into something that doctors will be able to access, very much faster than we’d have been able to do otherwise.”
Professor Ben Davis, Interim Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, said: “The Franklin is tasked with creating advances which push forward life science. The creative challenges posed by these SMEs are a great testbed for our technologies – this creates a golden opportunity to explore new areas together and so provide the companies with the leaps in results they need to take their products to the next stage.”
The Franklin is the national institute developing disruptive new technologies designed to tackle major challenges in health and life sciences. Their inaugural SME (small and medium enterprise) competition aimed to make these technologies – and the expertise of the Franklin’s own scientists – available to smaller life science companies in the UK, to help them overcome a specific research challenge. The residency prizes, which include bench space, consumables and instrument time, are valued at between £30,000-£50,000. All intellectual property generated during the residency will remain with the individual companies.
The UKRI-STFC part funded the awards. Dr Barbara Ghinelli, Director, Innovation Clusters and Harwell Campus, UKRI-STFC, said: “We are delighted to support this programme at the Rosalind Franklin Institute, a core partner within the Health Tech Cluster at Harwell. Fostering collaboration and partnerships between world leading institutes and innovative businesses helps to drive forward science and innovation that will have a real impact. These exciting projects at the Franklin will nurture the development of tools and technologies in business that will have far-reaching impacts on people’s health and wellbeing in the UK and around the world.”
Benchtop NMR spectroscopy can accurately analyse pyrolysis oils
A team of researchers at Aston University has demonstrated that benchtop spectrometers are capable of analysing pyrolysis bio-oils just as well as far more expensive, high-field spectrometers.
Bio-oils resulting from the intense heating (pyrolysis) of industrial or agricultural by-products, are increasingly seen as potential alternatives to fossil fuels. But the stability and consequent treatment of these bio-oils depends entirely on their composition; and since they are often mixtures of many dozens, or hundreds, of different compounds, analysing such complex mixtures is not simple – or cheap.
Dr Robert Evans, Senior Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Aston University, explains: “The composition of any pyrolysis bio-oil is absolutely key to future use. For example if there are oxygen-containing chemicals in the oil, that will make the oil more corrosive and it will be more unstable. So in particular we need to know if carbonyl groups are present – where oxygen and carbon atoms are bonded together – as these can have a major impact.”
A leading method of analysis is high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which gives a detailed breakdown of the identity and concentration of chemical species present in any sample. However these large high-field NMR spectrometry machines cost in the range of £600,000-£10million and require a supply of expensive cryogens and solvents, so are generally only found in the very biggest research facilities.
The team at Aston, led by Dr Evans, set out to see if ‘low-field’, or benchtop, NMR spectrometers, could analyse pyrolysis oils well enough to produce the necessary detailed information. Benchtop NMR spectrometers use permanent magnets, which don’t require cryogenic cooling, so cost much less to purchase and maintain. However, using lower strength magnets comes at the cost of lower sensitivity and poorer resolution. While they can find some use as research instruments, they are also commonly found in teaching laboratories.
The study, carried out with collaborators at the University of Tennessee, tested pyrolysis oils produced from a number of different plants, and compared the results from benchtop spectrometers to both high-field spectrometers and other methods of analysis. They found that the benchtop machine estimates compared favourably with titration analysis for overall carbonyl content, as well as matching high-field spectrometry for the specific identification of carbonyl groups such as ketones, aldehydes and quinones.
Dr Evans said: “Despite the known limitations of benchtop spectrometers, a very similar quality of NMR data could be obtained for these samples, enough to accurately estimate concentrations of different classes of carbonyl-containing species. Using benchtop spectrometers will make NMR analysis of pyrolysis oils much simpler, cheaper, and more accessible to a wider range of different users.”
Quantitative Low-Field 19F NMR Analysis of Carbonyl Groups in Pyrolysis Oils is published online today in ChemSusChem, a journal of Chemistry Europe.
Cautious welcome to UK’s new Biomass Strategy
A group of bioenergy experts have welcomed the Government’s new UK Biomass Strategy, but say urgent action is now vital to shape its ambitions into deliverable policies.
Researchers at the Supergen Bioenergy Hub – led by Aston University – worked closely with government departments to provide scientific evidence to inform the strategy, which outlines the role biomass will play in supporting the UK’s transition to net zero and how this will be achieved.
Professor Patricia Thornley, who leads the Hub, says: “This is a comprehensive and considered biomass strategy that, rightly, places sustainability at the heart of UK bioenergy development. The challenge is now to produce actions that can deliver the sustainable system of biomass required to achieve net zero.”
