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Risk expert Montse Guillen: pensions will inevitably be lower in the future

Risk expert Montse Guillen has strong opinions about pensions. She notes that the current pension system in Spain and in many other western countries is mathematically unsustainable and believes it should be totally redesigned, giving more responsibility to the individuals. The key factors that make it unbalanced are increasing life-expectancies, low salaries and the need to guarantee an basic income level to all pensioners. Possible solution? Lower pensions at 65, higher after 80.

Pensions are provoking heated discussions in Spain, with many retired people protesting in the streets. The government is working on a budget law that raises pensions by a bit more than the meager 0.25% that was planned years ago in the middle of a major financial crisis, with inflation around 0%. Today the inflation rate in Spain is above 1%.

In 15 years, with the current system, those retiring will lose 40% of the value of our pension compared to today's levels — In 15 years, with the current system, those retiring will lose 40% of the value of our pension compared to today’s levels

UB professor and BGSMath faculty member Montserrat Guillen is an expert in risk assessment. She manages the Riskcenter, the Research Group on Risk in Insurance and Finance, and is an ICREA Academia awardee. Penta asked her how a mathematician looks at the pension issue altogether.

“There’s a book that came out recently called The 7 most important equations for your retirement. I find it a good starting point for all those who want to start looking into their retirement with a mathematical approach,” says Guillen. “In it, Moshe Milevsky, a world expert in financial mathematics, argues that 21st century retirement income planning is indeed a science and has its foundations in the work of great sages over the last 800 years.” For those interested in the mathematical derivation of the formulas, here a technical paper about them. “In essence,” adds Guillen, “what we do is to calculate the ‘risk’ of surviving to our capacity of generating richness”.

Give us some examples of these key equations.

The Italian Fibonacci (XIII century) calculated how long a fortune that is depleted with an annual percentage last. The Briton Benjamin Gompertz (XIX century) established the key mortality laws that allow you to estimate how long you will survive after your retirement. The British astronomer Edmond Halley (XVIII century) described the value of a regular income in relationship with the interests of the investments. The US economist and statistician Irving Fisher calculated the behavior of interest rates when inflation is changing. The very influential US economist Paul Samuelson (who died in 2009), among other things, studied how to diversify investments. Another American, Solomon Huebner (XX century), known as the “father of insurance education” and who introduced the concept of “human life value”, is the first one to recognize the need for solidarity among people. Finally, the Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov (XX century), among many other fundamental results, found the formula for the lifetime ruin probability.

In mathematics we trust.

Well, personally I believe much more in the statistical regularity than in an analytical formula for financial markets. That’s why I prefer good insurance to a bad investment. If you look at the problem with mathematical tools, what you have is two components of the problem. On one side, it’s a statistical problem: what is the probability to pass each stage of your life, which depends on how much time you lived until then. Secondly, a financial problem: do I want to face the risk on my own, or share the risk with others (for example, with a private pension scheme).

Is an insurance policy the right solution for your pension?

What insurances do is eliminate the risk of ending up with no money at a moment in your life when you cannot work anymore and your savings are gone. This is the reason why governments created social security. It is ultimately a compulsory insurance.

So, problem solved?

I believe that the way the public pension scheme is designed nowadays is not working. It is not sustainable even after the reforms. The first years you stop working, you should be using your savings. After a certain age – say 80, or 85 – this is when you should receive a payment. That’s when the “compulsory insurance” should cover your payments.

This is quite shocking to many.

The model would be more sustainable. The entry level of the pensions would be very low for the first years. Those who want higher income then should use their own savings. Starting at 80 or 85 the amount of the monthly payment should be raised. People would only have to worry about their savings for the first 15 to 20 years, eliminating what we call “longevity risk”. What we do is share responsibility. The first part, it would be the responsibility of the individual, with his or her own expectations and desires; after that, there must be solidarity.

At the current salary level, for many people saving money is unthinkable.

Salaries should be higher and as a consequence the social security would have a larger inflow and be less distressed. But I am convinced the system has to change, because the way it is now is a fraud. You cannot mix an insurance principle with compulsory spending to pay every pensioner an income. Otherwise it will be inevitable for retirement age to go up. More than 50% of the retired people live over 20 years after their pension.

