This data scientist and entrepreneur has spent much of her career in Japan, working in the field of video games. There she founded Yokozuna Data, a company devoted to predicting the behavior of individual gamers by means of machine learning algorithms. At the end of 2019, she returned to Spain to work as the Chief Analytics Officer at Inditex, where she led the data science research, development and implementation across the organization. However, despite being very interested in the project, she did not last long in that position. "I got a call with a proposal that was hard to turn down," she said with a big smile.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation approached us to enhance mobile health apps through our machine learning platform, which features recommendations, individual behavior predictions and experimentation systems

How did you feel when you got reached by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with a proposal like this?

It was such a nice opportunity that I did not have to think about it at all. This foundation recruited us to make improvements in health apps through artificial intelligence (AI). Among other things, we will work on promoting positive reinforcement and nudging the behaviors of the users of these apps. Our mission is to take the most advanced machine learning algorithms for personalization, which are used in the apps of large technology companies, to the healthcare field in resource-poor countries.

To this end, we created benshi.ai, a nonprofit that is fully funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and that operates as one of its arms. Our headquarters are in Barcelona and we already have a budget: about 9 million dollars for the next two years. We are very happy and motivated.

What is benshi.ai working on now?

After registering our organization, we are developing a machine learning platform that will include different products, such as recommendation systems, individual predictions of the behavior of health app users, and an experimentation system.

Are you already using the platform for any specific issue?

Yes. While we continue improving the platform in the issues I mentioned before — predictions, experimentations and recommendations — we are already working with another nonprofit called Maternity Foundation [also funded by the Gates foundation] that has built an online learning app for midwives. They have been active for quite some time now and are present in most of Africa, in India and in many Southeast Asian countries. Their app is called the Safe Delivery App and is designed to train midwives in these countries to assist women during childbirth

Every day 800 women die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, so it is crucial to improve the training of midwives and the resources they can use

There are many organizations investing in midwives, as they are women who help other women. They are very much neglected by the institutions of these countries, where every day 800 women and 14,000 babies die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. This is why it is critical to improve the knowledge and resources they can use.

África Periañez during a moment of the interview / Álvaro Muñoz Guzmán / SINC

And what improvements are you making to the Safe Delivery App?

First, we are developing predictive models to help us determine how midwives use the application on their cell phones. For instance, we want to find out when they will connect again and which modules they will access. To that end, we use algorithms that combine autoregressive and deep learning models, such as DeepAR.

Once we know more about what they will do and how they will use the app, we can start creating incentives based on their behavioral data. We already did that in video games to motivate players. In health apps, you can also use this technology to shift behaviors.

In the Safe Delivery App, we are including predictive models to determine how midwives use the app on their cell phones. For instance we want to find out when they will connect again and which modules they will access, so that we can choose the best time to send them notifications

What incentives can be given to a midwife in these countries?

 To investigate this question, we developed a tool that we called XP Engine. This experimentation system allows us to test different approaches in order to decide, for example, what kind of incentive will work best: financial help, food, working material, etc. Such "prizes" can encourage midwives in these countries to access the app more often whenever we recommend the specific modules they are going to need, so that they can improve their training and practice at the time of delivery. It is a matter of sending the most appropriate incentive to each midwife. We also use reinforcement learning models to enhance their training.

How do these models help?

Reinforcement learning models are AI agents that automatically learn how each midwife reacts to the different interventions we have devised. In this way, we can optimize the notifications she receives on her cell phone by including the right content and sending them at the best time for her to assimilate and apply the information. For example, would it be better to send her the recommendations just as she is delivering a baby, or on the night before, so that certain materials are fresh in her mind? 

We take into account many factors. We need to know when the best time is to send these notifications. This is why we turn to behavioral scientists, who give us tips like: "Be careful if you want to send a recommendation at night in some African countries, because women usually do not look at their phones during these hours." There are many things we cannot see in the data, so we try to complement them with the knowledge of these experts. 

With the experimentation module, we test what incentive will work best, and we also take into account the recommendations of behavioral scientists to get information that are not in the data

In which countries, and in what other areas, are you working?

At the moment we are conducting projects with midwives in Ethiopia and India, and we are already gathering data from almost all countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

We are also starting to improve general diagnostic apps in other African countries, such as Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. Plus, we are working with pharmacy apps, in order to ensure the correct use of drugs, encourage the monitoring of treatments, and perform the necessary tests to guarantee the control of diseases such as AIDS, malaria or COVID-19.

We will investigate what incentives can be given to change patients' habits, so that, for example, they start taking their medication or collecting the results of the tests they have undergone.

Interview with África Periáñez. / Álvaro Muñoz Guzmán / SINC

Do you collaborate with research institutions?

Yes, we are working with universities to turn research results into production systems on our platform. Currently, we collaborate with the Statistical Reinforcement Learning group at Harvard University. Also, with the University of California, we are developing personalized surveys for midwives; this will help us to further assess the impact these personalized recommendations and incentives have on them, beyond the analysis of the data they generate in the apps.

One of the main issues in connection with AI bias is that most data scientists are straight white males from rich countries. In the end, you are not aware of your own bias

AI algorithms have a very bad reputation for introducing all kinds of bias. How can this problem be mitigated?

One of the main issues in connection with AI bias is that most data scientists are straight white males from rich countries. In the end, you are not aware of your own bias.                                                            

To improve things, I think it is important to have diverse teams. This is something we are working very hard on. To that end, we are trying to attract talents from Africa and elsewhere. We also want to open offices in Zambia and Nigeria, and our staff include people from different continents, religions, genders — we have more women than men — and sexual orientations.

In addition, we are collaborating closely with behavioral scientists in the countries where we work, because, as I have said before, many times data alone is not enough.

“We propose to produce these vanadium flow battery electrodes from chitin, a material from shrimp shells, which, in addition to carbon, contains nitrogen,” says Francisco Martin-Martinez

The chemical engineer Francisco Martín-Martínez, one of the authors, has explained to SINC that “vanadium redox flow batteries, unlike lithium batteries used in the automotive industry, do not provide a high energy density, but do provide a large volume of energy storage at low cost, which makes them ideal for storing energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind power, whose energy production is intermittent.”

Martín-Martínez, an expert in the development of bio-inspired materials, points out that in order to facilitate the flow of electrons from one side of the battery to the other, carbon electrodes are usually used: “We have produced these electrodes from chitin, a material from shrimp shells. Chitin is a polysaccharide, similar to cellulose, which is found in the exoskeleton of crustaceans and insects.”

Improved performance

The peculiarity of chitin - he says – “is that, in addition to carbon, it also contains nitrogen, which is incorporated into the structure of the electrode during the production process, improving its performance.” This parameter has been characterized in detail by the authors in the paper.

In fact, the team has proven the benefits of nitrogen in the chemical structure of the electrode, where it facilitates the transfer of electrons between from the vanadium ions. “Obviously, there are carbon electrodes that can yield a better performance, but the key to this project is to produce such electrodes from a waste material, in this case chitin from shrimp shells,” points out Martín-Martínez.

"Its benefit does not only relies in its good performance, but also in the low cost of the starting material, which makes the electrodes more sustainable, given the reuse of waste," the researcher points out

Therefore, “its benefit not only relies in its good performance, but also in the low cost of the starting material, which makes electrodes more sustainable, given the reuse of waste,” he adds.

At present, electrodes of this type are principally made from carbonised polyacrylonitrile, a synthetic polymer, so its production from a waste product such as chitin is, in the opinion of this researcher, “a more sustainable alternative.”

The researcher comments that “these electrodes from shrimp waste could also be applied in supercapacitors, electrochemical devices that provide a very high energy density, and even in desalination processes, “although we have focused on vanadium redox flow batteries,” he clarifies.

De izquierda a derecha, Francisco Martin-Martinez, Antoni Forner-Cuenca, y Diego López Barreiro en un laboratorio de MIT donde hacían los experimentos con biomasa. / Foto cedida por los autores

An idea by three Spanish colleagues at MIT

The project to obtain electrodes for large storage batteries from chitin in shrimp shells was the result of a initial collaboration between three Spanish researchers working at MIT who now work separately in various European institutions.

One of them is Antoni Forner-Cuenca, who worked on vanadium redox flow batteries and now leads his own research group on porous materials for electrochemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands).

Another of them is Diego López Barreiro, who was in the same department as Francisco Martin-Martinez at MIT, developing materials from biomass waste. Now, he is awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship at the DSM Biotechnology Centre (The Netherlands) where he is researching the use of structural proteins in biomedicine materials.

Martin-Martinez continues to be a research affiliate at MIT and now runs his own laboratory, dedicated to the computational design of nature-inspired nanomaterials at Swansea University (UK).

Reference:

F. Martín-Martínez, A. Forner-Cuenca, Diego López Barreiro.“Exploration of Biomass-Derived Activated Carbons for Use in Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries”. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2020).

The costs and incidence of chronic wounds are increasing due to the growing number of older people, among whom pressure ulcers and leg ulcers are more common, and the increase in people with diabetes, who are more prone to foot ulcers.

Faced with this problem and considering that proper assessment of these wounds is not within the reach of caregivers with the relevant expertise, French scientists have developed a new graphene patch that allows them to be monitored remotely.

“The conductivity of the Graphene electrode varies according to the physicochemical changes in the wound, so we have produced films of this material on a polymer (a plastic) and integrated them into a bandage that can record biological parameters by direct contact with the wound bed,” explains Vincent Bouchiat of Grapheal, a spin-off from France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), which is based at Néel Institute, in Grenoble, where this technology was developed.

A smart, connected dressing

The graphene dressing is ultra-flexible, adapts easily to any part of the body, and has tiny wireless electronics (with lightweight, fully flexible electrodes) that transfer the data to a mobile application. Then, using a telemedicine software and medical technologies in the cloud, the information can reach the hospital to be monitored and evaluated by a specialist.

Medical and nursing staff can remotely monitor how wounds are healing with this system, receiving alerts on any infection that may arise, which helps to prevent complications.

“This can improve and individualize the treatment of chronic wounds that require long-term care,” says Bouchiat, who emphasizes: “In particular, it provides an early detection of infections, allowing a hospital solution at home.”

Stimulating healing

The incorporation of graphene into skin patches of these types not only does not interfere with wound healing, but in fact can actually promotes it, actively stimulating this process, as demonstrated by the pre-clinical studies that have already been conducted.

The first human trials are about to begin.  This medical device has been classified as class II-b (such as condoms or insulin pens, for example) and requires the European mark of conformity. Its launch is planned for 2023.

The creators of the patch had intended to present it in February, along with other projects of the major European initiative known as the Graphene Flagship, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which was cancelled to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

In this context, the researchers point out that this new graphene device will be able to help monitor the chronic wounds of isolated people, such as those who have now been forced into this situation by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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SINC produces scientific news for the European project SCOPE, coordinated by FECYT and funded by the European Union through Horizon 2020, its funding program. The SCOPE mission is to communicate visionary research results of partnering projects in the framework of the Graphene Flagship and the Human Brain Project, as well as to enhance the FET Flagships partnering environment in the European Union.

Far from giving up, the youngsters decided to reorient their work towards a part of the body engineers were less interested in but was highly complex: the hands. They set out to create robotic hands that would perfectly imitate human hands.

This led to the creation of what nowadays is the Shadow Robot Company, which last summer received the AIconics Award 2019 in the category of Best Artificial Intelligence Hardware Award and won the Queen's Awards for Enterprise 2019 under Innovation. One of their recent inventions is the world’s first haptic telerobot hand. In addition to cooperating with the main entities and research centres in the world, such as NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Siemens, the team participates in the Human Brain Project (HBP), the most important European project on the human brain.

“Neuroscience is something new to us but, at a conference, a researcher working at the Technical University of Munich (Germany) proposed that we integrate our dexterous hand simulation model into the HBP-Neurorobotics simulation Platform. This we believe will enable the neuroscience researchers and Shadow Robot’s customers to explore learning paradigms and control models coming from neuroscience, something no other simulation platform can offer” Radhika Gudipati, the company's business development manager, explains to Sinc.

This platform allows virtual brain models to be connected to robotic devices, such as hands

This platform allows virtual brain models to be connected to robotic devices, such as hands in this case. Thus, researchers can analyse how these devices control movement, react to stimuli or even ‘learn’ in a virtual environment.

Sensitivity up to the fingertips

The robotic hand has 129 sensors and 24 joints, with very similar movements to those of humans, including the thumb or even the flexion of the palm to move the little finger. Moreover, the fingertips are very sensitive, which adds to the similarity to real hands.

“Robotic hands are always used in the area of prostheses but, in this case, we expect our robotic hand model, which has been tested on the platform, to serve as an opportunity for researchers in Artificial Intelligence and neuroscience to test their techniques on hands similar to human hands,” summarizes the expert.

The Neurorobotics platform is public, accessible via the internet and available to all scientists who want to test their brain prototypes or build the brain-inspired robots of the future. The aim is that, thanks to the simulations, the new androids will be designed in a completely different way from what has been done until now.

Shadow Robot Company participates in the Human Brain Project, one of the FET Flagships of Horizon 2020- the European Union's research funding framework programme.

Shadow Robot Company participates in the Human Brain Project, one of the FET Flagships of Horizon 2020- the European Union's research funding framework programme.

The Sinc agency is participating in the European SCOPE project, coordinated by FECYT and financed by the European Union through Horizon 2020. The objectives of SCOPE are to communicate visionary results of research projects associated with the GrapheneFlagship and the Human Brain Project, as well as to promote and strengthen relationships within the scientific community of the Emblematic Research Initiatives of Future and Emerging Technologies (FET Flagships) in the EU.

Quside quantum chips can be installed on any connected computer for unbreakable encryption

The field in which Abellán is innovating is that of computer security and communications. Not only regarding current equipment, but also setting his sights on future quantum computers, an area to which large corporations like IBM are strongly committed.

“Current encryption systems are very limited in a world with all kinds of connected devices and with an increasing amount of information stored in the cloud,” the executive comments to Sinc.

“Quside uses the latest photonic integration technologies to design and produce components that generate random numbers capable of producing billions of bits per second,” as Abellán explains. “These devices can be installed on any computer that is connected to the internet to protect its data and communications.”

Secure encryption for today and tomorrow

“The greatest advantage of using a quantum component as the one we offer is that we guarantee that the generated numbers, which are then used to encrypt the information and the transmission, are truly random and therefore unpredictable to any hacker. This ensures that the protection will be secure not only today but also in the future,” he points out.

The devices can be integrated in servers, mobiles, tablets, autonomous cars, intelligent houses, drones... "The business potential is enormous"

The technology is available in the market in the form of a card called Qucard that can be installed in the equipment. The company has also developed a photonic chip, using light instead of electrons, which they have named Qupic and is in prototype phase.

Both devices can be integrated into servers, mobile phones, tablets, autonomous cars, intelligent homes and offices, drones, etc. In general, any equipment connected to the Internet. “The business potential is enormous,” emphasizes the manager.