Sustainability is a major theme within the new strategy. It includes a review of how existing sustainability policies could be improved, as well as a commitment to developing a cross-sectoral sustainability framework (subject to consultation) to ensure sustainability across the many different applications of biomass. This follows previous work led by Dr Mirjam Rӧder, Systems Topic Group Lead in the Supergen Bioenergy Hub, calling for harmonised sustainability standards across different biomass applications, which is referenced in the strategy.
Dr Rӧder says: “We need rigorous approaches to sustainability governance that go beyond emissions. Considering wider environmental, social and economic trade-offs is essential for true sustainability and building trust in bioenergy projects.”
The strategy considers the amount of biomass resource that might be available to the UK in the future, highlighting the importance of both imported and domestically produced biomass resources. Professor Thornley comments: “It is important that the strategy recognises the potential of imported as well as indigenous biomass in achieving global greenhouse gas reductions. Sustainable systems should grow, convert and use biomass in the locations where they can deliver most impact, ensuring we take account of all supply chain emissions. We shouldn’t shy away from imports where the source is sustainable and the overall system makes environmental, economic and social sense.”
The strategy also considers how biomass should be prioritised across a variety of applications to best support the transition to net zero. Biomass applications ranging from transport fuels and hydrogen to domestic and industrial heating are recognised as important, but in the medium to long term the focus is on integration of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
BECCS is an emerging technology where the CO2 that may be released during the production and use of electricity, fuels or products derived from biomass is captured and stored, potentially resulting in negative emissions.
Professor Thornley comments: “The priority use framework outlined in the Biomass Strategy makes eminent sense. The UK (and the global energy system) needs carbon dioxide removals to deliver net zero. BECCS has an absolutely key role to play, as reflected in the strategy. Again, while this is encouraging to see, we must not underestimate the challenges of moving towards such a radically different system at scale.”
“Relying on future BECCS deployment alone to counterbalance the current excess of greenhouse gas emissions would not enable the full potential and benefits of BECCS. BECCS should be deployed alongside measures to transition away from the use of fossil fuels, not instead of them,” adds Dr Joanna Sparks, Biomass Policy Fellow at the Supergen Bioenergy Hub, who engaged closely with government departments as they developed the strategy.
Dr Sparks led an extensive policy engagement and knowledge transfer process to ensure that those developing the strategy had full access to the breadth and depth of UK scientific and engineering academic expertise, ensuring a robust, independent scientific base.
Professor Thornley believes continued engagement between policymakers, academics and the wider sector is vital in achieving the next steps in the delivery of the Government’s strategy. She says: “The key to successful long-term results is a close partnership between academia, industry and policy stakeholders so that we can anticipate problems and plan the pathways to success.”
Ukrainian employment remaining stable despite war, study finds
The jobs market in Ukraine has remained relatively stable despite a fall in GDP of almost 30% following the Russian invasion of the country in February 2022.
Researchers from the Universities of York and Birmingham analysed more than 5.4 million job listings to provide a real-time picture of fluctuations in employment opportunities in Ukraine – and for Ukrainians in Poland – since the escalation of the conflict.
The researchers hope that their model could provide useful information to help Ukraine rebuild its economy once the fighting is over, in the absence of official employment statistics during the war.
The data used in the study was sourced from the Jooble Ukraine job search website (ua.jooble.org), looking at job listings posted up to one year prior to the Russian invasion and eight months after. Jooble mainly shows vacancies in certain sectors, including IT, engineering, manufacturing and the service industry, but not the public sector.
The researchers used the data to analyse vacancies based in Ukraine and those based in Poland – which prior to the Russian invasion, would be targeting economic migrants, then refugees in the subsequent months.
They found that, while the number of jobs advertised in Ukraine remained stable, the majority were in the Western part of the country, furthest from the actual combat. They also found that after February 2022, the demand for soft and analytical skills rose in Ukraine, but wages dropped for posts at all levels.
Dr Tho Pham from the University of York explained: “Although you’d expect vacancies to all but dry up during times of conflict, our study has shown that isn’t the case. However, job adverts don’t mean new jobs are being created, simply that a role needs to be filled, such as if the previous worker was called up for armed service or the company has relocated further from the front line.”
In Poland, the number of vacancies targeting Ukrainians rose following the Russian invasion, with the largest increase in medium and high-skilled roles, as well as jobs targeting female applicants. However, wages for these positions fell. Compared to pre-war economic migrants, Ukrainian refugees are now being offered more lower-paid jobs, or lower wages for similar jobs.