You are advocating for private insurance.

The pension sector is based on mathematics, regulation and supervision. The State has to guarantee a minimal public system and, in addition, a viable, mathematically sound and fair private system.

Would you feel comfortable with a system like this?

If we implemented a system like the one I described, you would really only have to contract a supplementary private source of income for few years, from 65 to 80 or 85. We cannot take a decision at 65 for the rest of our life: a fourth of the population lives longer than 30 years after pension, that’s a third of your life! So the best strategy is to segment the decision into smaller chunks. The real issue is that governments keep changing the taxing system. It’s not the same if 30 years from now you have to pay 30% or 40% of your income in taxes.

What do you think of the formula used by the Spanish government to raise the value of pensions? Is 0.25% enough?

The formula the government used is wrong, but not for the reasons that many think. The formula aims at equilibrating the incomes with the expenses of the system but it contains many mistakes. It mixes arithmetical averages with geometrical averages, it uses an average instead of a median when the distribution is very asymmetric, and it fixes arbitrary factors that have no meaning. The sad truth is that with the current arrangement, to balance the system, the pensions would have to be lower.This would not be very popular.

I know. There’s also another part of the equations. The evolution of life expectancy from the retirement age onwards. We are now worried about this 0.25%. But in 15 years, with the current system, all of us who will be retiring will lose 40% of the value of our pension compared to today’s levels.

It is not a very uplifting prospective.

I always say that your best asset is yourself: you are the main source of your own richness, you are your own company. We are not used to think about ourselves like that. But the consequence of this is that you are the one who has to establish until when you ought to work, and how to invest your savings. With the prospect of a low pension awaiting us, the best strategy, as with any risky business, is to diversify the investment, which is what we study as risk experts. There are of course also other types of risks: you might get sick. This is why in our social security system there are mechanisms, like the disability retirement to protect us from these risks.

Image credits:

In-text images taken from the original interview appeared in the Apr. 2018 issue of the newsletter Penta, by BGSMath.

Frontpage pensioner demonstration licensed from Flickr by an Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license.

Ice age thermostat prevented extreme climate cooling

During the ice ages, an unidentified regulatory mechanism prevented atmospheric CO2 concentrations from falling below a level that could have led to runaway cooling, reports a study conducted by researchers of the ICTA-UAB and published online in Nature Geoscience this week. The study suggests the mechanism may have involved the biosphere, as plants and plankton struggled to grow under very low CO2 levels.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations swung over a range of 100 ppm (parts per million, by volume) during the ice ages. The exact processes behind this variation have been difficult to pinpoint, but it is known that changes in the storage of carbon by photosynthetic organisms played an important role.

“When we took a close look at measurements from ice cores, we noticed that atmospheric CO2 concentrations hovered close to 190 ppm during much of the past 800,000 years, but very rarely fell any lower,” said Sarah Eggleston, a researcher at the Institut of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and co-author of the study. “This was surprising, because it suggests that these very low CO2 concentrations were quite stable. What’s more, we know that CO2 was often very high in the distant geological past, but we have no evidence that CO2 concentrations were ever lower than 190 ppm.”

“We know that, over hundreds of thousands of years, CO2 is regulated by slowly reacting with exposed rocks” explained Eric Galbraith, lead author of the study and an ICREA professor at ICTA-UAB. “But this would be too slow to explain the stability during periods of only a few thousand years, as we see in the ice cores. So it must have been some other mechanism that kicked in at very low CO2.”

Arctic winter landscape, by William Troyer

The authors suggest that it was most likely the biosphere that maintained habitable temperatures, since at very low CO2 levels, plants and phytoplankton struggle to photosynthesize. Slower growth of these organisms would have meant less carbon in the soils and deep ocean leaving more in the atmosphere, and preventing CO2 concentrations from falling further. This might have prevented extreme cooling that would have led to Earth freezing over as a ‘snowball’.

However, the study did not reveal a corresponding regulation during the warm portions of the ice age cycles, suggesting that the Earth does not have a similar mechanism to prevent rapid warming.