The company’s customers include manufacturers of devices for data centres and telecommunications companies that use its technology to generate billions of random bits per second to improve the encryption systems in their products.

Carlos Abellán, founder and CEO of Quside / Domenico Tulli

The challenge of quantum computing

Another challenge facing the information and communications security sector is quantum computing.

“Today's cybersecurity algorithms are considered secure because they are too complicated to decipher for a conventional computer. But the enormous power of quantum computers could easily solve them,” notes Abellán.

If today there were a quantum computer with enough qubits, all communications on the Internet would be unprotected. "Our technology would guarantee the security"

If there were now a quantum computer with enough qubits, all communications on the internet would be unprotected. It would therefore be “necessary to integrate and deploy solutions based on products such as ours before the security of our communications collapses to guarantee long-term online security,” he says.

The field in which Quside works is still very much an emerging one and therefore has still few rivals. “There are several offers in the research field. The biggest competitor in the industry is the Swiss company ID Quantique, which has recently signed an agreement with the Korean telecommunications company SK Telekom”, Abellán tresses.

The goal that the company –which currently employs eight people– has set itself is to scale up the technology over the next few years so that its chips can be integrated into all types of devices at an affordable cost.

European Research

Quside was created in early 2017 to market the technology developed at ICFO, a leading research centre in the field of photonics. The company continues to collaborate with this institution “to continue investing in basic research as a tool for innovation and the generation of new products,” says the entrepreneur.

Quside is also part of two consortiums within the European Commission's FET Quantum Flagship, a programme with a €1-billion grant for the next ten years that aims to place Europe among the world leaders in quantum technology.

More specifically, the Spanish company is part of the QRANGE project, which focuses on the industrialization of quantum random number generators as a basic element of encryption systems. The company is also working on the CiViQ initiative, which focuses on the development of quantum key distribution systems and is based on a technology known as continuous variables, which is compatible with current telecommunications networks.

Mobile traces were used to predicted displacements due to a severe drought in La Guajira

Now, Spanish experts have applied the smartphone migration tracking system for the first time to a more long-term phenomenon such as climate change.

The study, in which Enrique Frías-Martínez, researcher at Telefónica Research, in Madrid, Spain, has participated, has used aggregated and encrypted cell phone metadata to predict the migration caused by a severe drought in 2014 in La Guajira, Colombia. La Guajira is a rural department located in northeast Colombia, on the border with Venezuela, and is mainly inhabited by the aboriginal population of the Wayuus.

From the telephone signals of the migrants from La Guajira (Colombia), it was observed that they were displaced mainly to urban areas (in red). / Frías et al

As Frías-Martínez explains to Sinc, in the research, which received funding from the National Science Foundation of the USA, cell phone traces were used "to identify population flows in the municipalities of the area affected by the drought".

This information -he adds- "was then used to monitor migrations using radiation models, which take into account not only the characteristics of the population and the distance between origin and destination, but also the economic opportunities of the place where they end up”.

On the basis of this solution, the authors proposed a variation based on considering the climate of the destination area as an addition to the concept of economic opportunity to predict the migrations caused by climate change.

A prediction success rate of more than 60%

The conclusions of the work, says Frías-Martíbez, "indicate that the percentage of the population displaced during the drought in the Colombian region was 10% during the six months of the study."

The flows mainly went from rural areas to urban environments due to better economic prospects and easier access to water and food

The results also highlight that the climate of the destination areas plays a minor role in that decision. "The flows mainly went from rural areas to urban environments within the department itself, since urban areas offer better economic prospects and easier access to water and food," he stresses.

"We have verified that, with cell phone traces, these migrations can be characterized with a success rate of over 60%, both in terms of the total number of people who migrate and the place where they move to."

The researcher says that "since displacements caused by climate change -especially by extreme drought and soil erosion- are going to be increasingly frequent, this mobile tracking system could be very useful, especially if we take into account that these devices are already widespread in developing countries".

Reference:

Sibren Isaacman, Vanessa Frias-Martinez, Enrique Frias-Martinez “Modeling human migration patterns during drought conditions in La Guajira, Colombia”. ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS 2018); 20 of june, 2018.

"It is the second cause of environmental complaint in the world, after noise but it doesn’t receive the attention it deserves from the authorities or the industry”

This chemical engineer has been working on odour-related problems since 2004 and trying to break into an area in which "everything is still to be done". Arias has been employed in two of the main consultancies dealing with the subject in Spain, but she eventually decided to act on her own, since these companies -she says- "have no interest in innovating".

A couple of years ago, she developed an app called OdourCollect, "that uses citizen science, the smartphones we always carry with us, and our nose, which is the best smell sensor that exists." Humans can distinguish around one billion different odours.

As a sense of defence that alerts us of dangers, it is highly developed. "For example, hydrogen sulphide, the main gas that causes the odour of rotten eggs in sewage treatment plants, is a lethal gas and our nose detects it at very low concentrations of less than 10 parts per billion (ppb), which is below the detection limit of many measuring devices”.

"The app," she explains, "is very simple. What it does is geolocate the user in space and time using the mobile phone, which means you can register a new smell in real time wherever you are. You also have the possibility to access the observations included by other people and even communicate with them to make a collaborative map of odours."

A European project to fight odour pollution

The researcher points out that "the largest number of odour complaints in Spain is due to waste treatment activities and sewage treatment plants because they are very close to the population."

"I wanted to give citizens a tool to show that there is an odour problem in their community and to demand action from those involved"

She comments that "there are very few cases in which the industries or the municipalities involved carry out technical studies to confront the problem and, if there are any, they are closed and less than transparent. Citizens have no access to this environmental information, which is affecting them every day."

This was the reason that led her to develop the application. "I wanted to give citizens a tool that could empower them to not only access the data, but also generate them; to prove that there is a odour problem in their community and to demand action from those involved."

Her determination to bring this environmental problem to the foreground has made the EU award her with the leadership of the European D-Noses Project, along with the Ibercivis foundation of citizen science in Aragón. The goal, she says, "is to create a world map of smells with the help of data sent by people via OdourCollect."

The Odour Collect app allows citizens to register smells using smart phones. / Ibercivis

The project, which started last April, has a budget of 3.1 million Euros for a period of three years and "is the most ambitious odour pollution initiative in Europe and in the world," she stresses.

D-Noses is participated by fifteen partners, including experts in odour pollution from universities, civic associations and small companies from the environmental sector.

A total of nine countries will participate: Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and Chile. Arias indicates that "there will be case studies of communities that are severely affected by this problem in these countries as well as in other countries in Africa and in different parts of the world."

"We are going to develop a world map of smells with the help of data sent by people via our app"

As she explains, "to begin with, the OdourCollect tool will collect the data that citizens generate in real time; the odour experts will be responsible for validating the different insights and will incorporate meteorological data and mathematical back-trajectory models to verify the origins of the smell".

Then, in collaboration with the environmental authorities and the emitting industries, we will study what was happening at the time of each validated observation, in order to find ways to reduce the nuisance; for example, applying good practices in the emitting industry or modifying the different operations in order to emit the odour in favourable dispersion conditions.

In addition, "the analysis of the information we obtain will help us to make recommendations, guides, the green book of odour pollution and the action plan for the next five to eight years", she adds. “The idea is to influence the environmental policies of the different countries and put odour pollution on the map. We also want the citizens to be protected, as we haven’t been so far”.

Arias wants to influence the environmental policies of the different countries. / David Fernández / SINC

International Observatory

The International Odour Observatory will be ready by the end of the year. It will act as a repository of information and, as Arias explains, "it will map emitting industries, communities with problems and areas with environmental regulations, allowing open access to information for the first time as regards odour pollution."

"Odour pollution is a warning sign of more serious environmental problems and can be harmful to one’s health"

"What we want to show," she says, "is that odour pollution is a warning sign of more serious environmental problems. It can be harmful to one’s health and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change."

For example, "one of the most pestilent odours is that of methane, one of the main gases that cause the greenhouse effect, more so than CO2, and mainly generated in landfills and livestock farms."

"With the right facilities, these gases could be collected through pipes and suction systems and then sent to a cogeneration engine to produce energy. In this way, both stenches and greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced, "she clarifies.

The researcher believes that the European initiative will help to further pressure the emitters of these smells into taking corrective measures. It will also serve "to design new strategies in response to this problem with the help of citizen participation".

A 'start-up' to exploit citizen science data

In parallel to her participation in D-Noses, Rosa Arias’s upcoming plans include the launching of a start-up to be called Science for Change, which is now in the constitution phase.

"The idea behind this company is that of making use of the data on odour pollution that we are going to collect thanks to the European project with the Odour Collect tool," she points out.

The business model "will be based on the identification of populations with stench problems and with an interest in applying our new, citizen science-based methodology to solve the problem from a bottom-up perspective".

According to the chemical engineer, "the odour experts at Science for Change will be responsible, on the one hand, for creating the community of citizens involved in registering odours in real time, training them and educating them to obtain valid observations, and, on the other hand, for validating each one of those observations, verifying the origin of the odour with mathematical models and making detailed analyses of what is causing that annoyance in order to reduce it”.

"The emitting industries will have a very powerful monitoring tool that will be more affordable than traditional odour studies - since citizens' observations are free of charge – in order to improve their processes and reduce odour pollution. At the same time, it will be possible for them to check whether the corrective or good practice measures they are implementing actually work."

In addition,"it will be possible to extrapolate the model to address other environmental issues, study climate change or improve urban transport, and generate data in real time through citizen science tools.The possibilities are endless,” she concludes.

A study conducted by Guido Giunti, medical researcher and advisor of the Sevillian company Salumedia Tecnologías, has analyzed 599 breast cancer apps available in the stores of the Apple iOS and Android stores. The main conclusion, the researcher said to Sinc, "is that most do not meet a basic criteria for making the assessment of their reliability possible."

Most of these apps don't meet a basic criteria for making the assessment of their reliability possible

The author emphasizes that 80% of these apps do not cite the source from which they have extracted the data they handle. "Since it is not known where the information came from, it cannot be validated; the developer may have gotten it from Wikipedia or from what he or she heard one day on the radio. There is no way for us to know".

In addition, only one quarter of them have any kind of warning or disclaimers about their use. "This means that if a woman who has the condition, experiences some symptom or is concerned and decides to resort to one of these apps, she will not find anything in them that will guide her in the search for the right information and the help they need."

In most of these applications "there is also no information about whether there has been any cooperation with health entities in their development. And, although more than half promote treatments, they do not include the recommendation to consult with health care providers,” he adds.

Homeopathy and 'alternative' medicine

The results of the study, published in theInternational Journal of Medical Informatics, indicate that most applications found under the descriptor breast cancer in Apple and Google stores were free and targeted to patients.

The most common type of app contained information about the disease and its treatment (30%) and 19% dealt with its management. The authors also noted that 15% of them addressed issues of awareness and sensitization and that one in ten dealt with homeopathy therapies and 'alternative' medicine.

Capture of several breast cancer applications / Google Play

According to Giunti, "there are different levels of disinformation in these health apps, ranging from questionable material, which includes unsourced data about the disease to dangerous indications such as prolonged fasting or self-hypnosis sessions for neutralizing cancer. All of this brings us back to how important it is that the information offered be validated," he emphasizes.

The benefit they offer to patients is not clear

Other problems detected in the apps assessed are the lack of clarity in the information and usability difficulties, with a confusing interface that is not very user-friendly, and fundamentally, that the benefits they offer the patient are not clear.

Lack of quality control

"It is very easy to realize that many of these apps have not had adequate quality controls or have been developed using medical criteria. Our expectations for developing applications of this kind need to be higher,” he says.

The study also highlighted that almost all these apps were created by SMEs and entrepreneurs. In Giunti's opinion, "in the future there will be more and more technological tools that will be part of the health system repertoire. It is our duty as healthcare professionals to find a way to cooperate and make these tools genuinely helpful for patients so that they meet their needs in the best possible manner,” he concludes.

Reference:

G. Giunti, D.H. Giunta, Guisado-Fernandez, J.L. Bender, L. Fernandez-Luque. “A biopsy of Breast Cancer mobile applications: state of the practice review" (2018), doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2017.10.022.

The company continues to receive awards and recognitions for their work in developing technology and helping to understand the links between the brain and disease. The British Magazine Wired declared it the Best Start-up in health in 2015 and last year the El Periódico journal chose it as the best innovative company in Catalonia. Even the Financial Times has highlighted this businesswoman’s entrepreneurial talent within the field of Neuroscience.

The headgear of success

Neuroelectrics started operating in 2011 in Europe from its headquarters in Barcelona, and in 2014 it opened offices in Boston to reach the US market. "The staff consists of thirty employees, mostly engineers, physicists, mathematicians and neuroscientists," says Maiques to Sinc.

The star product is Starstim, "the first device on the market that can simultaneously record electrical brain signal and apply transcranial current stimulation into the brain. The technology is based on mathematical models, data analysis and artificial intelligence".

"Patients can take the device home to apply the stimulation sessions on themselves with medical supervision"

As she explains, the device does two things: "It records brain activity and stimulates it by administering small currents to the brain." In addition, "our scientists have developed a series of brain models and algorithms that make it possible to customize the treatment according to the characteristics of each patient and their pathology."

"The system allows us to collect brain activity, upload it to our Cloud storage and then compute a customized solution. We can decide the number of electrical channels and the type of currents for exciting or inhibiting a specific area or different areas of the brain”.

In her opinion, "it is a very sophisticated technology that for the very first time, allows one to address or non-invasively focus on different areas requiring treatment, which are different for each patient, depending on the disease or where the source of their injury lies". Another benefit of this technology is that "patients can take it home, under the supervision of a medical personnel, to apply stimulation sessions themselves."

Clinical trial with epilepsy

The most important project which Neuroelectrics is implementing now is the use of Starstim for the treatment of epilepsy. "We are testing it in a clinical study at the Boston Children’s Hospital with about a hundred patients," she comments. The idea is to reduce epileptic seizures in children who do not respond to medication by non-invasive electro-stimulation. A sample of adults has also been included."

Ana Maiques, co-founder of Neuroelectrics and Starlab. / Daniel Loewe Pujol-xicoy

If the company accomplishes positive results in the next two years, the hopes are that the US Food and Drug Administration will give the approval so that Starstim can be used on patients.

She believes that this device can help people with various neurodegenerative diseases. "We are working on a pilot study with Harvard University to stimulate the memory and motor skills of 40 patients with dementia and cognitive impairment, which is an early stage of Alzheimer's."

In addition, the company has received help from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting research on Parkinson's, "to see if, with brain monitoring, one could develop early biomarkers of the disease," she says.

Starstim is being tested in children with epilepsy and in trials with patients with dementia and Parkinson's

Another possible application under study is that of rehabilitation after a stroke. Neuroelectrics is working with several centres in Spain, such as the Hospital Vall d'Hebron and Sant Joan de Deu, which perform research in this field.

