By Heather Hobbs
BRINGING YOU THE LATEST NEWS & EVENTS FROM THE SCIENCE INDUSTRY OQI pilot launches at CERN
After a successful 12 month incubation period, a pilot project by the Open Quantum Institute (OQI) to advance quantum computing, moved into operational launch at CERN (5th March).
Led by the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) and in collaboration with some 180 experts from all over the world, the three-year project is a multilateral science diplomacy initiative, uniting academia, technology companies, the private sector, the diplomatic community, philanthropy organisations and global citizens in a joint effort towards more open and inclusive quantum computing for the benefit of society.
During its pilot phase, hosted at CERN and supported by the Union de Banques Suisses (UBS), the OQI will form part of CERN’s wider Quantum Technology Initiative (QTI); launched in 2020 QTI’s mission aims are to push the boundaries of geography and disciplines to enabling quantum computing to tackle some of the key global challenges.
“CERN offers ideal conditions for the development of the OQI and my hope is that this initiative will not only be a success, but also a model of what scientific diplomacy can
Participants of the OQI operational launch (Credit: CERN)
do to promote concrete projects of benefit to humanity,” said Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General. “During the pilot phase, the OQI will benefit from CERN’s experience in deploying scientific and technological progress to the benefit of society. We look forward to working with GESDA and other partners from academia, industry and government to ensure that quantum computing is accessible to all, including underserved regions of the world.”
The focus will lie on the selection of sustainable development goals (SDG)-related use cases to explore applications in fields like health, energy, climate action, clean water and food security.
CERN will host the OQI from 2024 to 2026 and support three or four projects targeting SDG-related use cases. It will also lay the foundation for the next phase of the programme and potentially become a reference point for other initiatives aimed at deploying quantum technologies to address societal challenges.
GESDA will remain the science diplomacy advisor and fundraiser, helping to ensure the continuity of the initiative and contributing to its diplomatic engagement, while UBS will act as the lead support partner, ensuring further growth of the institute.
Organisations and individuals, committed to human- centred, inclusive and responsible quantum computing, are encouraged to become involved.
More information online:
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Study reveals potential key to newborn brain injury cause
A study of babies with a type of brain injury caused by a lack of oxygen (hypoxia), carried out at Imperial College London (ICL) has found that patterns of gene expression detectable in the blood can point to the cause of the injury. This could inform doctors if the newborn is likely to respond to cooling treatment, a practice commonly used to treat brain injury in infants in HICs.
The study found a dramatic divergence in gene expression between babies from low and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs), suggesting a different underlying cause of brain injury.
Lead investigator, Professor Sudhin Thayyil from the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London, explained: “Although cases of brain injury in babies may appear similar, they can be quite different in terms of how they come about, as our study shows. The gene expression patterns we saw in babies from LMICs were similar to what you would see in people with sleep apnoea, suggesting that they experienced intermittent hypoxia in the womb and at birth. We believe this is brought on by multiple chronic stresses during pregnancy such as poor nutrition or infection, as well as the normal labour process and uterine contractions, which leads to further hypoxia and ultimately injury to the baby’s brain.
“On the other hand, gene expression patterns in babies from HICs suggested a single, acute cause of brain injury,
for example complications during birth like maternal bleeding, leading to a sudden drop in blood oxygen levels in the foetus.”
While whole-body cooling can improve outcomes for babies with Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE), in a previous study, the largest of its kind in LMICs, Professor Thayyil and collaborators in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka showed that whole-body cooling could worsen outcomes in babies with HIE and might carry increased mortality risk. It is hoped that this difference in treatment response could lead to a simple test to evaluate which babies are likely to benefit from cooling treatment.
The researchers stressed that in this study the differences between the cohorts were not related to ethnicity, but rather socioeconomic factors; for example the type of brain injury commonly seen in LMICs was also likely to be present in deprived areas in HICs, whilst in more affluent populations in LMICs, more cases of brain injury of the type mostly seen in HICs was to be expected.
Professor Thayyil said: “The key for clinicians, anywhere in the world, is to be able to identify which type of brain injury they are dealing with as soon as possible – and that’s something we’re currently working on.”
The study was funded by the Cerebral Palsy Alliance and The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). It was conducted by researchers from Imperial
Lighting up the future of healthcare
An international partnership has come up with a new device platform for placing small wireless light sources in the body as a minimally invasive approach for better understanding and treatment of diseases. This could replace implantation of more bulky devices based on the electrical excitability of human cells, such as cochlear implants, cardiac pacemakers and brain stimulators that are already providing life-changing solutions for many individuals.
The novel approach presented by researchers from the University of St Andrews, Scotland and the University of Cologne, Germany, is based on the integration of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) on acoustic antennas. OLEDs, commonly found in modern smartphones, consist of thin layers of organic materials which can be deposited on almost any surface.
“We have exploited this property to deposit OLEDs directly on the acoustic antenna, thus merging the unique properties of both platforms into a single, extremely compact device” explained Professor Malte Gather, who directed the study.
The new devices operate at the sub-megahertz frequencies, similar to those used in submarine communications, as electromagnetic fields at this frequency are only weakly absorbed by water. However, classical antennas used in radios and smartphones would be too large at this frequency to be used in a medical implant with a much smaller footprint.
Julian Butscher, who developed the new devices as part of his PhD, said, “Unlike a classical antenna, an acoustic antenna can be very small, even when harvesting energy from a low frequency electromagnetic field.”
The wireless light-emitting device targets optical stimulation that has emerged as a promising alternative to electrical stimulation because it can be more cell selective and even enable the stimulation of individual cells via genetic modification. Such techniques have already shown promising results in early clinical trials, for instance, in treating an otherwise untreatable eye disease.
For many emerging applications, multiple sites must be stimulated independently and this is why modern brain stimulators often incorporate a large number of electrodes. By tuning the operation frequency of different acoustic antennas to different values by slightly varying their size, the scientists can operate several of their tiny light bulbs independently, turning each one on and off individually. This carries the future potential for the individual addressing of multiple stimulators in different parts of the body, for instance, to treat debilitating neurological disorders.
With their novel device platform, the scientists now move one step closer to developing the ‘ideal stimulator’ by combining minimal device size, low operation frequency, and optical stimulation.
The research was published in Science Advances. More information online:
ilmt.co/PL/0M2n
62274pr@reply-direct.com Sudhin Thayyil (Credit: Thomas Angus, ICL)
College London (UK; University of Campania (Italy); Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health; Madras Medical College; Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College (all India); BSMMU-Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (Bangladesh); University of Kelaniya (Sri Lanka); Wayne State University, Nationwide Children’s Hospital; St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (all US)
More information online:
ilmt.co/PL/Ov0p 61988pr@reply-direct.com
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