Reference:

E. D. Galbraith and S. Eggleston. A lower limit to atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the past 800,000 years, Nature Geoscience. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2914

On the protective effects of Alzheimer’s on Cancer

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports studies the comorbility relations between these two diseases.

Patients with Alzheimer’s disease have a higher risk of developing glioblastoma and a lower risk of lung cancer. A paper published in Scientific Reports by researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), headed by Alfonso Valencia, a researcher affiliated to the CNIO and to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), describes the biological processes that underlie this comorbidity. In its new location at the BSC, Valencia’s group will be able to use large scale computing to continue the comorbidity work analyzing very large cohorts of patients and diseases at various levels.

The increase in life expectancy has resulted in many people developing multiple diseases. This phenomenon is known as comorbidity, and there may be a direct relationship, when in the presence of one pathology, there is a higher risk of another emerging; or an inverse relationship, having a certain condition implies a lower risk of developing another. Epidemiology has identified a number of relationships of this type, such as a lower incidence of cancer in people with certain diseases that affect the central nervous system.

The increase in life expectancy results in higher chances for development of multiple diseases.

A paper published in 2014 in the journal PLoS Genetics by researchers from the CNIO revealed that over-expressed genes in central nervous system diseases (Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia) were under-expressed in cancer (lung, colon, and prostate) and vice versa. Understanding the molecular bases of these processes provides important information regarding the study of the causes of each disease and the possible design of new therapeutic strategies (drug repositioning).

The paper published now in Scientific Reports delves into the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and brain tumours (glioblastoma, in particular), using lung cancer data as reference and applying a new meta-analytical method explicitly developed for this case.

Mitochondrial alteration and chronic inflammation

“The analysis of glioblastoma, which has a direct comorbidity link with Alzheimer’s and which, in addition, originates in the same organ, has allowed us to better understand the molecular relationships between Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, and to eliminate tissue-dependent bias,” says Jon Sánchez-Valle, leading author of the paper.

The analyses conducted on more than 1000 samples from patients with these diseases have identified 198 genes whose function is altered significantly in the three cases. Of these, 112 had a similar pattern in Alzheimer’s disease and glioblastoma and the opposite pattern in lung cancer.

By comparing the biological processes altered through the deregulation of these genes, the authors confirmed that mitochondrial dysfunction plays a key role in the development of Alzheimer’s and could also lead to an increased risk of brain tumours in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, through the emergence of chronic inflammation in the brain. The decrease in the energy supply and the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) due to alterations in the mitochondrial function would, in turn, be related to the protection against lung cancer in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

These results, the authors point out, could help in the search for new uses for existing drugs and new therapeutic combinations to treat these diseases based on patient-specific genomic information.

This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BIO2012-40205 and BFU2015-71241-R) and it was carried out in the framework of the Platform for Biomolecular and Bioinformatics Resource (PT13/0001/0030 of the ISCIII), which is funded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). RT-S acknowledges funding from the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2015/021) and the national grant PI14/00894 from the Spanish “Plan Nacional de I + D + I 2013-2016,” co-funded by the “ISCIII Subdirección General de Evaluación y el Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER).

Reference:

Sánchez-Valle J, Tejero H, Ibáñez K, Portero JL, Krallinger M, Al-Shahrour F, Tabarés-Seisdedos R, Baudot A, Valencia A (2017). A molecular hypothesis to explain direct and inverse co-morbidities between Alzheimer’s Disease, Glioblastoma and Lung cancer. Scientific Reports, Published online on 30 June 2017; doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04400-6

From galaxies far far away!

In a paper that appeared in Science on 22 September (Science 357, 1266–1270 (2017)), the Pierre Auger Collaboration reports observational evidence demonstrating that cosmic rays with energies about a million times greater than that of the protons accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider come from much further away than from our own Galaxy.