Neuroelectrics is also exploring the use of Starstim in psychiatric ailments such as depression and anxiety. "We will have to go pathology by pathology, proving effectiveness, but we believe that our devices could be applied in these cases."

Apart from participating in clinical trials of its technology, Neurolectrics sells its devices for research purposes to scientific centres, hospitals and universities around the world. "This is our main source of income," she points out.

"Last year’s revenue reached over three million Euros with the marketing of Starstim to institutions in 40 countries, including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre and veterans’ hospitals in USA ". In the latter, she comments that "they are using Starstim in neuro-rehabilitation sessions and for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome."

Good times for neuro-technology

For its part, NASA is applying the Neuroelectrics device to monitor brain activity and study the fatigue of pilots during space flights.

“There will be more and more technologies improving the quality of life of patients with neurodegenerative diseases”

Apart from the sales obtained with Starstim, the firm is immersed in its first round of financing, trying to secure 15 million dollars (about 12 million Euros) while searching for industrial partners.

The board believes that this is a good time for research and development in neuro-science and neuro-technology. "The population is aging, so neuro-degenerative diseases are increasingly affecting more people and there are only a few drugs on the market that help improve a patients’ quality of life. We’re going to see more and more innovative technologies that try to provide a solution to this epidemic of pathologies," she concludes.

Can consciousness be measured?

The scientific 'muscle' of Neuroelectrics is Starlab. It is the Barcelona-based Spanish corporation parent company, which is also in charge of longer-term research.

Starlab is currently participating in the Luminous Project of the European Commission, which uses Starstim to measure the level of consciousness in patients in a vegetative state and investigate whether this can be modified with electro-stimulation.

Stiped, another European project, uses the digital brain technology to collect brain data from children with hyperactivity and Autism, and check if they improve with stimulation.

It has a global revenue of 4.5 million Euros (including the three million contributed by Neuroelectrics) and allocates 700,000 euros a year to R & D. Maiques and her husband founded it in 2000 from the remains of a Belgian company that went bankrupt during the 'dotcom' crisis. "We recovered it to work in the Aerospace and Neuroscience sectors," comments Maiques.

"Starlab continues to do cutting-edge R&D in these two areas, but the partners’ intention were always to go from research to market. Therefore, we decided to create the spin off, focusing on marketing devices to the medical sector. This led to the creation of Neuroelectrics, which is 100% owned by the parent company," she says.

The drug is a small interfering RNA capable of penetrating the cells of the retina and blocking the formation of new blood vessels

The drug SYL136001v10, presented by the PharmaMar group company, is still in the preclinical phase. “Its effectiveness has been proven in animal models and trials with humans will begin at the end of 2018”, said Covadonga Pañeda, R+D Manager at Sylentis.

Pañeda is the main author of a study on SYL136001v10, which was presented at the end of September at the XIII Annual Meeting of the Oligonucleotides Therapeutics Society, held in Bordeaux (France).

Objective: to silence the expression of the NRARP protein

Pañeda goes on to explain that this compound “is a small interfering RNA (siRNA) designed to silence the expression of NRARP, a protein that controls the formation of new blood vessels in the retina”.

Covadonga Piñeda, main author of the study and R&D manager director at Sylentis. / PharmaMar

In this way, she says, “the drug exerts its action by entering the cells of the retina, where it prevents the synthesis of this protein and blocks the formation of new vessels, which is one of the fundamental characteristics of degenerative diseases of the retina”.

The compounds currently used to treat these diseases are based on large antibodies that cannot penetrate from the ocular surface to the retina, so they must be administered by intravitreal injections.

Therefore, “patients suffering from age-related macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy have to go to the hospital where the treatments are performed with ocular injections, which is annoying and painful, and also involves a significant financial investment for the health system”, says Covadonga Pañeda.

Until now, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy are treated with intravitreal injections

Efficacy in animal models

However, she notes, "siRNA, like SYL136001v10, are up to 10 times smaller than these treatments. Their size allows them to penetrate the retina and inhibit the formation of new blood vessels after their application in ophthalmic drops, as we have shown in animal models”.

In particular, “efficacy studies have shown that the reduction of NRARP in the retina by means of siRNA leads to the regression of angiogenic retinal lesions and that the observed reductions are equivalent to those of anti-VEGF, which is the current treatment standard for these diseases with ocular injections”, stresses the R&D manager. .

The firm, located in Tres Cantos (Madrid), plans to take charge of the first clinical efficacy studies. Once the proof of concept in humans has been demonstrated, it will try to license the drug to a multinational.

Reference:

Covadonga Pañeda et al.“Targeting NRARP with siRNA based compounds for the treatment of retinal neovascularization”.Annual Meeting of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society (September 2017).

The meeting, held between the 25-29 of September in Athens, was organised by the European initiative Graphene Flagship to discuss latest research and applications of graphene, "the most amazing and versatile material known to mankind,” according to the event organisers.

The extraordinary mechanical and electrical properties of this material, together with the list of potential applications, have triggered intense interest among research teams across the globe. In Europe, the Graphene Flagship initiative coordinates the main groups on the continent and promotes collaborations with companies to accelerate the use of graphene in commercial products.

C. R. Fiat has taken part in the production of a technology demostrator with graphene used in a panel for rear seat back in vehicles

An example is Polygraph, a four-year EC funded project coming to an end in October 2017 and made up of 14 partners across Europe: seven SMEs, four large companies, two universities and one research centre. Together they have developed two demonstrators incorporating graphene that can help reduce the weight of some vehicle and aircraft components, resulting in better fuel economy and lower harmful emissions.

One of the devices is a panel for rear seat back in vehicles, where graphene is added to the composite resin with which these components are made, proving improvement to the thermal, mechanical and electrical properties.

The Italian firm Fiat has taken part in the production of this technology demonstrator through its Centro Ricerche Fiat SCpA, and the UK company NetComposites, which is also the coordinator of the Polygraph project, is responsible for characterising and manufacturing the composite material.

Radome, an enclosure that protects an antenna, manufactured with polymers, fibreglass, epoxy resins and graphene. / Polygraph

Development engineer, Maria Konstantakopoulou from NetComposites, highlighted the role of all the other PolyGraph partners in each of the steps required to reach the end product: “Robnor Resins (United Kingdom) supplies the epoxy resin, the Spanish company Avanzare and the Swiss company Imerys produce the graphites and graphenes, which are then mixed with the resins using advanced mixing and exfoliation techniques developed by the German SMEs YTRON and NETZSCH”.

For Gary Foster, project manager at NetComposites and Project Manager of PolyGraph, the project’s key targets have been met: “We have managed to develop process methods for exfoliating expanded graphite and generating graphene at an industrial level. And these processes have been used to produce a material with improved physical and electrical properties for composites, coatings and adhesives”.

The second demonstrator presented by the team during Graphene Week was also manufactured in this way: a radome or sonar housing, which is an enclosure to protect an antenna without interfering with radio waves. It is made with fibreglass-reinforced polymers and resins enriched with graphene.

The engineers Selim Stahl, from the Swedish institute RISE, and Maria Konstantakopoulou from the UK company NetComposites, presenting the radome or sonar housing and the panel for rear seat back-panels in vehicles manufactured with graphene materials. / SINC

The UK company BAE Systems, one of the leading manufacturers in the European aerospace sector, took part in the design and analysis of this prototype, proving that graphene technologies can now be applied to some components within this industry.

A radome or sonar housing to protect an antenna is made with fibreglass-reinforced polymers and resins enriched with graphene

Researchers at the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) also took part in the development of this component and published some of their findings in scientific magazines: In 2016 they presented a technique in the Journal of Nanomaterials to improve the electrical and thermal properties of polystyrene-graphene nanofibers via electrospinning and this year they offered solutions in the Composites Science and Technology journal, for filtration problems encountered when incorporating the innovative material into resins.

Another partner expected to publish their results is the Swedish research institute, RISE, which has estimated the costs of the life cycle and the environmental impacts - including waste management - associated with the production of the panel for car seats and the radome for aircrafts. They have also tested the effects of fire on these products.

The details were explained by the engineer, Francine Amon from this company during one of the Graphene Week sessions, in which Julio Gómez, the director of Avanzare, defined the advantages of graphene materials with large lateral dimensions "which, like reduced graphene oxides, offer very high electric conductivity and can compete with other materials, such as conductive lampblack”.

Less marketing and more genuine industry

The fine sheet of graphene can be seen behind the mesh grid of the transmission electron microscope / Avanzare

This entrepreneur from Avanzare has just been appointed chairman of the Alianza Española en Grafeno (Spanish Graphene Partnership), aimed at bringing producers and users together so they know exactly what is being sold to them. "Graphene-based materials need to be ‘labelled’, indicating how they have been produced and their properties; transparency is essential. Graphene does not need to be a marketing issue, but a genuine industry for technical applications," added Gómez.

The Polygraph results suggests this could be possible and apart from the two technology demonstrators, a number of PolyGraph partners are considering using graphene in their products, although, to date, none of the have manufactured a component or a specific device intended for the marketplace.

The PolyGraph project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 604143. A budget of 7.2 million euros was allocated to this project (5 million of which were provided by the European Commission), which also had the collaboration of the Padova University (Italy), the UK company HMG paints, specialising in coatings; the French company SAIREM with its microwave manufacturing technologies and The Institute of Occupational Medicine (United Kingdom), covering health and safety issues associated with the production of Graphene.

Polygraph is just one example of a whole host of projects supported by the European Union. In addition, the Graphene Flagship initiative, launched by the European Union in 2013 and with a total budget of around 1 billion euros, aimed at getting graphene out of research labs and into commercial applications to benefit society as a whole.

As Costas Galiotis from the Greek foundation, Hellas, explained as host of the Graphene Week, “the technological advances envisaged by the use of graphene and other 2D materials may have an equal, or even greater, impact on future technologies than the achievements in science, culture and technology of 5th century BC in Athens”.

Graphene Week 2018 in San Sebastián

During the closing of Graphene Week 2017 was announced the city that will host this international congress next year: San Sebastián, in Spain. The host institution will be a nanoscience leading center of the Basque Country, CIC nanoGUNE, as informed its director, Jose M. Pitarke.

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SINC produces scientific news for the European project SCOPE, coordinated by FECYT and funded by the European Union through Horizon 2020, its funding program. The SCOPE mission is to communicate visionary research results of partnering projects in the framework of the Graphene Flagship and the Human Brain Project, as well as to enhance the FET Flagships partnering environment in the European Union.

The team has produced P450 enzymes - powerful compounds used by plants to defend themselves - in 'E. Coli '

“These powerful compounds can be used as active ingredients in drugs for treating diseases such as cancer and psoriasis,” SINC was told by the Spanish researcher Darío Vázquez-Albacete, the lead author of a paper describing a new method of producing the enzymes in bacterial cell factories.

The findings of the study, developed at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, a research facility managed by the Technical University of Denmark, were published in the journal 'Biotechnology and Bioengineering’.

Simulation of a three-dimensional structure of a plant P450 enzyme. / DTU

According to Vázquez-Albacete, “the new technique is a significant step forward, as plants produce P450 enzymes in very small amounts, extraction is very complex and sometimes we have to use polluting chemical synthesis processes which involve the use of oil derivatives. Additionally, some plant species such as the yew (Taxus baccata), from which the cancer drug Taxol is obtained, are endangered species.”

Large-scale production

“We have developed tools which will allow the proteins from plants that produce these compounds to be recognized by the bacterial molecular machinery. The aim is to use bacteria because they arecapable of growing rapidly in controlled fermenters, allowing us to produce large quantities of the enzymes,” says the researcher.

To achieve these results, the researchers modified and transferred P450 genes from plants to E. Coli bacteria and to check whether the microbes could produce larger quantities of these enzymes than existing methods.

Vázquez-Albacete says that “in order for bacteria to properly express the enzymes, the corresponding DNA sequence must frequently be modified to facilitate ‘decoding’ by the bacteria’s system.”

The Spanish researcher Darío Vázquez-Albacete in the laboratory of protein production at the Technical University of Denmark. / DTU

In the study, the team developed a toolbox of ‘auxiliary’ DNA sequences, allowing them to express around 50 P450 enzymes from different plants in E. coli.

Some of these enzymes are involved in the synthesis of ingenol to treat psoriasis, and others in the production of the cancer drug Taxol

Some of these enzymes are involved in synthesising the natural compound ingenol, which is used to treat psoriasis and is currently manufactured using traditional chemical techniques. Other P450s are used to produce the cancer drug Taxol.

The researcher stresses that plants generate a variety of interesting compounds to protect them from the sun and from predators, dehydration, etc. “Many of these are synthesised by P450s, whose function is still very little understood, so there is enormous potential to discover new compounds.”

Besides the Novo Nordisk Foundation team, a handful of other groups are already following this line of research. Pharmaceutical firms have already displayed interest in the new technique.

Reference:

Darío Vázquez-Albacete et al. “An expression tag toolbox for microbial production of membrane bound plant cytochromes P450”. Biotechnology and Bioengineering (abril, 2017).

The jaw of Nereis virens is composed of a protein that contains histidine, an amino acid that interacts with the ions of the environment and makes it more or less flexible

Chemical engineer Francisco Martín-Martínez, a Spanish researcher at the MIT Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics and co-author of the paper, explained to SINC, "the jaw of Nereis virens is composed of a protein that contains large amounts of histidine, an amino acid that interacts with the ions of the environment and makes it more or less flexible depending on the environment in which it finds itself.”

The material, described in a study published in the journal ‘ACS Nano’, has been developed in collaboration with the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

"It's a hydrogel made from a synthesized protein, similar to the one that makes up the jaw of this worm and which gives it structural stability and impressive mechanical performance," says Martín-Martínez, who adds: "When we change the ions of the environment and the salt concentration, the material expands or contracts."

The team found that at the molecular level, the structure of protein material is strengthened when the environment contains zinc ions and certain pH indexes. The Zinc ions create chemical bonds with the structure of the compound. These bonds are reversible, and can form or break at convenience, making the material more dynamic and flexible.

In addition, the researchers at MIT have created a model which is capable of predicting how the substance operates and have conducted a theoretical study that explains the molecular mechanism responsible for that behaviour.

In this way, the researchers have been able to simulate, using supercomputers, how the compound behaves, in order to improve it and to design its molecular structure before taking it to the laboratory. As the AFRL is involved in its development, "the details of the synthesis are not in the public domain," says the co-author.

Research scientists Francisco Martin-Martinez and Zhao Qin sketch the molecular background of their research on Nereis virens, a marine worm with a remarkably strong and adaptable jaw. / Allison Dougherty

Robotics and sensors

Its ability to contract and expand makes it especially suited to creating devices that work as muscles for so-called soft robots

The new material could have different applications, as Martín-Martínez explains: "Its ability to contract and expand makes it especially suited to creating devices that work as muscles for so-called soft robots, which are made of polymers. It could also be used in the development of sensors that do not need to use external power supplies and control devices for complex electronic systems."