Co-researcher Professor Oleksandr Talavera, from the University of Birmingham said: “While online vacancies don’t give the whole picture, they can give us an idea about the state of the economy, such as the shifts in the demand for skills and the impact of increased supply on wages. One advantage of online data is that it’s constantly updated, and so our findings can be continually updated as well.”
Dr Pham added: “Analysing online adverts could compensate for the lack of official statistics in the labour market in Ukraine, helping to understand the shifts in demand for different skills. We hope that the technique we have developed and the data it provides could be valuable when Ukraine eventually comes to rebuild its economy after the war has ended.”
The study, Labor Markets during War Time: Evidence from Online Job Ads is published in the Journal of comparative economics https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596723000550
Personal finances increasingly play second fiddle to personality, finds study
Personality has become a more important factor than finances when it comes to dating, a new study has found.
Researchers from the University of York and the University of Essex analysed more than a million lonely hearts ads and found that in the USA, France, and Canada, there was a sharp decline in economic factors when choosing a partner. However, finances remained an important issue in India when it came to relationships.
To see how partner preferences changed over time, the researchers analysed lonely hearts ads from various major news outlets from Canada, France, and India. They collected data from publications from 1950 to 1995, the year that most of these ads shifted to being online. Also, they also looked at ads from 41 regional newspapers from Canada and the USA in 1995.
The researchers analysed the language of these ads and categorised them into four distinct preferences.
The first of these was economic, which focused on a potential partner’s financial situation. The second was personality, which covered traits such as openness or extroversion. The third category was physical, in which ads expressed a preference for body types, and the final was taste, which covered issues like hobbies or habits.
This allowed the researchers to identify broader trends of how partner preferences changed over time in a range of countries.
The researchers found that between 1950 and 1995, personality played a much greater role in partner preference in Western countries, while economic factors declined in importance, particularly after the 1960s. However, in India, finances remained a key issue for people searching for love, becoming more prominent after 1970, while personality factors remained stable.
In the sample of ads from Canada and the USA, by 1995 around 40-45% of the words used by women to describe their ideal partner related to personality criteria. At the same time, only around 10% mentioned finances. Similarly, 35-40% of words in lonely hearts ads placed by men by 1995 focused on personality traits, while only 5% were related to economic factors.
The researchers found that up until the 1970s, the share of words relating to finances in Indian ads remained stable at around 35%, but after the 1970s this started to rise. By 1995, this had increased to around 60%.
There was some gender disparity in the data from the ads, with a greater rise in the importance of economic factors in ads placed by women than those placed by men.
Study co-author Khushboo Surana, from the University of York, said: “The data we have found supports Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs. In this framework, material needs – i.e. financial factors – have to be satisfied before you can focus on the immaterial ones, such as personality traits. It is possible that unlike in the west, people’s first order needs still haven’t been satisfied, which is why we see a focus on economic criteria.”
Co-researcher Quentin Lippmann, from the University of Essex, also argued that “Our study shows personality becoming more and more important in western countries such as the United States, but we don’t see the same trend in India. Once India’s economy develops further, and the current generation are more secure financially, they may show a change in preference for personality factors as well. This would align them with the trends we see in the western countries we sampled.”
This research is being presented today at the Royal Economic Society annual conference in Glasgow.
New study shows gap between rich and poor has increased more quickly in the US than in Europe
Wealth inequality in the United States has increased more quickly than in Europe in the last 50 years, partly due to significant rises in stock market prices, according to a new study from Imperial College Business School, published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.
They are calling for action to be taken by governments and policy makers in the US, to boost wages at the lower end of the market, control unemployment, and stabilise house prices.
Researchers from Imperial and the Paris School of Economics drew on new economic data from which they could build a database of the distribution of wealth for most European countries for the first time. This brought the data in line with the available US financial figures and allowed them to compare the change in both total household wealth and wealth inequality in Europe and the United States since the 1970s to the present day, as well as working out the reasons for those changes.
The researchers found that although both regions had a similar steady growth in total household wealth, the way the wealth had been distributed has been markedly different since the 1980s.
Dr Clara Martínez-Toledano, Assistant Professor in Finance at Imperial College Business School, and one of the lead authors of the study said: “From the 1980s we see a wealth gap start to emerge, where there’s a more dramatic change in the United States. The wealth that the top 1% richest people own in the States has undergone a significantly larger increase than the top 1% richest in Europe – in other words, the gap between rich and poor in the US became much more pronounced as wealthy Americans became even richer.”
To discover why this gap emerged, the researchers broke wealth down into three key drivers: differences in saving rates; wages; and capital gains rates.
During the decades surveyed, the research showed that house prices had gone up dramatically in both regions, as had financial asset prices. However, stock market prices had increased much faster in the US than in Europe.