Ever since the existence of cosmic rays with individual energies of several Joules was established in the 1960s, speculation has raged as to where such particles are created. The 50 year-old mystery has been solved using cosmic particles of mean energy of 2 Joules recorded with the largest cosmic-ray observatory ever built, the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina. By studying the distribution of the arrival directions of more than 30000 cosmic rays the Auger Collaboration has discovered an anisotropy, significant at 5.2 standard deviations, in a direction where the distribution of galaxies is relatively high. It is found that the rate of arrival of cosmic rays is ~6% greater from one half of the sky than from the opposite one, with the excess lying 120 degrees away from the Galactic centre (see Figure). Although this discovery clearly indicates an extragalactic origin for the particles, the actual sources have yet to be pinned down. The direction of the excess points to a broad area of sky rather than to specific sources as even particles as energetic as these are deflected by a few 10s of degrees in the magnetic field of our Galaxy. The direction, however, cannot be associated with potential sources in the plane or centre of our Galaxy for any realistic configuration of the Galactic magnetic field. Knowledge of the nature of the particles will aid the identification of the sources and work on this problem is targeted in the upgrade of the Auger Observatory to be completed in 2018.

Sky map showing cosmic-ray flux above 8 EeV (colour scale). Galactic center marked with an asterisk

Members of IGFAE contributed directly to this discovery

The Astroparticle Physics group at IGFAE led by Prof. Enrique Zas contributed directly to this important discovery. By analysing inclined showers induced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays that arrive at Earth at large angles with respect to the vertical to the ground, the field of view of the Auger Observatory was extended towards the Northern hemisphere. “This is a long-term project of the whole group and was a crucial step in the determination of the existence of the excess of cosmic rays in the observed direction, since the extended field of view allowed us to compare the rates of cosmic rays from most directions in the sky”, says Inés Valiño who coordinates the work in Auger devoted to the determination of the ultra-high energy cosmic-ray spectrum. The Astroparticle Physics group is composed of five senior members (Jaime Alvarez-Muñiz, Gonzalo Parente, Inés Valiño, Ricardo Vázquez and Enrique Zas) as well as several PhD students (Aida López Casado, Francisco Pedreira and Guillermo Torralba). The group participates in the Pierre Auger Observatory since 2002 when Spain became a full member of the Pierre Auger Collaboration consisting of more than 400 scientists from 20 countries.

More information:

https://www.auger.org/images/News/papers/Press-Release_Pierre-Auger-Collaboration_2017-09-21.pdf

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6357/1266

Image information:

Front and in-text sky map image, as measured at the Pierre Auger Observatory ; obtained from IGFAE, extracted from Science 357, 1266–1270 (2017).

Towards calcium-based batteries

The development of a rechargeable battery technology using light electropositive metal anodes would bring in a breakthrough in energy density. For divalent charge carriers (M2+), the number of ions that must react to achieve a certain electrochemical capacity is diminished by two when compared to Li+. This would allow for the design of higher energy density batteries.

Amongst divalent electropositive metals, calcium is especially attractive as it is the fifth most abundant element on earth crust and its standard reduction potential is only 170 mV above that of lithium, enabling significantly larger cell potential than that achievable with magnesium. Moreover, Ca2+ would hold promise for faster reaction kinetics than Mg2+ (and thus better power performance) due to its lower polarizing character. Despite the electrodeposition of calcium being thought to be impossible, the feasibility of calcium plating was demonstrated in conventional organic electrolytes, provided moderate temperatures (100 °C) are used to mitigate the degree of ion pairing and enhance Ca2+ mobility within the electrolyte. The electrolytes used are similar to those used in the Li-ion battery technology and thus exhibit very wide operation potential window. The reversibility of the process upon cycling was ascertained and thus these findings are the first proof of the viability of calcium metal anodes.

Portable batteries will largely benefit from the new technology

The study was carried out by researchers at ICMAB with the support of results obtained at ALBA Synchrotron in the framework of a project funded by Motor Europe (TME). The results achieved open the way to exploratory screening and testing of potential cathode materials which would reversibly insert and deinsert calcium in the electrolytes used. Efforts are currently underway to achieve proof-of-concept of a new high energy density rechargeable battery technology using calcium anodes.

Reference:

Ponrouch, A.; Frontera, C.; Barde, F.; Palacin, M. R. Towards a calcium‐based rechargeable battery. Nature Materials, 15 (2), pp. 169+, 2016.