In this project, Martín-Martínez, originally from Granada (Spain), has been in charge of the theoretical study that explains the mechanism by which histidine interacts differently with different ions and causes the material to expand and contract. "Thanks to that, we understand what is happening and we can control it and improve it," he emphasizes.

Martín Martínez, who has been at MIT for three years and has specialized in the design and modelling of materials, believes that most of the problems that are being addressed with technology "have already been solved by nature, almost always in a much better way than we humans can develop, so for us it is a great source of inspiration," he concludes.

Bibliographic Reference:

Chia-Ching Chou, Francisco J. Martin-Martinez, Zhao Qin, Patrick B. Dennis, Maneesh K. Gupta, Rajesh R. Naik, Markus J. Buehler. “Ion Effect and Metal-Coordinated Cross-Linking for Multiscale Design of Nereis Jaw Inspired Mechanomutable Materials”. ACS Nano (2017).

The model, called a survival ensemble, can predict what day and at what stage of the game a user will stop playing

África Periáñez –Head of Game Data Science at the video game company Silicon Studio, in Tokyo– and her team have developed a mathematical model that predicts when a user will leave a specific mobile game. The results of their work were presented at the International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics, held last October in Montreal (Canada).

As Periáñez told SINC, the algorithm they developed uses the so-called ‘ensemble’ method, “a model that is based on many learning algorithms instead of a single one, thereby improving the prediction accuracy by examining many more correlations and alternative models.”

“Every time we run the model, we are actually using 1,000 distinct submodels,” she adds, “each of which focuses on different variables and has different initial conditions.”

The team also used a survival analysis algorithm within each submodel. These models “are used in medical research, for example, to predict when a patient will experience an event of interest, and in biology, to know how particular cells are going to behave in the body,” she explains.

The main and most pressing priority is to try to extend the player’s ‘life’ and get them to buy as much as possible

Combination of mathematical models

The Silicon Studio researchers have now, for the first time, combined the power of survival algorithms and ‘ensemble’ models in the field of video games. “This," says Periáñez, "has enabled us to achieve a high level of prediction accuracy, as the algorithm automatically adapts to the data of the game we want to analyse.”

Applied to videogames, the model, called a survival ensemble, can predict what day and at what stage of the game a user will stop playing, and why they will do so.

“Already from their first days playing the game, we know with a good degree of certainty what level a user will reach and how many days it will take them. The main and most pressing priority is to try to extend the player’s ‘life’ and get them to buy as much as possible. Also important is to understand users’ needs and design a more entertaining and stimulating game,” says the researcher.

The team of Game Data Science is formed by researchers from several countries: Anna Guitart (Spain), Paul Bertens (Netherlands), Africa Periáñez (Spain), Sovannrith Lay (Cambodia), Guan Jun (China) and Peipei Chen (Taiwan). / Silicon Studio

The industry has undergone a paradigm shift since the appearance of games for smartphones. According to África Periáñez, “companies store a lot of information on users: their actions, connections, purchases, etc. And they are beginning to realise that they need to move towards a data-based development model, which allows them to know who their players are and what they like, and also to predict their reactions.”

"We have managed to reduce churn by 5% using personalised push notifications. This alone has led to an increase of about 15% in sales", says Periáñez

“Bigger companies are already taking steps in this direction, albeit slowly,” she explains, “but small and medium studios do not have as many resources. This is why we are offering our platform as a service, so that they can use it as a prediction tool.” The product was called 4Front as a code name and will be marketed under the trade name Yokozuna Data, inspired by the highest achievable rank in sumo wrestling.

Automatic adaptation to different games and data

The Silicon Studio platform adapts automatically to different games and data. “We are already working with Japanese and European firms, and have tested the product with several of our company’s games, such as Age of Ishtaria and GrandSphere,” notes Periáñez.

According to the researcher, the system can predict who will leave the game very accurately. “Focusing on the players that spend the most money, known as ‘whales,’ we have managed to reduce churn by 5% using personalised push notifications. This alone has led to an increase of about 15% in sales,” she points out, concluding that “our goal is to become leaders in the international market and to democratise data science in the field of video games, an area where we are pioneers."

Reference:

África Periáñez, Alain Saas, Anna Guitart and Colin Magne. “Churn Prediction in Mobile Social Games: Towards a Complete Assessment Using Survival Ensembles”. IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (2016).

The method uses a predatory bacterium to extract bioplastic materials from the inside of other bacteria without degrading it

Martínez is currently a researcher at the biotech firm Evolva in Copenhagen, having previously worked at the CIB’s Polymer Biotechnology Laboratory, and specialist in developing bacterial cell factories. “The aim is to sustainably obtain the products we’re interested in, such as bioplastics, a very interesting alternative where very large amounts of money are at stake."

The issue, she adds, “is that bacteria can produce and accumulate up to 90% of their own weight as bioplastic. But the polymer is contained inside the cell and it is difficult to extract. Until now, different detergents and cell disruption systems have been developed and applied to lyse the producers and release the product. However, these processes are not environmentally friendly and also quite inefficient, which increases production costs”.

Aiming to reduce costs and improve the downstream process, the team chose a bacterium which preys upon other bacteria, named Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus. Moreover, the predator was genetically redesigned, transforming it into a biological tool that enables the disruption of bioplastic-producing bacteria, facilitating the extraction and further purification of the bioproduct.

Virginia Martinez at the laboratories of the biotechnology firm Evolva in Copenhagen. / R. Guzman

A pioneering method

The innovative extraction method is unique and novel and has already been patented. “What we did was to use the predatory bacterium B. bacteriovorus as a lytic agent to kill other bacteria (in this particular case P. putida KT2440, a natural PHA producer) and recover the intracellular bioproduct. We also engineered the predator so that it doesn’t degrade the bioplastic accumulated by the prey,” the researcher explains.

The system enables the bioplastic to be recovered in a single step with no need for complex equipment or toxic compounds

This lytic system enables the bioplastic to be recovered in a single step “with no need for complex equipment or toxic compounds,” Martínez stresses.

The bacterium P. putida KT2440 accumulating bioplastic. / CIB

The method could also be used to obtain other added-value compounds, such as enzymes or proteins previously accumulated in other bacteria.

This is due to the ability of B. bacteriovorus to attack a wide variety of bacterial strains, including those most widely used in industry and also at high cell density. In addition, “it is safe for use by humans, as it does not attack mammalian cells,” the researcher points out.

With the system now patented, some companies have already shown interest in it. “We hope it will be used commercially to produce bioplastics or any other intracellular compound. This is an innovative process because it is the first time a predatory bacterium strategy has been used as an alternative method for the recovery of intracellular products of industrial interest” Martínez concludes.

Reference:

Virginia Martínez, Cristina Herencias, M. Auxiliadora Prieto. “Engineering a predatory bacterium as a proficient killer agent for intracellular bio-products recovery: The case of the polyhydroxyalkanoates”. Scientific Reports (2016)

“The application could have been very useful, for example, as a support system to control violent football fans during Euro 2016", says the researcher

“This system could have been very useful –for example– as a support system to control the violent football fans that caused serious incidents during Euro 2016 in France,” points to Sinc Juan Manuel Corchado, professor of Computer Science and leader of the Bisite artificial intelligence team at USAL.

According to Corchado, the police and other law enforcement agencies could use the tool to detect critical points, threats and areas with concentrations of potentially dangerous people. “It’s based both on the semantic analysis of messages and historical data and their evolution.”

To develop the tool, the team used hybrid neural–symbolic artificial intelligence systems and methods that solve problems using a combination of different algorithms, “with good results”, he highlights.

Analysis in different languages

The advantage of the new application, says Corchado, is that it can analyse emotions in different languages –at the moment, Spanish, English, French, German, Russian and Arabic–. Also, ontinuously extract communications information and see changes in individuals’ sentiments and physical location, analysing group interrelationships at the same time.

European detail map of Flickr and Twitter locations. / Eric Fischer

“It can establish where a dangerous user is located with reasonable precision, based on what they share on Twitter and how and with whom they are connecting at any time, without the need of geolocating tweets,” he adds.

Depending on the traffic generated between people, it is possible to identify the members of a group, its leaders and followers. It is also possible to see how relationships evolve and whether new members join a group. In addition, says the researcher, having identified the leaders, the tool can try to influence them to change their sentiments.

Corchado assures that the tool is at a very advanced stage. “We’ve developed a prototype for experimenting with new algorithms and functions, and we’ve almost perfected the system to follow individuals and their social contacts, which is able to monitor the interaction between different people or groups and the evolution of their relationships. All that, in a very dynamic, user-friendly format,” he stresses.

The algorithms locate dangerous groups by analyzing what they share on Twitter and how their relationships evolve

Preventing bullying and racism

Other uses of the system could be preventing phenomena such as bullying and racism. It can also be used to analyse what’s being said about companies, brands and people on social media.

The USAL researchers are already working with national law enforcement authorities, who will soon begin validation of the tool. “I can’t tell you any more at the present time,” says the professor.

The tool will be put to market through partner companies of the Bisite group, which is very active in transferring technology to the corporate world. The team has close links with companies such as Telefónica, IBM, Iberdrola, Indra and CSA, among others. With CSA, te team is working in a project called PIAR, which has enabled the development of highly sophisticated sentiment analysis algorithms that can be used in security applications.

The sensor disc changes color when it detects furfural, a compound that appears when the beer ages

Now, a team of chemists, led by the researchers Elena Benito-Peña and María Cruz Moreno-Bondi from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), has developed a simple, low-cost method capable of measuring whether or not beer has gone stale, simply by using a sensor and a smartphone app. The results of the study have been published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Elena Benito-Peña explains to SINC that this development forms part of an INNPACTO project of the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness, in which the UCM has collaborated with the Mahou-San Miguel brewing company.

The researcher points out that up until now brewers have measured furfural –a chemical compound that appears during the aging process of beer and gives it a stale taste– and other freshness indicators using methods based on chromatography techniques. “But these methods involve the use of expensive equipment and sample preparation is very time-consuming,” she highlights.

Sensor discs

The system developed by the researchers at the UCM consists of sensor discs that detect the presence of furfural in beer. These sensors, made from a polymer similar to the one used to manufacture contact lenses, have been designed to change colour (from yellow to pink) when they come into contact with a beer containing furfural.

The sensors change from yellow to pink when they come into contact with a beer containing furfural. / UCM

“We have incorporated an aniline derivative into the sensor material which reacts with the furfural and produces a pink cyanine derivative that allows us to identify the presence of the marker in the sample. The intensity of the colour increases as the concentration of furfural in the beer rises and, thus, as more time passes since the beer was produced,” explains the chemist.

The team has also created a mobile app for Android smartphones that, by taking a picture of the sensor disc, allows for the identification of the amount of furfural present in the beer. With this data, the degree of freshness can be determined.

The application is available as open source, meaning that any programmer can utilise and modify it to be used on other platforms. In the future it will also be available for Apple IOS.

The low cost methot can also be used with other food products such as honey, milk and coffee

Results comparable to more sophisticated methods

Benito-Peña recounts that the idea of developing the new method came about following a meeting with Mahou-San Miguel in which the company spoke about the technical difficulties they were having in detecting furfural directly at the production facilities.

The results of the tests on the new system “have been very satisfactory,” says the co-author. “The measurements have been taken using samples sent directly from the brewing company with different production dates and distinct degrees of aging. These same samples were also sent to a laboratory where they were analysed using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. The results we obtained were completely comparable,” she emphasises.

The method was initially developed for brewing companies. “Especially, because the global market for this product is huge. But it can also be used with other food products such as honey, milk, coffee, etc.,” indicates the researcher.

Reference:

Alberto Rico-Yuste, Victoria González-Vallejo, Elena Benito-Peña, Tomás de las Casas Engel, Guillermo Orellana y María Cruz Moreno-Bondi. “Furfural Determination with Disposable Polymer Films and Smartphone-Based Colorimetry for Beer Freshness Assessment”. Analytical Chemistry (2016)

Alberto Rojo, a professor in the USC’s Agroforestry Engineering department and one of the paper’s authors, told Sinc that the application “is fundamentally aimed at landowners, companies and forest managers in Galicia and and the Cantabrian coast. They will be able to use it, for example, to improve wood sales, knowing the volume they have and the optimum moment for felling. It is also aimed at researchers, lecturers and students for scientific and teaching activities.”

The new application easily calculates the volume and biomass of eucalyptus plantations

Rojo points out that EucaTool offers a very straightforward way of calculating the volume and biomass of plantations from data on individual trees and on the stand (a group of trees of the same age, size and thickness). It can also estimate growth and future production by measuring four stand variables: age, number of trees per hectare, dominant height and basal area.

The engineer explains that the application “implements a dynamic model of growth and production, elaborated from measurements from a network of 128 plots spread throughout the species’ distribution area in Galicia in addition to the analysis of 87 trees that were felled, chopped and measured.” This model was developed by the forestry engineer Juan Daniel García-Villebrille, co-author of the study.

The application, available through any device connected to the Internet (computers, tablets, smartphones), was developed in Visual Studio Web Express, using MVC technology and the languages C# and XML, Razor, HTML, Javascript and CSS.

It was developed by VSonCloud, a spin-off of the USC which was created in 2014 by Rojo and other members of his research team at the Sustainable Forest Management Unit.

The application is available through any device connected to the Internet. / USC

Transfer and dissemination

According to Rojo, the reason for making the application available free of charge was for it to be transferred and disseminated into the productive sector. “The complexity of these types of dynamic models, which include a lot of interrelated equations, hinders their use if you don’t have an application like EucaTool,” he highlights.

EucaTool is aimed at forest owners and managers. Also at researchers, lecturers and students for scientific and teaching activities

The team’s plans include organising outreach days this year, aimed at forestry technicians in the Galician administration and at individual owners of areas where the species is distributed. The days will offer training on the practical use of the tool to calculate the volume, biomass, growth and production of Eucalyptus globulus plantations in Galicia.

In addition, he says, “we would like to continue taking measurements in the network of plots where we started our research on the dynamic model that includes the application, in order to continue gathering information and improving on the model’s estimates. That is a long-term job for which we would need to find additional funding.”

Another of Rojo’s ideas is to develop applications similar to EucaTool for other tree species in Galicia, such as pine, oak and birch. His team has already developed dynamic models in the past for these species, as well as a simulator named GesMo, which “would have to be brought up to date so it could be adapted to current technology,” he says.

Referencia bibliográfica:

Alberto Rojo-Alboreca, Juan D. García-Villabrille y Fernando Pérez-Rodríguez “EucaTool®, a cloud computing application for estimating the growth and production of Eucalyptus globulus Labill plantations in Galicia (NW Spain)”. Forest Systems (2016).

These companies prioritize securing contracts and production over any R&D activity

Eugenio Pellicer, a Construction Engineering professor at UPV and one of the authors of this study, told Sinc that “the companies in this sector work on contracts that are time limited, generally only a few months long, and they need to secure a minimum number of contracts each year in order to survive; especially the small and medium-sized construction firms. These companies –with limited product and market diversification– give priority to obtaining new contracts and production over any other activity”.