Dr Martínez-Toledano continued: “Differences in the composition of these assets across wealth groups is key. The richest people tend to own financial assets such as stocks and bonds, while the middle wealth groups tend to have a house as their major asset. But even with a big growth in house prices in both regions, stock market prices were the standout distinguishing factor, with a huge jump in value of US stocks during those decades.“
Another important factor that can explain the wealth gap between rich and poor in the US is inequality of labour income, with the US economy showing a much bigger contrast in pay between the lowest and highest paid workers than the European economies over the same time period.
To document these findings, the researchers ran simulations that substituted the labour income inequality and asset price trajectories from France into the US figures. They found the hypothetical US wealth concentration levels were lower as a result of the smaller rise in labour income inequality and the larger rise in house prices relative to financial assets in Europe. The results were similar when they substituted the same figures from other European countries into the US data.
The researchers say US policymakers should prioritise job market policies that are aimed at boosting wages at the lower end of the distribution to reduce wealth inequality. They also call on central banks to play a key role in stabilising house prices.
Dr Martínez-Toledano explains: “Less equal societies have less stable economies. High levels of economic inequality can lead to economic and political instability. This is why action needs to be taken before societies become polarised.”
The new Distribution Wealth Accounts for Europe database is already available on wid.world for other researchers to build on this work, with the researchers planning regular updates to stay informed about the state of wealth inequality in Europe and the US.
The project forms part of a bigger international drive by the World Inequality Lab to provide more comprehensive public information about wealth and income inequality across the world.
Wealth inequality dynamics in Europe and the United States: Understanding the determinants is published in the Journal of Monetary Economics.
Brexit changes caused 22.9% slump in UK-EU exports into Q1 2022
Research by the Centre for Business Prosperity at Aston University has shown that UK exports to the EU fell by an average of 22.9% in the first 15 months after the introduction of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, highlighting the continuing challenges that UK firms are facing.
Building on earlier work funded through Aston’s Enterprise Research Centre, the researchers found that a negative effect on UK exports persisted and deepened from January 2021-March 2022.
According to the research, the UK has also experienced a significant contraction in the variety of goods being exported to the EU, with an estimated loss of 42% of product varieties. The researchers say this, combined with an increased concentration of export values to fewer products, has serious implications for the UK’s future exporting and productivity.
The authors are calling for an urgent national debate from politicians about the UK’s post-Brexit trade arrangements.
The researchers assessed the impact of the TCA, which allows goods to continue to be bought and sold between the UK and EU without tariffs in the wake of Brexit, by creating an ‘alternative UK economy’ model, based on the case that the UK had remained within the European Union. By comparing the model UK’s exports and imports with actual figures for the UK, they could accurately isolate the impact which the new trade rules were having.
“What we are seeing is the effect of Brexit on exports; and that is persisting. It’s not diminishing, and exports have yet to show signs of recovering,” says Professor Jun Du of Aston University. “Until this serious problem with exports is openly acknowledged and discussed, we won’t see any necessary actions being taken.”
Unlike exports, an initially significant drop on EU imports to Britain has recovered during the same period, suggesting that UK businesses and consumers have quickly adjusted to new rules. This stands in contrast to the persistent decline in UK exports, which the researchers believe is caused by more fundamental factors.
Professor Du said: “It seems that the UK can buy, but it can’t sell – and that’s reinforcing the problem of Brexit. A reduction in import bottlenecks might help exports to rebound, but this recovery is likely to be offset by the rising costs of imports.”
Researchers found that as many as 42% of the product varieties previously exported to the EU have disappeared during the 15 months after January 2021. This, they say, is principally caused by a large number of exporters simply ceasing to export to the EU, while the remaining exporters are streamlining their product ranges.
Co-author, Dr Oleksandr Shepotylo, says: “The product varieties that have disappeared are mostly those with low export value – we know this because the average export value increased as the number of varieties declined. These products are the ones typically exported by small firms or new exporters, or are exported to new markets. And It’s those smaller businesses that would normally export much more in future, as they grow their volumes and products – so that’s the UK’s future export pipeline being affected, which has bleak implications.”
Professor Du says: “The evidence we present here shows the real loss of Brexit, the overall competitiveness of the UK as a global trader. The considerable contraction of the UK trade capacity, combined with an increased concentration of export values to fewer products, signify some serious long-term concerns about the UK’s future exporting and productivity. Debate is essential so that the UK can start to address its current challenges. Of course, no one is suggesting going back into the EU, but there are collaborations, conversations and discussions that must be had. If the UK’s political leaders don’t acknowledge the facts, they are setting the course towards even longer-term problems.”