Gene expression patterns may help determine time of death

International team of scientists led by Roderic Guigó at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona showed that changes in gene expression in different tissues triggered by death can be used to predict the time of death of an individual. As reported in a paper published in Nature Communications today, researchers suggest that by analysing a few readily available tissues (for example lung or skin tissue), the post-mortem interval (time elapsed since death) can be determined with considerable accuracy and may have implications for forensic analyses.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, oil painting by Rembrandt, year 1632

It all started with the GTEx project, which aimed at creating a reference database and tissue bank for scientists to study how genomic variants affect gene activity and disease susceptibility. GTEx was designed to sample as many tissues as possible from a large number of individuals in order to understand the causal effects of genes and variants, and which tissues contribute to predisposition to disease. “GTEx data allow us to ask questions about genetic variation and its effects on gene expression both in one tissue and across many tissues. Since the samples we are using all come from deceased donors, we need to find out if there were changes in gene expression related to the death or the time of death, so we could better model our predictions of variation between tissues or in disease,” explains Roderic Guigó, lead author of this study and coordinator of the Bioinformatics and Genomics Programme at the CRG.

To understand the tissue-specific changes to gene expression following the death of a person, Roderic Guigó and his colleagues studied RNA-sequencing data of over 7,000 samples from 36 different tissues obtained from 540 donor within the GTEx project. They show that the time since death has an effect on gene expression and that this effect varies from tissue to tissue. The authors developed models for the prediction of the post-mortem interval based on these tissue-specific gene expression changes using high-throughput sequencing of the cell.

“We found that many genes change expression over relatively short post-mortem intervals, in a largely tissue specific manner. This information helps us to better understand variation and also it allows us to identify the transcriptional events triggered by death in an organism,” adds Pedro G. Ferreira, CRG Alumnus currently at the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology, University of Porto in Portugal.

Researchers have studied the effect of different covariates on biological analysis. The model could be further improved to make it applicable to a forensics scenario and to devise a protocol for the potential implementation in forensic pathology.

Reference: Ferreira G. Pedro, et al. “The effects of death and post-mortem cold ischemia on human tissue transcriptomes” Nature Communications (2018) 9:490. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02772-x

María de Maeztu Gender & ICT program to promote women in STEM

María de Maeztu Gender and ICT program at DTIC-UPF

The Maria de Maeztu Gender and ICT program groups the broad gender strategy at DTIC-UPF, with the involvement of over 100 volunteers. The program has been since its inception set up as a collaborative project with several external entities, including the financial support of companies NAE Consulting, Google, Oracle, Accenture, Schibsted and Zurich Insurances; and the collaboration of public organisations as the Catalan institute for Women or the USA Consulate in Barcelona, as well as entities active in women empowerment such as MujeresTech & Aliados, and Wikimujeres.

Promoting gender equilibrium in STEM contributes to equality of opportunities and a better distribution of talent

Key actions created or supported by this program:

Over 1.000 participants in the #GirlsHacks and summer courses, encouraging girls as creators using technology
Boys and girls in spanish schools talking and writing about women in ICT in the award-winning Wisibilízalas contest or the MujeresTech Summit
Leading professionals mentoring current female engineering students
Women and men contributing to reduce the gender gap in Wikipedia in the Wikimujeres – ViquidonesUPF groups
Regular participation in gender and technology events, to inspire other organisations and learn from others

Image Credit:

Men and women in tech image from the public domain, downloaded from Pixabay, authored by Geralt.

L. Verde shares the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics as part of the WMAP team

On past 3th December, at a ceremony in California, the Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics was awarded to the WMAP “For detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies”. Funded by private sponsors, the Breakthrough Prizes recognize the achievements of scientists in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics with awards of $3 million prizes, the largest individual monetary awards in science.

Launched in 2001, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mapped the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with unprecedented precision during 9 years, opening a new era of quantitative cosmology that led to the establishment of the Standard Model of Cosmology. Among other discoveries, the interpretation of WMPA data allowed scientists to determine age of the universe (about 13.8 billion years), its rate of accelerating expansion (about 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec) and its basic composition (about 5% “normal” matter, 24 % dark matter and 71 % dark energy).