Pellicer stresses that the directors of small and medium-sized construction firms “are completely focused on making production profitable for the firm and satisfactory for the client, meaning that they devote most of their efforts to production planning and control while putting little weight on everything else. Consequently, they do not have time for other activities such as reflecting on tasks carried out or recording and sharing those which were innovative”, he adds.

Large firms, on the other hand, have been managing their innovative endeavours for quite some time, driven by public support, Aenor certifications and certain tax benefits.

Process improvement

Implementing a model that improves the processes of innovation and knowledge acquisition could be the solution to helping smaller firms overcome their disadvantages. In order to study the best way of implementing such a model, researchers from UPV analysed the management system of a medium-sized construction firm over the course of nine years.

“It was really interesting to get the sense that site managers are indeed conscious of the fact that they are being innovative, mainly to solve the problems that arise at the construction site or to satisfy client requests. These are technical improvements that occur from time to time and are born out of the necessity. Their problem is a lack of time –in addition to a lack of recognition by company management– that holds them back from reflecting, recording and properly sharing those innovations“, points out the professor.

Nonetheless, we are starting to see some changes. “The additional importance that public agencies have placed on innovation in bid solicitation documents since 2005 –by assigning a specific score to innovation equalling between 10% and 30% of the total score for public tenders– has caused company directors to start changing their attitudes”, he adds.

Systematising innovation

During their analysis, researchers observed that support from upper management to the technicians carrying out the construction work was paramount to motivating the organisation as a whole, as well as to introducing changes that aided in systematising innovation.

Technological improvements tend to be the result of necessity and aim to solve specific problems that arise at the construction site

“By making simple modifications to some procedures, site managers were properly notified about troubleshooting cases that were likely to become a source of innovation –he adds–. This way, they received attention and support from the company's central services in order to find the best solution, record it and properly share it”.

With regard to recommendations, Pellicer points out that having a department dedicated to innovation is highly desirable, but that “given the size and resources of these companies, having someone in charge of this area who can be identified by the rest of the staff is sufficient”, he comments.

External support

Bearing in mind the limited resources of small and medium-sized construction firms, Pellicer believes that considering the use of external support from consultants and collaborators is necessary.

Finally, he adds, it is very important to inform all company personnel, collaborators, suppliers, subcontractors and clients about the results that have been achieved, as well as the individuals who have contributed to accomplishing them, emphasises the engineer.

The UPV's research is part of a three-part study that aims to improve the innovation management processes of Spanish construction firms.

Reference:

Víctor Yepes, Eugenio Pellicer, Luis F. Alarcón y Christian L. Correa. “Creative Innovation in Spanish Construction Firms”. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, American Society of Civil Engineers (2016), 04015006, DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE) EI.1943-5541.0000251

As explained to SINC by Begoña Cueto, Professor of Economics at the University of Oviedo and the main author of the study, her team has analysed the relationship between self-employment and unemployment, including the relationships between the regions of Spain. "The results suggest that the increase in unemployment has led to an increase in self-employment, indicating a certain element of 'employment refuge.' However, self-employment and entrepreneurship cannot be interpreted to be analogous," she notes.

Spain is one of the countries with the highest rate of self-employment in the European Union

The researcher adds that "there are people who are self-employed that are entrepreneurs, but not necessarily all of them are. We need to be able to better distinguish the collective of self-employed workers, given that it deals with a very heterogeneous group. Also, in Spain is very concentrated in traditional sectors such sales and hostelry."

Spain is one of the countries with the highest rate of self-employment in the EU, but that does not imply greater innovation, precisely due to being focused on these traditional sectors," she continues.

In the study, the promotion of entrepreneurial initiative is recommended as a way to promote economic growth, innovation, and employment, especially in countries with high rates of employment like Spain. But Cueto points out that "Quality is more important that quantity. It is not about providing incentive for the creation of more self-employed workers, but rather to support those with a greater capacity for innovation and growth."

Mortality of new businesses

On the other hand, the economist emphasizes that the effects of self-employment on reducing the unemployment rate is low, due to the fact that "the mortality rate of new businesses is high, especially during periods of economic crisis."

The effect of self-employment in reducing unemployment rate is small, because the high mortality of new businesses

Another study that the team is about to publish has found that the survival rate of a self-employed enterprise is 70% and this percentage drops to 50%-60% in times of crisis. “In general, we tend to look at the increase in inflows of self-employment, but in recent years an increase in outflows, meaning, a lower survival of business in Spain is also observed.

Cueto also points out that another common result found in the literature is that unemployed people who starts a new entrepreneurial activity have a lower rate of survival with their new activities, which is associated it with the loss of human capital caused by unemployment. "This suggests the necessity of educational measures and assessment for starting up new businesses," she emphasizes.

Regarding the differences between regions, the study observed lower rates of self-employment in the more developed areas such as Madrid, Barcelona, and some provinces of the Basque Country. The highest rates are found in the north-eastern provinces. "This pattern supports the idea that self-employment is a response to the lack of salaried employment," says the economist.

Reference:

Begoña Cueto, Matías Mayor y Patricia Suárez. “Entrepreneurship and unemployment in Spain: a regional analysis”. Applied Economics Letters (2015).

The system includes an innovative optics sensor that looks through the skin and can observe white cells as they flow past a miniature lens

The project, known as Leuko, has been financed by Madrid-MIT M+Visión, a consortium that seeks to catalyse collaboration between research centres and hospitals in the region of Madrid with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other centres in the Boston area (USA). Two other USA institutions have also supported the project: the Center of Future Technologies in Cancer Care and the Coulter Foundation. The total amount raised to develop this idea has been 400,000 euros.

Carlos Castro, an engineer specialised in biomedicine working in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, tells Sinc that the new device “will allow white blood cells to be measured simply and painlessly. The same way diabetics nowadays have a glucometer to check their glucose levels, patients undergoing chemotherapy will be able to use a ‘leukometer’ in the future to estimate the state of their immune system.”

Lymphoma and leukaemia

This technology –Castro adds– opens up the possibility to personalize chemotherapy treatment according to the immunological response for each patient. Particularly, in the case of patients with lymphomas and leukaemia, “treatment doses could be maximised for each individual without compromising their immunological system. Treatment efficiency could be improved while reducing the risk of suffering serious infections.”

The engineer tells that the idea came up during a clinical visit the team conducted at Hospital Gregorio Marañón, in Madrid, two years ago. The researchers observed that immunosuppression (low white blood cell counts) is the main side effect for chemotherapy patients, which leads to possible infections, hospitalizations, treatment delays and shorter life expectancy.

Immunosuppression (low white blood cell counts) is the main side effect after chemotherapy

From that moment, “we saw the need to create a non-invasive device that would detect leukopenia earlier and avoid its consequences,” he says.

According to the expert, the technology includes a portable optical system, which provides oblique illumination with LEDs, and is able to capture images of superficial capillaries under the skin with cellular resolution. The acquired videos are subsequently analysed by automatic algorithms capable of detecting white blood cells and calculating their concentration. These algorithms, which have been protected by a patent filing, were presented at the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, held in Milan in August.

A simple measurement

Castro explains that the device is placed on the patient’s fingertip, in a similar way to how pulse oximeters are used in hospitals to measure blood oxygen levels. With a small lens, the system captures images of capillaries very close to the surface in the nailbed.

One prototype is a portable microscope which is placed manually on the patient’s fingertip to take videos of microcirculation in very superficial capillaries. / Research Laboratory of Electronics / MIT

When illuminating at certain frequencies, light is absorbed by the haemoglobin in the red cells, an effect that does not happen with the white cells. This means that the leukocytes appear as small transparent particles moving inside the capillary.

With this technology leukocytes appear as small transparent particles moving inside the capillary

Subsequently, “our image processing algorithms recognise these events and count them, providing an estimate for their concentration in the blood,” adds the researcher. In his opinion, this easy-to-use and portable device will allow the patients to carry out these measurements at home in the future. It will no longer be necessary for them to travel to a hospital or clinic. “In rural areas where access to health centres is limited, or in developing countries, this becomes a huge advantage. It would also be possible to perform measurements on a continuous basis, opening up treatment options that were previously not possible,” he highlights.

Personalized treatments

For example, if white blood cells were detected to be too low for a chemotherapy patient, medication could be immediately prescribed to boost his levels and avoid a potential infection. On the other hand, if a patient is observed to recover earlier than anticipated, he could be administered a new dose of his treatment and shorten his recovery time. “These decisions are not currently possible because it is not feasible to call patients in every hour or every day to test their blood”, says Castro.

The engineer says that, in addition to its application in chemotherapy, “there are other medical areas where this device could have a great impact, from preventing sepsis to the early diagnosis of bacterial or viral infections, which threatens 4 billion people worldwide.”

Currently, the team, that includes Castro, Ian Butterworth, Álvaro Sánchez, Aurélien Bourquard, Luis Soenksen and Alberto Pablo Trinidad, is developing the technical proof of concept and has established collaborations with institutions to clinically test their first prototypes. These institutions include the Massachusetts General Hospital, Hospital Fuenlabrada (Madrid), Boston University, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO).

The team has developed image processing algorithms that provide the estimate of the level of white blood cellsthree prototypes

Three prototypes

There are currently three different prototypes. One of them is a portable microscope which is placed manually on the patient’s fingertip to take videos of the microcirculation in very superficial capillaries. This device has already been tested on 31 patients in Hospital Fuenlabrada and on six more in Massachusetts General Hospital. “We are now working to improve its accuracy and reliability,” says Castro.

A second version of the prototype includes modifications to the microscope to improve the stability and quality of the images. The third type is a small optical piece which can be placed in a mobile phone camera to obtain images of the circulation in the capillaries. “These images could then be transmitted to a server where the algorithms would analyse them and give an estimate from the analysis”.

Castro thinks that by the beginning of 2017 an initial beta product could be available for people willing to try it through crowdfunding platforms such us Indiegogo. “Afterwards, with sufficient funding, we could develop a final product which meets European regulations by the beginning of 2019. This would include improvements to the prototype and clinical validation in a significant sample of patients to demonstrate the technology’s capacity,” he concludes.

“Identifying the species to which the traces belong would help in resolving conflicts about who is responsible for the faecal pollution of a river: a farm, an abattoir, a sewage treatment plant or a human population nucleus, for example,” as Anicet R. Blanch tells SINC. Blanch is microbiologist at the University of Barcelona, and co-director of the project together with Lluis Belanche, from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

Microbial, chemical or eukaryotic indicators

According to Blanch, the new piece of software, which they have called Ichnaea (ancient Greek for ‘tracker’), “is based on the development of prediction models from the analysis of a series of microbial, chemical or eukaryotic indicators. This information allows the source of the sample to be determined, even in complex cases in which the faecal pollution is very diluted or deteriorated,” Blanch highlights.

To be able to elaborate on these predictions, the analysis results of several parameters of other water samples with a single known source of faecal pollution have to be previously entered into the system. “Using this data, the software determines the relevant indicators, which when analysed in water samples with an unknown source of faecal pollution, would allow its source to be determined,” he adds.

“Up until now, each research group proposed the indicators which they believed to be the most important, but Ichnaea eliminates the subjectivity by selecting the most essential for a reliable prediction from among the different variable parameters,” the researcher explains.

Reliability of the prediction

Some of these relevant indicators are microbial parameters such as bacteriophages (viruses which infect bacteria) linked to a single species. Others related to bifidobacteria (a group of bacteria that live in the intestine) often appear or the mitochondrial DNA of the specimens, indicates the expert.

The prediction’s degree of reliability depends on the number and the quality of the samples used to train the computer learning models, the parameters that have been analysed and their relevance, given that the presence of certain bacteria varies depending on the geographical location. The freshness and degree of dilution of the samples to be analysed also play a part.

The scientists compared the effectiveness of this system on three sites with different degrees of faecal pollution of human and animal (cattle, pig or poultry) origin. The predictions made ascertained the source in areas with high and medium dilution. Where the dilution was low, in irrigation channels in the Delta del Ebro, a high range of probability was established.

Analysis from the cloud

This software is currently still in its prototype stage, as its components have been developed separately. The researchers are now looking for funding which will allow them to refine and integrate the different modules into a single platform for calculation. They plan to move the whole application to the cloud.

“The idea is that anyone can access the system from any computer, even a tablet, because the calculation is done from a remote machine,” explains Blanch.

According to the team’s plans, the user will be able to adapt the prediction to their geographical location with a customised setting. This will allow them to provide the software with their own samples of known origin, to complete the learning stage which will subsequently allow the predictions to be made.

In the event that a user does not have their own samples for this training, they could use the system’s database, which will include results left with open access by other scientists. In this way, they will be able to choose the analysis of the closest or most similar geographical areas to that which is to be studied.

Blanch considers that knowing the source of the pollution is also important from a health-risk perspective, “given that human pathogens present in water are significantly more contagious than those of animal origin,” concludes the scientist.

References:

Blanch, A. R. et al. “Predicting fecal sources in waters with diverse pollution loads using general and molecular host-specific indicators and applying machine learning methods”. Journal of Environmental Management 151: 317-325, 2015. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25585145

The project has been financed by Madrid-MIT M+Visión, a consortium that wants to boost the collaboration between research centres and hospitals in the autonomous community of Madrid with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other institutions in the Boston area (USA).

Carlos Castro tells Sinc, in a telephone interview from the Research Laboratory of Electronics of MIT in Boston, that the idea of developing this device –which already has a prototype– was to “facilitate the diagnosis of bacterial meningitis using imaging technologies and algorithms.”

The device can detect this illness with a simple ultrasound scan of the fontanelle

Alternative to lumbar punctures

“We were searching for an alternative to the lumbar puncture (LP), the only existing procedure up until now for its diagnosis, which is difficult to perform on babies and very painful,” says the researcher. This test consists of extracting a sample of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) with a syringe inserted between two vertebrae in the lumbar region.

“We witnessed a LP on a 29-day-old baby that had arrived at the emergency department at Boston Children's Hospital with a fever. It took three paediatricians and five attempts to be able to extract a CSF sample. It was awful,” he remembers.

Knowing the cellularity –the concentration of white blood cells in the cerebrospinal fluid– “is important to start the treatment as soon as possible. But the LP results, which tell whether there is an infection in the fluid, can take between 24 and 48 hours” says Castro.

Currently the only test to diagnose bacterial meningitis in babies is through a lumbar puncture: / VisualPhotos

The researcher highlights that in 95% of cases in the developed world, meningitis is not the cause of the fever in babies and therefore, “lumbar punctures do not benefit the patient in any way”. Developing countries do not usually have the facilities to carry out these types of tests and therefore, the children die or suffer serious complications.

Faced with this, the Lumbar project team saw the need to develop a system which would indicate the cellularity in CSF in a simple, economical and non-invasive way for newborns and babies on suspicion of infection.