Licia Verde, ICREA researcher at ICCUB (IEEC-UB), joined the WMAP team in 2001, when she was a Chandra Fellow in Princeton University. Among other contributions, she contributed to the cosmological analysis and lead the methodology paper in the 2003 release, the sixth most cited paper in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics according to Web of Science.
This is not the first time WMAP team has been awarded such an important prize. The team also holds the prestigious Shaw Prize for Astronomy (2010) and the Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2012).

Watch the video of the Breakthrough Award for WMAP! (see the link to the right for the specific time)

SONAR – Nanotechnology for the Oil & Gas industry

The first stage of the SONAR project (Strategic Opportunities of Nanotechnology Applications in Repsol) was completed in 2015 with a closing session held at the Repsol Technology Research Centre (Móstoles, Madrid). A stimulating series of talks given by both IMDEA and Repsol scientists summarised the findings of the project reinforcing the importance of nanotechnology research for the Oil & Gas industry.

The initiative was financed by Repsol and can be considered a milestone in public-private collaborations. A joint team of more than 45 researchers from IMDEA and Repsol worked together to complete a strategic roadmap of nanotechnology applications in the energy sector. Repsol provided more than 65 current technological challenges, grouped into 6 areas of application. Joint workshops were organised to discuss the challenges and IMDEA proposed a series of nanotechnology solutions (more than 168 in total). These solutions were then filtered by the scientists to provide 95 opportunities producing the structure for a technology roadmap. Research tracks were then plotted onto the roadmap, providing a guide for navigating possible nanotechnology applications both in the short, medium and long term.

Repsol Technology Center. Display of different oil samples

This technology prospecting exercise and the resulting internal roadmap has helped Repsol to define and implement a strategic framework in order to exploit the opportunities that nanotechnology can offer within the energy sector. Already as a result of this collaboration, Repsol and IMDEA Nanoscience have initiated several research projects, the first of which has recently successfully completed its first stage, (FREENOX).

Image credits:

Frontpage image of Offshore oil and gas production platform in the public domain downloaded from Flickr. Authored by Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement BSEE.

In-text image of Repsol Technology Center image downloaded from Flickr. Authored by Microsiervos. Licensed with an Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license.

New spin-off Ahead Therapeutics SL to develop novel therapies for autoimmune diseases

Ahead Therapeutics SL is the result of a joint research project with a strong nano component between the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), the ICN2 and ICREA. It was created to advance the development of therapies for autoimmune diseases and pursue their application in a clinical setting. Just a few months in, the new company has already attracted 1.1 million euros in private investment.

Ahead Therapeutics SL develops novel therapies for autoimmune diseases

Ahead Therapeutics SL is a new spin-off signed last December between the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). The young biotech company is linked to the IGTP Immunology of Diabetes Research Group led by Dr Marta Vives-Pi and to the ICN2 Supramolecular Nanochemistry and Materials Group led by ICREA Research Prof. Daniel Maspoch, where researcher Dr Mary Cano is also based.

The company was established after the researchers generated and proved the efficacy of an immunotherapy approach for treating type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis based on nanotechnology. Specifically, the therapy uses liposomes to halt the self-destructive autoimmune response triggered by such diseases. The company aims to provide the financial and structural framework needed to take these results into the clinical arena and turn them into treatments for these and other autoimmune diseases, which are becoming more and more prevalent.

Just weeks after it was founded, Ahead Therapeutics SL had received support from several investors. Apart from the seed capital, the company has already attracted 1.1 million euros in private funding. “This is truly exceptional”, says Nuria Martí, head of Innovation and Technology Transfer at the IGTP. “The fact that it has attracted so much financial interest from the outset makes us very optimistic about the future of the project”. In addition to contributions from the partner institutions, the company’s creation was made possible thanks to support from ZBM Business Connect and the advice received from the Rousand Costas Duran legal practice.

Immunotherapy for type 1 diabetes

After five years of published research, the IGTP, ICN2 and ICREA scientists have demonstrated the efficacy of an immunotherapy directed at the autoimmune response. The new approach, tested in animal models with type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, opens the door to therapies that prevent and treat autoimmune diseases.

The therapy uses liposomes to simulate cells in the process of natural cell death, by doing so bringing the immune system’s mistaken reaction against the body to a definitive halt. Already in use in medicine, liposomes consist of small drops of liquid surrounded by a fatty exterior, making them very similar to the outside of cells. In the particular case of diabetes, when introduced into the body, the liposomes are able to call off the mistaken attack on the insulin-producing pancreatic cells (beta cells) and prevent the disease from developing.

“Ahead Therapeutics will allow us to develop the product and pursue its use in patients with an autoimmune disease”, explains Marta Vives-Pi, IGTP researcher and Ahead Therapeutics shareholder. “This initiative gives us the opportunity to exploit a technology based on encapsulation in liposomes for a wide range of autoimmune diseases”, comment fellow shareholders Dr Mary Cano and Prof. Daniel Maspoch of the ICN2. The company will work to make this new form of immunotherapy available to patients, while also refining the products resulting from the technology. “Already tested in type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, this immune-modulating strategy can be applied to other diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis or celiac disease, because our approach attacks the common origin of these disorders”, affirms Vives-Pi.

Orchestra Scientific: a new spin-off to capture CO₂

CEO Cristina Saenz de Pipaón and CTO Álvaro Reyes showing a CO₂ filtering membrane

Last year, ICIQ researchers discovered a blue material capable of ‘trapping’ CO₂ molecules. This new material –a metal-organic framework– slows down CO₂ molecules, allowing the separation of carbon dioxide in a mixture of gases. Now, researchers will commercialise said technology with a new spin-off company – Orchestra Scientific. Even shortly after Orchestra kicked off, it has already attracted investors around the country, investments which have been increasing over time.

The novel technology by Orchestra, fully developed at ICIQ in Tarragona, incorporates the blue MOF into thin plastic layers that, rolled up, can be introduced in gas pipes and reactors. When gas mixtures circulate through these rolls, CO₂ molecules are slowed down and separated from the mixture, which is particularly useful for biogas refinery.

Biogas is a renewable fuel obtained by fermentation of organic matter such as compost or biomass. Biogas is mainly composed of methane and carbon dioxide. The former would have a tremendous impact on pollution if directly emitted to the atmosphere, thus it’s normally burned down. “Methane has a greenhouse effect 21 times bigger than carbon dioxide, yet we often forget the danger it represents,” explains Dr. Cristina Sáenz de Pipaón, Orchestra’s CEO. “However, if you separate the two gases, they both have an added value we can take advantage of,” she adds.

Biogas has to be refined into methane in order to use it as ‘natural gas’. The hardest part of biogas refining is to remove carbon dioxide, which normally represents 35% of the mixture. Nowadays, only 500 plants in Europe carry out this process, but business is expected to grow to more than 10.000 biogas refining plants in 2020. Refining processes –based in cryogenic methods, high pressures, and hazardous chemicals– are expensive and highly contaminant. The MOF-based membranes developed at ICIQ are more sustainable, they work at atmospheric pressure, at room temperature, and save up to 25% in electricity when compared to the available membranes.

Orchestra Scientific is now looking for partners willing to use their technology. Moreover, it’s looking into additional applications of the membranes, such as the separation of CO₂ from industry emissions. The project was born inside Prof. José Ramón Galán-Mascarós’ group, and grew thanks to the support of the Obra Social “la Caixa” Foundation in ICIQ’s Incubator Call. Orchestra highlights that their success is all due to the hard work of ICIQ researchers, who worked during several months in this project. They also have the support of the European Research Council thanks to a ‘Proof of Concept’ grant that will allow them to further develop the technology. Orchestra has been selected finalist during the ‘CleanTech Camp’ organised by KIC-Innoenergy with the sponsorship of Gas Natural Fenosa among other companies. They are also participating in different training and incubator plans thanks to the project ‘Tarragona Open Future’.

ICIQ team in charge of the development of the novel membranes (as seen in picture), is formed by:

Dra. Neus Corella, Dra. Vanesa Lillo, Dr. Jesús González, Dra. Mabel Torréns, Samantha Grand and Mabel de Fer. Orchestra Scientific is led by Cristina Sáenz de Pipaón (CEO) with the collaboration of José Ramón Galán Mascarós (Scientific Advisor), Elías Daura (CFO), José Luis León (CCO) and Álvaro Reyes (CTO).