How to use

Castro explains that the new portable device is placed over the baby’s fontanelle –the opening between the cranial bones which does not close for the first 12 months– and obtains a high-resolution image of the area which stores the cerebrospinal fluid, located between the skin and the brain.

The image obtained is then analysed by image-processing algorithms to determine the presence of cells indicating infection if there are any, indicates the expert. “This entire process lasts just seconds,” he reiterates.

“Therefore –he adds– it not only provides the doctor with an image, but information about the presence or absence of cells in the cerebrospinal fluid. This means it can be used without having to undergo specialised training, and as it is portable, it can be made available to any intensive care or observation room in a hospital”.

The team believes that their system will mean a breakthrough for diagnosing bacterial meningitis in babies and save lives in developing countries, as it is a low-cost and simple technology.

The team believe that their system can save many lives in developing countries, being a low-cost technology and easy to use

Among other contributors, the engineers relied in the collaboration with Luis Elvira, specialist in non-destructive acoustics at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). Elvira helped the team demonstrate the capacity of quantifying the cellularity in a fluid that replicated the acoustic properties of CSF in the laboratory.

Madrid hospitals La Paz, Quirón and San Carlos also provided significant assistance. In Boston, they worked with Massachusetts General Hospital.

Funding, patents and market

To date, 300,000 euros has been invested in the project, awarded by the Madrid-MIT M+Visión Consortium. This amount allowed the group to initially test the first prototype in Hospital La Paz. They are now waiting on further funding to be able to continue with the technological development and a pilot study in patients.

Other plans of these young engineers include applying for three device patents and the creation of a company to put it in the market. Castro believes that, with sufficient funding, they will be able to have a finished product that complies with European regulations by the end of 2018.

As Antonio M. Graña, professor in the Geology department at this university and co-author of the study, comments to Sinc, “the objective is to showcase the geological and palaeontological heritage of the area and generate educational resources and research.”

The aim is to value the geological and paleontological heritage of the area and create educational resources and research

Building on the extensive experience of the team in the Upper Neogene deposits in the province of Huelva, on the western edge of the Guadalquivir basin, “we wanted to do something different to bring geology and palaeontology closer to earth science students, using the abilities of Google Earth and everyday technologies such as tablets and smartphones.”

In particular, Graña indicates that geo-informatics tools have been applied, such as the geographical information system ArcGis 10.2, “to produce a virtual 3D tour of the geo-referenced sites including multiple digital layers grouped by geological and topographical maps, digital terrain models and orthophotos”.

The educational resources generated, which include a virtual route, flight simulator, field notebook with questionnaires, videos and augmented reality, are implemented with models and mapping. They can be downloaded free of charge from the homepages of the Spanish Geology and Mining Institute (Instituto Geológico y Minero de España) and the National Geographical Institute (Instituto Geografico Nacional).

Google Earth’s free virtual globe

Each stop on the route of the ten interest sites selected “contains descriptive and graphical elements which can be seen on Google Earth’s free virtual globe, together with diagrams, photographs and information factsheets to quantitatively evaluate the scientific, educational and cultural value of each site of geographical and palaeontological interest,” the expert highlights.

Using this 3D digital geological database, a virtual flight route is proposed which can be shown in video format and is compatible with smartphones and tablets.

As the professor says “When you start getting closer with these virtual flights you can see how the geological mapping is superimposed on the orthophotographs loaded in Google Earth. We can zoom in or out to get closer to or distance ourselves from the geosite, analysing the geological context of the study sector. The tool also gives us an overall spatial view of the route and places us on the different geological and palaeontological materials available in 3D.”

The tour also allows us to observe the topographical position and the sequence with other lithologies. To enhance the virtual tour, “each stop is bursting with graphical documentation from the different information factsheets, field photographs of the actual outcrop and even sometimes includes the Google streetview option to analyse the structure and the outcrop that we want to visit on the route,” he adds.

The virtual flight can directly record a route in which the different layers that are superimposed on the satellite image and aerial photos of Google Earth can be activated or deactivated.

“The flight can be created directly from the computer keyboard or by guiding the flight simulator with a joystick”. It can fly over the map and geosites as if it were a videogame and you can choose different types of plane and observe the different panoramas using the controls,” says Graña.

Ten geological stops

The ten geosites on the geological and palaeontological tour of the Guadalquivir basin have been selected for different reasons. “Some have records of the opening of the Atlantic ocean in the Mesozoic, such as pillow lavas (similar to that found in the Atlantic part of Iceland) located between the towns of Niebla and Bonares, next to the Seville-Huelva motorway”, he adds.

Another of these locations “contains five-million-year-old marine fossils which are found in the same place in which they lived, which allows for palaeoecological interpretations of the characteristics of the Pliocene sea”. This site is in a place known as Casa del Pino, next to Bonares.

In the area are preserved marine fossils five million years old and recordsof the opening of the Atlantic Ocean in the Mesozoic

The virtual 3D tour also includes geological stops located in places where scientific surveys have been made up to 250 metres in depth in which many environmental changes have been dated with great accuracy by studying calcareous microplankton (next to the bullring in Huelva and next to the Montemayor chapel in Moguer). Graña explains that these explorations are mentioned in numerous international publications.

The team from USAL does not limit itself to the area of the Guadalquivir basin in its projects. It has also made a 3D geological tour of the Protected National Park of Las Batuecas (Salamanca) and is now developing a 3D georoute on foot of a stretch of the Portuguese Algarve.

Other initiatives include similar routes relating to the Miocene in Lisbon, one of the most representatives in Europe, as well as on Lanzarote and the island of Maio (Cape Verde), concludes Graña.

Reference:

J. A. González-Delgado, A. M. Martínez-Graña, J. Civis, F. J. Sierro, J. L. Goy, C. J. Dabrio, F. Ruiz, M. L. González-Regalado, et al. “Virtual 3D tour of the Neogene palaeontological heritage of Huelva (Guadalquivir Basin, Spain)” Environ Earth Sci (2015) 73:4609-4618 DOI 10.1007/s12665-014-3747-y

This development is part of one of the main lines of research in telecommunications: the development of 5G, the fifth generation of mobile communications. This objective entails a great challenge: in five years time, to multiply by 1,000 the capacity of the current mobile communications wireless networks, according to one of the researchers who has developed this patent, Ana García Armada, of the Communications research group at UC3M.

With the “technological revolution” that 5G will bring, high speed data uploading will have to be offered to the network’s users, points out García Armada, and this is precisely the focal-point of this innovation. Right now, the patent, which consists of a group of antennas developed using textile technology, will allow for “a tenfold increase in the uploading speed of a normal mobile terminal such as a tablet, telephone or camera,” explains another of the inventors of this device, Eva Rajo, of the Applied Electromagnetism Research group at UC3M.

This patent, which is the product of a joint project carried out by these two research groups from the university’s Department of Signal Theory and Communications, can be applied to leisure activities or to security crisis situations. This is how another author of this patent, Professor Matilde Sánchez, explains it. She reminds us that right now people tend to upload a lot of content to social networks. However, the applications that this technology could be used for go far beyond leisure activities; for example, “on the subject of security and emergencies, we could provide greater coverage and speed in scenarios where this service is typically not available,” the inventor adds.

This patent can be applied to leisure activities or to security crisis situations

Patent awarded

This idea was recently recognized at the international level from among hundreds of proposals seen at the latest edition of the "Bell Labs Prize", a worldwide competition that looks for revolutionary ideas in the area of communications. The MIMO HUB won the 25,000-dollar prize awarded for third place in the contest, which supports “ideas that change the way we communicate and live”.

At the Parque Científico de la UC3M (UC3M Science Park), a university unit which has been involved in the entire process of protecting the results obtained by this research, and which is now helping with marketing the product, they highlight the fact that this invention can be applied not only in the crisis management and leisure and entertainment sectors, but also in the biomedical sector.

However, as Borja Martínez, researcher in the Telemedicine and eHealth Group at the University of Valladolid, explains to SINC: “These applications do not handle information securely and this is especially serious in apps that use clinical or medical data that are particularly critical for the user”.

These applications don't have secure data processing and this is especially serious in apps that use clinical or medical data

Martínez is the lead author of a study that reviews these problems and proposes a series of recommendations for developers to improve the handling of information that should be confidential. The work was published in January in the ‘Journal of Medical Systems’.

This young engineer points out that “the developers, in their haste to get their applications out before the rest, neglect certain aspects that should be considered, especially privacy and security of data handled. Today the majority of health apps do not offer the user sufficient measures to protect their data”.

Risks

In their opinion, “the main risk is that someone can hack into the personal medical information of another individual or, even worse, modify it”.

A clear example, warns the researcher, “would be an app that saves electronic medical histories. If a third party unconnected with the app were to access the stored information and change any patient details, such as take away an allergy to certain medication, it could put the life of this person at risk should the case arise”.

Also, “another significant problem is that health professionals and the patients themselves are not aware of the methods that apps use with regard to the privacy and security of their data. Many take it for granted that the application is secure and others couldn’t care less. I believe that greater collaboration between countries is necessary to create international laws which are in charge of monitoring these aspects,” he says.

The main risk is that someone could hack into the personal medical information of another individual or, even worse, modify it

What can be done? According to Borja Martínez, “many things [although] it all boils down to developers analysing the type of data that their apps are going to be dealing with and applying the necessary security and privacy methods”.

Each case is different, he states. “Some applications do not even deal with patient data and therefore it is not necessary to introduce such methods, others will use critical information and designers will have to decide which mechanisms to use. The main thing is that they do not disregard these aspects and that they concern themselves with investing part of the development time in analysing and implementing these techniques”.

Borja Martínez says that “to oblige developers to carry out this task, it is necessary to update laws which govern these aspects. Yet in two of the main world powers, the European Union and the United States, these laws are outdated and obsolete, and therefore should be reformulated to cover current mobile technology”.

In this sense, the EU Data Protection Directive dates back to 1995 and the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the US is from1996.

Quick guide to e-health security

In their guide for health app developers, Martínez and his colleagues propose the following recommendations, among others:

Reference:

Borja Martínez Pérez, Isabel de la Torre-Díez y Miguel López-Coronado. “Privacy and Security in Mobile Health Apps: A Review and Recommendations”. Journal of Medical Systems. DOI: 10.1007/s10916-014-0181-3 (January, 2015)

The objective of this initiative, according to the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Transfer, Carlos Balaguer, is “the collective participation of society in research and transfer projects that are proposed by our university community: students, professors, researchers, administrative and service personnel, entrepreneurs and alumni.” This will enable the active involvement of “all of us who want to see R+D+i projects with social impact become a reality,” notes the director of the Science Park, Paloma Domingo.

Following an analysis of the Spanish platforms for crowdfunding, it was decided that the project would be established on Goteo, which belongs to the Fuentes Abiertas Foundation. This platform has collected 1.5 million Euros in two years and obtained financing for 67% of the projects that were announced. In addition, it has previous experience with university projects.

The promoters of each initiative use this platform to show their project and its objectives, establish minimum and optimum budgets, and set the rewards for their financiers. They only receive their funds if they manage to obtain enough to cover at least their minimum budget; if not, the donations are returned to the donors.

The 13 Crowd-UC3M projects, which are already seeking financing, have a “high potential for impact on the advancement of society in UC3M’s various fields of endeavor.” Moreover, “they will contribute to free knowledge” and “will be carried out within one year’s time,” according to the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Transfer.

Projects seeking for funds

Medical skin diagnosis. A prototype that facilitates the diagnosis and treatment of psoriasis, alopecia, etc., using image processing technology.

Improvement of visual disabilities. This uses a low-cost augmented reality device, which will help patients with a reduced visual field gain autonomy in moving about.

History, art and tourism. A mobile application using augmented reality allows users to virtually visit the Roman village of Fuente Álamo (Córdoba) and its mosaics.

Diagnosis of diseases. Innovative biomolecular sensors improve the diagnosis of diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Public health and food safety. A new antimicrobial plastic to make containers for food and medical material, in order to prevent illnesses in developing countries.

The handicapped and the public. A 3D wheelchair simulator to learn to move in surroundings with obstacles and to raise public awareness.

Social justice. Establishment at UC3M of a Legal Clinic to provide free legal advice to low-income individuals.

Photography and gender. Development of an audiovisual and publishing platform to foment a greater presence of female photographers, through their work.

Employment and social protection. Proposals for the improvements of the social safety net and employability for unemployed young people and long-term unemployed workers.

Psychology: overcoming grief. Online support platform for parents of children who have died due to cardiac problems, with the support of the Menudos Corazones Foundation.

Pedagogy and science. Development of 3D and audiovisual material. The initial idea is to teach science to children in a practical and fun manner.

Sociology and documentation. A web application to transmit and share documents about migration during the 20th century among institutions and/or family members.

Competition and education. Development of a single-seater race car to participate in Formula Student, and international student competition.

In addition, another of the important challenges that this digital ecosystem faces is that one out of four Europeans lack the knowledge and skills to remain connected (to and through technology), a “digital gap” that especially affects the elderly, according to research. This is not the only challenge. Professor Pedro Isasi, the head researcher on the project, highlights that the challenges presented by a project like this begin with making it simple and easy to use; it must accessible, use an adequate typeface and present no barriers; this will guarantee its effectiveness and facilitate digital inclusion.

Towards an active ecosystem

“The most complicated part is to reach a high enough number of users so that they not only consume information but they also begin to produce it; that way the digital ecosystem will begin to take on a life of its own, a life created by the users themselves,” points out Sáez. To sum up, the system attempts to promote intergenerational solidarity, the usability of tools of social inclusion by the elderly, and to contribute to increasing a healthy life expectancy for European citizens.

Contains news, forums, videos, social networking, mobile applications and games to promote mental activity and a training program

With the goal of being effective and dynamic, the SEACW ecosystem enables users to find news, forums, videos, a social network, mobile applications, games that foment mental activity and even a training program for active, healthy ageing through the use of ITCs. For now, the offer has attracted over 11,000 users and, according to the developers’ forecasts, will reach approximately 20,000 by the end of the year.

In setting Action for Healthy Ageing in motion, UC3M was responsible for the technological development of this ecosystem. Thanks to this work, thousands of Europeans now have access to this space and are able to connect with forums, videos and other online tools. The goal is to implement the pilot program in fifteen regions, in addition to carrying out studies: one on the state of the technique and another on the impact of ITCs on healthy, active ageing.

SEACW (Social Ecosystem for Anti-ageing, Capacitation and Wellbeing) is a European project lead by Aliad Conocimiento y Servicio, whose objective is to become an Internet meeting place for anyone interested in healthy, active aging using Information Technology and Communications (ITC). Financed by the European Commission’s European Program CIP-ICT-PSP 2012, it has been carried out by a consortium of partners from five European countries: Bulgaria, Spain, France, Italia and Malta. In addition to the project’s coordinator, the Spanish firm Aliad Conocimiento y Servicio, the following entities have also participated: Eseniors, Exorgroup, Go to our Site, Gruppo Sigla, the Institute for Neurobiology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the University for Technology of Troyes (France) and the University of Vic.

At least this is what Enrique and Vanessa Frías-Martínez believe, brother and sister and computer science researchers at Telefonica Research and the University of Maryland (USA) respectively, who have suggested using geolocalized tweets for urban planning and land use. Their study’s results were published in ‘Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence’.

As Enrique Frías-Martínez explained to SINC, "geolocalized tweets can be a very useful source of information for planning, since it is an activity carried out by a large number of people who provide information on where they are at a specific time and what they are doing".

The researcher points out that "thanks to the increased use of smartphones, social networks like Twitter and Facebook have made it possible to access and produce information ubiquitously".

Geolocation tags

These networks, he adds, generate tags with the event's geolocation. "For example, Twitter includes longitude-latitude information in the tweet if the user so desires. Amongst possible applications we have seen that this network could be highly suited to helping in urban planning, especially in identifying land use".

Using Twitter, says Enrique Frías-Martínez, "you can capture information on urban land use more efficiently and for a much larger number of people than with questionnaires. Moreover, this type of consultation, traditionally used until now in planning activities, are very costly and can cause problems due to the lack of accuracy of the answers".

The new technique "automatically determines land uses in urban areas by grouping together geographical regions with similar patterns of Twitter activity," says the researcher.

Using aggregate activity of tweets, the Frías-Martínez siblings have studied land use in Manhattan, Madrid and London. In the first two cases they identified four uses: residential, business, daytime leisure (mainly parks and tourist areas) and nightlife areas. In London, they also established industrial land uses. These results were validated with open data sources.

Nightlife

"One of the most interesting contributions of the study is the identification of nightlife areas, since this type of land use in not often specified in urban planning, despite the problems of noise, security and need for cleaning that this creates. Therefore, this information is very relevant," says Frías-Martínez.

In this respect, the study has determined that, in Madrid, night-time tweet activity is concentrated on weekends and in Manhattan, on weekdays. On the other hand, London is characterised by its tweeting activity in daytime leisure areas.

Business, leisure and nightlife areas in Madrid. / Martínez Frías

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Reference:

Vanessa Frías-Martinez y Enrique Frías-Martinez. “Spectral Clustering for Sensing Urban Land Use using Twitter Activity”. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (octubre, 2014).

As Álvaro Ortigosa, Director of the UAM’s National Centre of Excellence in Cybersecurity, explains to SINC, he and his team have developed an application called SentBuk, which is capable of automatically deducing the emotional states of Facebook users by analysing their messages on the social network using algorithms. The results of the study have been published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

“SentBuk is an application external to Facebook which, with the user’s permission, analyses the messages he publishes and calculates his emotional state. The tool is based on two algorithms: the first calculates the emotional load of each message and classifies it as positive, negative or neutral. The second deduces emotional state by comparing it with the emotional load of recent messages.”

SentBuck is an external application for Facebook that analyzes the messages posted by users and calculates their emotional state

The tool –Ortigosa continues– “utilises a natural language analysis technique to recognise significant words with emotional load. It also uses an automatic, machine-learning-type classification system. Based on a large bank of sentences classified by humans, the application has been trained to learn to reproduce human judgment. The emotional load assigned to each sentence arises from a combination of both calculations.”

Adaptive e-learning

The UAM scientists believe that this application could be used in adaptive online education, i.e. education that attempts to suggest tasks to the student at the most appropriate time.

“The information obtained via SentBuk, with the approval of the user,” Ortigosa insists, “will be able to be used to avoid recommending especially complex pieces of work at times when it detects that the student is in a negative state of mind or one that is less positive than usual.”

In these situations, by contrast, “activities with less pedagogical content but designed to motivate students could be assigned.”

In his opinion, analysing the general trend of a group of students during internet courses “may afford the teacher similar feedback to that obtained by looking at students’ faces in an in-person class – information it is not normally possible to get online.”

Field tests

Ortigosa and the study’s co-authors have performed tests with SentBuk and have included the information on students’ emotional states in an e-learning system.

According to the expert, in its most basic form, the application alerts professors when it detects that a significant number of students are in a negative frame of mind. “These messages are analysed in context. Although there may be many reasons for the emotional state, the hypothesis is that these negative emotions should be uniformly distributed across time.”

On the other hand, he adds, the students of an online course have little to no relation to each other, beyond being classmates in that particular course. For this reason, “if at any given moment a negative emotional peak is detected in a representative sample of the students, it is highly probable that such emotional variation is due to some situation relating to the course, and thus the tool will send a warning message to the teacher.”

The application alerts professors when it detects that a significant number of students are in a negative frame of mind

Other applications

Álvaro Ortigosa says that it is a non-intrusive technique that “enables teachers to have an emotional state thermometer for Facebook users.” Once all the necessary permissions for the application have been given, it deduces their emotional state by observing the behaviour in their interaction – presumably normal and spontaneous – with the social network.

This information could be used in several contexts. “For example, to complement remote monitoring of those who are ill or to measure user satisfaction. In this area, companies could use the information to alter products or services offered to potential consumers.

The UAM team’s research is part of a broader project seeking to infer general characteristics, such as personality and emotional load, of those who use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Reference:

Alvaro Ortigosa, José M. Martín and Rosa M. Carro “Sentiment analysis in Facebook and its application to e-learning”. Computers in Human Behavior (07 de agosto, 2013).

The simulator has four areas of training: cyber attack, where users learn strategies for attacking a specific opponent or reaching a goal; cybersecurity, which teaches strategies of defense against an attack; cyber defense, where users go to combat in a technological context; and lastly, the area of computer forensics, where users acquire experience in the extraction and analysis of evidence that allows them to produce a forensic report in accord with research procedures appropriate for information technology.

The spectrum of possible students is very broad, from professionals who want to expand their knowledge on the subject, to companies seeking to strengthen their capabilities in this field, to members of police and military forces that specialize in cybersecurity.

Learning Experience

The simulator poses a scenario in which there are one or several computers connected, be it on the same or on different networks. The description of the scenario and help materials are provided to the students. The system records each of the user’s actions and compares them with the solution of the exercise so that the student sees his/her progress. “One of the most interesting aspects from a formative point of view is that the tool itself, when it detects that a student is lost, gives directions in the form of clues. Thus, a very rich learning experience is guaranteed,” explained Indra cybersecurity expert Jorge López Hernández-Ardieta.

It is aimed at students, businesses and members of the security forces

Another noteworthy aspect of the project is that the platform that is being developed is accessible through the browser. As such, any person with a computer and a connection to Internet can use the system. What the simulator does is set out the infrastructure, using what is called a system of “virtual machines.” “Because of them,” said José María de Fuentes, “no matter how much the tool is attacked, all of the consequences are confined to the platform.”

According to the developers, the SACO project is almost finished and it has already produced a working system ready to be put on the market, and one which Indra has begun to market around the world. The technology company is already defining new advanced capabilities that will be incorporated into second and later commercial versions. “There is no other way to triumph in a market as competitive as the cybersecurity market if one is not constantly innovating,” notes Jorge López Hernández-Ardieta. One especially outstanding innovation will consist of equipping the simulator with greater artificial intelligence to better react to and anticipate the student’s actions.

The solution proposed by ARQUIMEA, which has been patented and baptized SMARQ®, was born in the heart of the University, as was the company itself, a spinoff UC3M. After nearly a decade of work and laboratory testing, the first product based on this technology expected to be tested in orbit in 2016, as part of a series of experiments that will be carried out in the International Space Station. Previous to that testing, the researchers will have to test the device in conditions of microgravity on board parabolic flights.

The advantage of this technology is that it does not produce the vibrations caused by the explosions; in addition, it can be tested on land. The key to this lies in the materials that are used, which have a unique characteristic: shape memory. “When electricity or heat is applied, these materials contract, similar to the way human fibers do when they are commanded to by the brain,” explains Diego Fernández Infante. This property is what allows the part to be held in place during the launch and then, once in orbit, released by simply activating an electrical signal.

This research project is being carried out as part of the European scientific project known as Horizon 2020-call-1 (Space); it has been approved by the European Commission, led by ARQUIMEA and includes the participation of firms and research centers from several European countries. The aim is to develop and rate various products based on SMARQ® technology to test them in International Space Station, which will in turn make this the first demonstration of this technology carried out in flight. A number of international clients are interested in modernizing their satellite platforms using this technology, according to sources within the company. “This flight mission is the final quality requirement that is needed for SMARQ® technology to come out of the lab, so it can be used with every guarantee by the world’s top satellite manufacturers,” they declare.

ARQUIMEA Ingeniería SL (ARQUIMEA Engineering, Inc.) is a technology company founded in 2005 by doctoral students in the UC3M Robotics Lab. It began its life as a business in the Business Incubator of UC3M’s Science Park. Since then it has generated a portfolio that includes fifteen patents, many of which involved the collaboration of the University’s researchers, who are considered an essential part of the company. In fact, the firm’s design center in Spain is located in the UC3M Science Park (the other is in Frankfurt, Germany); a key element of its work is carried out in these two centers: R+D+i. This is because the company’s vision is to develop technology as part of complex space programs and later transfer this technology to products that are not only used in space, but also in other sectors such as medicine, automation or defense. To this end, the firm is developing radiation resistant microelectronics, integrated circuits, HDRM activators, valves, sensors and other robotic technologies.

UK has fallen in love with the idea and last year the entrepreneurs secured a first investment of around one million euros from British business angels. They also caught the attention of ISIS, the University of Oxford’s technology transfer office, which provides them with strategic and scientific advice.

As David Horna explained to SINC, after four years of intensive research and development, the prototype called Aglaris Facer 1.0, patented in 2012 in Spain and in the process of obtaining its international patent, “is practically ready to be on the market”.

Modular bioreactor for authomatic culture cell Aglaris Facer 1.0. / PCM

The idea of developing this device came about when the partners, who worked in various fields of biotechnology, noticed that more and more industries were using cells and tissues in their production processes.

UK has fallen in love with the idea and last year Aglaris Cell secured an investment of around one million euros from British business angels

Fully automatic

“We saw that the way live medicines from stem cells were being produced was highly manual, and so we came up with the idea of designing and developing a cell culture bioreactor that could automate the entire process. We believe that the stem cell-based therapies sector is going to expand rapidly in the years to come and will become a very promising business,” Horna stated.

He noted that there are other bioreactors on the market and some have been able to automate some of the stages in the process, “but ours is the first in the world to perform all the process stages in a fully automated way”.

Until now, an additive called trypsin was usually used in this type of culture, however, trypsin is toxic for cells and removes part of the membrane’s proteins. “It has been used up to now because there was no other alternative, but our technology does not need to use this product,” Horna said.

“Instead, our development uses an iterative method of cell culture which enables us to completely automate and remove the need for human involvement in the cell separation and washing stages, without using any additives that increase the toxicity level. We have achieved this by using smart surfaces that make cell adhesion and de-adhesion possible depending on changes in the environment”, the co-founder explained.

He also adds that “we are currently finalising the developments that also make it possible to use the same device to produce genetically-modified cell lines for cellular reprogramming and gene therapies.” These advances build on the work Horna undertook for his thesis on smart surfaces at the Spanish National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) and the Sarrià Institute of Chemistry (IQS) which was published in the ‘Advanced Healthcare Materials’ journal. Afterwards, the patent for this technology was exclusively licenced to Aglaris Cell.

Stem cells in bags

“The process,” he stated, “is as follows: before the culture, cells are taken from the patient, for instance fat cells obtained through liposuction, and then the stem cells are extracted. The next step is to inject the cells into the bioreactor where they will grow. The end product is cells packaged in a bag”.

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The device manages to produce a higher quantity of cells and of much higher quality than if they had been produced through manual culture, as there is no need to use trypsin. “We take much greater care of the cell and the culture quality; therefore the resulting ‘live’ medication can be far superior. These cultures are used in regenerative medicine therapies and cell quality is extremely important”.

The co-founder believes that this advance will be “extremely positive in cellular therapies as, apart from simplifying the process, it means the process can be repeated and carried out in a series. That means the batches can be the same throughout treatment, making the treatment better and lowering the risk of contamination”.

David Horna explained that cell cultures are usually grown in laminar flow hoods and that, although these are highly-controlled environments, there is always a risk of contamination; the risk that some agent, like a dust particle for instance, could get in. “On the other hand, Aglaris Facer 1.0 is fully sealed and isolated from the external environment,” he underlined.

Merck has shown interest in Aglaris Facer 1.0, the world’s first bioreactor that cultures cell in a fully automated way, without using toxic additives

The company is currently putting the final touches to the prototype “to make it look nice” before entering the commercial stage. In addition to British institutional and investment support, Aglaris Cell has been receiving strategic advice from the pharmaceutical giant Merk which has taken an interest in the product, Horna stated.

Disposable consumables

The device has two parts: what those in the firm call the ‘smart’ part which contains all the engineering components, the computer, valves, pumps and sensors; and the ‘dumb’ part, which contains the consumables. It is in this second part, which is like a disposable cartridge, that the culture is grown. “It’s important that this part is disposable because you must avoid cross contamination when working with ‘live’ medication,” the entrepreneur said.

“This gives us a massive advantage because, by changing this consumable, this means the device can have numerous different functions. Apart from the culture cartridge, we have another cartridge almost ready in which you will be able to modify, differentiate or reprogramme cells. You will be able to play with biology a little bit”.

According to the co-founder, potential customers of this system could be companies that develop therapies based on stem cell cultures. In Spain, for example, there is a company called Histocell, a University of the Basque Country spin-off that produces cultures to regenerate bones, heal wounds and inflammatory diseases. Another is Cellerix, which has merged with the Belgian company TiGenix, and grows cultures to repair knee cartilage and anal fistula and has products at an advanced clinical stage, very close to marketing. You could also add any user of cells, “as the Aglaris Facer 1.0 is a stand-alone cell culture device,” Horna emphasised.

The firm is currently in talks with a Madrid hospital, whose name it cannot reveal just yet, to conduct a joint study and publish it in a scientific journal.

The system is based on the biological processing that certain bacteria perform in conditions that lack oxygen, which convert organic waste material into a mixture of combustible gasses (carbon monoxide, hydrogen and methane). These gasses can be accumulated and later used in the production of heat and electrical energy. “This prototype will serve to optimize the processes that make use of waste material to produce energy and will be a useful instrument for solving the problem of managing potentially toxic wastes in urban, agricultural and livestock areas”, explains the company’s director of engineering, Javier Roa Fresno.

Prototype

In order to design this prototype, it was necessary to form a multi-disciplinary team of experts in process and control engineering, mechanical engineering and electronic engineering, among others. For this project, their objective was to design a plant with the greatest operating efficiency, most economical processing, best waste reduction and easiest maintenance. “We have been working on the design o similar equipment for four years and this last project was carried out in approximately six months,” state sources from the company, who are currently preparing an offer to provide similar systems to national and international clients; the systems would be for the treatment of agricultural and aquaculture waste, as well as for the treatment of sludge and mud from water purification plants.