The Big Bell Test

•On November 30th 2016, more than 100,000 people participated in the BIG Bell Test, a global experiment to test the laws of quantum physics.

•Participants were able to complete more than half a million levels of the video game that generated more than 90 million bits, a number that tripled the initial expectations of the scientific team leading the project

On November 30th 2016, for the first time, the world had the opportunity to participate in and contribute to this unique worldwide experiment, with the aim of testing the laws of quantum physics.

Coordinated by ICFO, twelve laboratories from around the world came together to put in motion the BIG Bell Test: worldwide quantum experiments powered by human randomness, with the aim of demonstrating experimentally that the microscopic world is in fact as strange as quantum physics predicts: particles that behave in a random way, determining their properties only when we look at them; strange instantaneous interactions at a distance… predictions that were questioned by Einstein, who rejected them completely.

The Big Bell Test: Worldwide quantum experiments powered by human randomness.

During the 48 hours in which it was November 30th at some place on the planet, participants contributed to the initiative, generating sequences of zeros and ones through a video game to get participants to create sequences of numbers that were as random as possible. Each of these bits was used to control in real-time the experimental conditions of the labs. They moved mirrors, polarizing filters, waveplates … elements located on optical tables and that affect the type of measurements that are made on the different quantum systems in each lab.

Together all the participants provided scientists with millions of unpredictable, independent decisions which were used to measure their particles. This independence is a crucial feature for the conclusions of the Bell tests to be valid. Using the sequences provided by the participants, the scientists have been able to verify whether or not their particles were intertwined by the “spooky action at a distance” that Einstein could not accept. In a nutshell, the Bell test states that experimentalists have to do their measurements with the help of human decisions and calculate the ‘Bell parameter’ (also known as the parameter S). If the world is as Einstein believes, predictable and without ‘spooky actions at a distance’, then S cannot be greater than 2. That is, S should always be less than 2. Otherwise, the inequality has been violated, indicating the presence of intrinsically quantum phenomena.

By 13:00 CET, the minimum number of participations needed to assure enough bits to power the experiments had already been surpassed, registering above 1000 bits per second in a stable manner over the course of several hours. By early afternoon CET, some of the labs had been able to obtain preliminary results, confirming violations of Bell’s inequality, and thus refuting Einstein, giving their complete support to the predictions of quantum physics.

Snapshot from the first level of the Big Bell Test videogame: get scored by how unpredictable you can be!

ICREA Professor at ICFO Morgan Mitchell reflects that ‘the project required contributions from many people in very different areas: the scientists pushed their experiments to new limits, the public very generously gave us their time in support of science, and educators found new ways to communicate between these two groups. I’m thrilled with all of the different things we have learned through the BIG Bell test.’

Carlos Abellán, researcher at ICFO and instigator of the Project, emphasizes that ‘the participation we achieved today for the Big Bell Test is absolutely astonishing and unprecedented. I’m excited about all the results we’re already receiving from the labs’. In Barcelona, in collaboration with “La Caixa” Foundation, the BIG Bell Test team had the opportunity to share the project with an audience of more than 300 people gathered in the Auditorium of CosmoCaixa, who witnessed in real time through several live connections, the experiments running in different labs in Shanghai, Concepción, Nice and Barcelona. This group further contributed to the experiment by participating in mass in a final tournament of the video game, created with Kaitos Games, to find the most random person in the audience. The event was streamed live around the world, and in China alone generated an audience of more than 300,000 people.

The BIG Bell Test has succeeded in uniting the scientific world and society in a common goal -an experiment that has demonstrated the unique value of human randomness to study certain fundamental processes of nature.

‘The BIG Bell Test team thanks the thousands of users who have so generously and enthusiastically contributed to this initiative. Without this essential contribution, the experiment would never have been possible.’

‘Finally, we would like to thank all the institutions that have helped support this project, such as the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the Cellex Foundation, the Mir-Puig Foundation, the Foundation Catalunya la Pedrera, “La Caixa” Foundation, AXA Research Fund , the European Research Council, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), the Severo Ochoa program of the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.’

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