The main reactor of this pilot plant consists of a stirred tank reactor in which the temperature and PH are controlled. The way it works is relatively simple: organic systems are continuously introduced and, as the biogas is produced by the metabolism of the microorganisms, the waste that is obtained is extracted through the lower part of the tank. “Since the equipment is used for R+D at the university, it includes some additional equipment that makes the process more versatile,” comments Javier Roa Fresno. “The ultimate goal is to develop the technology and optimize the processes that lead to energy production on an industrial scale, using organic waste,” he concludes.

A pilot plant for the anaerobic digestion of organic waste is going to be used for research in the field of biogas production using wastewater

Nanotechnology and chemistry

The company is exploring new projects in the field of nanotechnology, in collaboration with NanoInnova Technologies, in the search for new products derived from the production and modification of graphene, using sustainable synthetic routes, the development of mechanochemical activation and the use of supercritical CO2. In addition, Demede is also collaborating with Synthelia Organics, in the pharmaceutical field, to develop flow reactors for processes used in the production of medications and other intermediate compounds at high temperatures and under high pressure. In both cases, say the heads of the company, these projects are providing new products in the field of nanotechnology and the chemical industry, which are of high added value, and with the advantage that these products are being produced using new processes that minimize the generation of waste products and energy consumption, while maximizing the productivity and efficiency of old production systems.

The Business Incubator in the UC3M Science Park has supported this company since its birth, giving it access to its facilities and providing it with specialized consulting in the area of innovation. “Thanks to this effort, we have been able to increase our billing, gain market share with new clients and products, and continually add new members to our staff,” comment the heads of Demede Engineering & Research. Their staff is made up of engineers (industrial and chemical) and technicians (mechanical and electronic), as well as of students from UC3M who are doing internships and working on their final projects for their degrees.

The 12 principles of green engineering, a code of best practices for design

Source: Anastas, P.T., and Zimmerman, J.B., "Design through the Twelve Principles of Green Engineering", Env. Sci. and Tech., 37, 5, 94A-101A, 2003.

The research, published in the ‘Innovation-Management Policy & Practice’ journal, demonstrates that gender diversity within R+D teams generates dynamics that lend themselves to radical innovation, which causes a paradigm shift by the introduction of new features, resulting in the emergence of completely new markets.

With this study, researchers at the UCLM aimed to fill the gap left in previous research, relating innovative results with gender diversity in R+D teams.

In their research, the team used information on innovative activities performed by companies of the Technological Innovation Panel, with a sample of 4,277 companies, 83% from the industrial sector and 17% from the service sector.

In analysing the data, they found a positive relation between gender diversity and radical innovation. According to the sample, the probability of innovative development is significantly increased when gender diversity in the R+D team is increased. It also indicates that contracting external R+D and the fact that the company operates in a high-technology industry contributes to this type of innovation.

Different perspectives

"In this context, gender diversity fosters novel solutions leading to radical innovation, in companies as well as in the market," says lead researcher, Cristina Díaz García. “Gender diversity can provide different perspectives and insights. The combination of these offers a wider range of ideas and, thus, greater creativity, facilitating decision-making processes.”

Cristina Díaz García points out that the study has several implications: "In the business environment, the results point to the need to recognise and value gender diversity, which could, in turn, make an organisation more able to attract and retain key staff.”

In her opinion, "gender diversity not only has implications in the fields of equity and equality but also make teamwork more effective.”

The study recommends that if innovation is to be radical, managers should consider the potential offered by forming teams with more balance between men and women in technology sectors, since "innovation is a critical element within a context of increasing global competition," concludes Díaz.

References:

Cristina Díaz García, Ángela González Moreno, Francisco José Sáez Martínez. “Gender diversity within R&D teams: Its impact on radicalness of innovation”. Innovation-Management Policy & Practic, Junio 2013. 15 (2), 149-160. Doi: 10.5172/impp.2013.15.2.149; SSCI (2012): 0.529

Romeral is the coordinator of the European project Mosycousis, which was carried out over two years with an overall budget of €1.7 million. “The initiative consisted in developing new wireless sensors capable of detecting internal fractures of only a few microns in industrial machinery by analysing the ultrasonic waves they emit, using algorithms of artificial intelligence and advanced digital processing,” he elaborates.

New wireless sensors detect internal cracks of a few microns in industrial machinery by analyzing the ultrasonic waves

“Often,” he adds, “mechanical wear manifests initially as an internal fracture or fissure in the metal. When this crack appears, the material begins to emit ultrasonic waves, which are high-frequency, low-amplitude sounds. These emissions are the ones we capture with the sensor head and we separate those that reflect the normal operative state from those caused by an internal fracture problem."

Preventive maintenance

The new sensor shortens the time taken to detect the problem with the machinery before it begins vibrating or even an axle or another mechanical part breaks. “This maintenance to intervene earlier and plan it better to make the plant more secure,” the director affirms.

In his opinion, “maintenance that enables us to get ahead of a fault in the system to correct it before it suddenly shuts down will mean significant time and cost savings.”

The team led by Luis Romeral, in which Fundació CTM Centre Tecnològic and other companies and institutes in Ireland, Estonia Poland and Romania also participate, developed all the electronics forming the body of the sensor, a stand-alone device that feeds off the energy in the environment (from heat, mechanical or vibration sources). They also carried out the algorithmics of the signal processing to detect and identify the fault.

The sensor, as Romeral explains, was designed to capture ultrasonic waves at ranges that move between 50 and 300 kilohertz “because at this frequency range structural faults can be found in mechanical systems.”

Los investigadores prueban el sensor. / Ramón Fornell

The idea is to install these devices in industrial plants or machines that are difficult to access, “because these sensors operate in situ and are capable of discerning whether the ultrasonic information captured corresponds to a normal state of operation or fault due to an internal fracture of part of the material, identifying the severity of the problem and issuing a warning or a notice wirelessly to a central computer.”

The acoustic sensors developed in the Mosycousis project could be employed in all kinds of rotating machinery, systems with gears, gearboxes, compressors, pumps, engines, ventilators, etc. “They could be used in production companies, metal manufacture, packaging chains and food packaging, the pharmaceutical industry, etc.,” according to the researcher.

Over the duration of the project, which ended last October and was financed by the EU's 7th R&D Framework Programme, participants also identified other uses that were not foreseen in the original plan.

“We have seen that this technology is worthwhile and highly applicable in detecting problems in the positioning of wind turbines and improving their maintenance. And on railways they can be placed on the rails at station entrances where there is a continuous track change to direct the train towards one platform or another, which causes significant mechanical wear," the director says.

Researchers at UPC is studying potential applications in biomedicine to prevent bone fractures.

For railway applications, the sensors would not be self-powered but connected directly to the power supply at the station, and, according to Romeral, they would enable small fractures on the base of the rails to be identified and serious breakdowns to be prevented.

Applications in biomedicine

But perhaps one of the most surprising applications of these new devices is in the field of biomedicine. “Ultrasound has already been used extensively to detect bone fractures, but the concepts developed in this project in terms of identifying frequencies and analysing signal are novel in this field,” Romeral continues.

“We have only just begun to assess the possibilities in this field and we can see that there are numerous prospects. The researchers we are speaking to have told us that identifying and locating a fracture in a three-dimensional system with three sensors separated from each other within a single bone could be of great interest. For this reason, we have begun a new line of work and initiated contacts, as yet confidential, in this field," he concludes.

Reference:

Daniel Zurita, Miguel Delgado, Juan Antonio Ortega y Luis Romeral. “Intelligent Sensor based on Acoustic”. EEE International Symposium on Diagnostics for Electrical Machines, Power Electronics & Drives. Agosto 2013.

The study, published in the ‘Journal of Business Research’, included the data from 44 out of the 47 Spanish state universities for 2006-2009.

"Strategies to promote ransfer activities should consider the chacaracteristics of the local industry", explains Berbegal

As Jasmina Berbegal, one of the authors, currently a researcher at the International University of Catalonia (UIC), explains to Sinc: “The most notable technology transfer activities concern the patent development and marketing, the generation of contracts and of licences with businesses, and the creation of university companies or spin-offs.”

In order to estimate the level of involvement of the universities in these kinds of activities, the experts estimated the efficiency of the centres using a model in which they included factors such as available staff, investment in R&D, the number of graduates and published articles to measure perform in teaching and research, and the number of spin-offs created.

Then, they applied a second analysis in order to determine any possible influence of the environment and the characteristics of the business network in each region, as well as the presence of incentives that may explain the differences.

Among the new variables they included the size of the university, the number of patents, the teaching load per lecturer and the educational programmes on offer at the centres.

The information came from two sources: the annual reports from the network of Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs) –RedOTRI in Spanish- and the twice-yearly reports from the Conference of University Rectors in Spain (CRUE).

Berbegal highlights the role of the KTOs, which, in the researcher’s words, “are a necessary structure for guaranteeing efficient generation of technology transfer activities within universities.”

Territorial discrepancies

According to the 2011 data, Berbegal says, “in Madrid, five out of the six universities had a science park and all of them had an incubator. In Valencia and Galicia, all the universities had a science park and all but one had an incubator.”

In the study, this regional aspect proved to be a determining factor. Technology development in different regions had a positive effect on the creation of companies linked to the university (spin-offs); the most efficient centres were in areas with high intensity of technology and a high level of training of nascent entrepreneurs.

For example, in Andalusia, “only 44% of universities had a science park and three of them had neither a science park nor a business incubator.” The centres of Zaragoza and La Rioja also lacked both installations.

“Public administrations design programmes and incentives to reinforce synergies between universities and businesses,” the authors explain. ”However, these policies are subject to cultural norms and territorial barriers.”

Thus, it is essential that these transfer strategies take account of the characteristics of the industrial network in each region in order to adapt to the specific needs “both of local business owners and the community in which the university undertakes its activity,” the expert asserts.

Lack of incentives

“It is necessary to afford greater freedom for lecturers and the universities themselves to participate in the equity of a business”, says the researcher

In terms of the causes of these shortages, beyond regional factors, “we could say that the main problems that hinder technology transfer are related to the lack of incentives for university lecturers and departments to get involved in technology transfer processes.”

According to the experts, enterprising culture is scarce among the Spanish professoriate. “Lecturers would have greater incentives if there were fewer contractual barriers for businesses to establish formal contacts and undertake technology transfer activities,” Berengal stresses.

Another possible avenue for driving entrepreneurship is for “teaching quality assessment agencies, such as the Spanish National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) to attach greater importance to these activities in their assessment schemes.”

The study emphasises that, although “Spanish universities have sufficient potential”, their approach to managing resources and implementing promotion policies “is negatively impacting their productivity.”

The path to follow is to “afford greater freedom for lecturers and the universities themselves to participate in the equity of a business and represent the output of any transfer activity undertaken,” the researcher concludes.

Bibliographic reference:

Berbegal-Mirabent, Jasmina; Lafuente, Esteban; Solé, Francesc (2013). “The pursuit of knowledge transfer activities: An efficiency analysis of Spanish universities”. Journal of Business Research, Vol. 66, No. 10, pp. 2051-2059.

The innovation enables 3D images of living organisms to be obtained with greater speed and precision. In broad terms, helical optical projection tomography consists in rotating a sample while moving it vertically in order to then obtain a three-dimensional image of it, explain its creators

“With our design and the software we are developing, we can create equipment that is not available commercially and that has the advantage of evolving at the same time as the project it is being used for progresses,” explains Jorge Ripoll, a partner in 4D-Nature and professor in UC3M’s Bioengineering Department.

In fact, in addition to other technologies, such as live quantitative imaging and three-dimensional microscopy, this new technology of tomography that they have developed, and which appears in a recently published article in the journal Optics Express, can be integrated into the machines that they specially produce for their clients.

The innovation enables 3D imaging of living organisms with greater speed and level of detail

New drugs and sensors

This type of technology is essential in the development of new medicines and sensors, as well as for carrying out other types of biomedical research applicable to clinical diagnostic imaging, explain the researchers.

One of the keys to the successful use of these technologies is that the programs that control them be intuitive and user-friendly, that is, that there is no need for previous knowledge of or training in advanced imaging techniques. “It has taken around eight years to develop, fine tune and validate this software and get it to where it is now,” states Ripoll, for whom one of the keys here is technical support: “Software that is problem-free and easy to use is closer to success.”

For almost ten years, the researchers and promoters at 4DNature, among whom are scientists such as Alicia Arranz and César Nombela Arrieta, have been developing prototypes that are similar to the current systems, having installed this type of equipment in various countries, such as Germany, Spain, Greece, Israel and Switzerland.

“This has allowed us to develop parallel ‘user-friendly’ software to control those systems, which we could then test and optimize until we reached the point we are at now,” says Professor Ripoll, who has been awarded a European Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (a research fellowship) to develop this type of advanced imaging equipment.

UC3M’s Vivero de Empresas del Parque Científico (Business Incubator of the Science Park) has supported the creation of 4DNature, which it accompanied in its first steps following its successful participation in the 6th Concurso de Ideas UC3M (UC3M Ideas Competition); it has prepared its presentation for investment forums and sector fairs, facilitated its access to public subsidies and fomented meeting with experts.

“Since we are scientists, being here has offered us fundamental training for starting up a company, guided us through certain difficult choices, through the legal framework and put us in contact with highly qualified professionals,” comments Ripoll.

Referencia bibliográfica:

Alicia Arranz, Di Dong, Shouping Zhu, Markus Rudin, Christos Tsatsanis, Jie Tian and Jorge Ripoll."Helical optical projection tomography". Opt. Express 21, 25912-25925 (2013)

Josep Maria Font, director of the division of biomechanics at the CREB and leader of the project, explained to SINC that the initiative is the first of its kind. Until now this type of biomechanical studies has only been applied to sportive footwear but not to urban shoes.

The aim of the project “is to establish which parameters have an effect on the comfort of Camper shoes. We have achieved this by using physical measurements taken at our biomechanical laboratory and conducting surveys to find out more about user perception”, says Font.

For the study, the researchers worked with 54 volunteers who tried on six models of men’s shoes and six models of women’s shoes, which were analyzed using the sophisticated equipment from the Biomechanical Laboratory at CREB.

The instruments used included pressure insoles placed between the foot and the shoe to record the pressure applied to the foot. Force plates were also employed. These permitted the measurement of the contact forces between the ground and the user when walking. An optical motion capture system was also used. This consisted of 18 cameras, permitting the movement of the person’s legs while walking to be monitored at any moment, explains Font.

The researchers also used electromyography sensors, electrodes that record the activity of the muscles in the human body. “In this case –continues Font– we focused on the movement of the ankle joint, as this is the closest to the shoe. On the basis of this electrical measurement we have also been able to establish how much muscular activity is required when using one shoe or another”.

Several models have been analyzed using optical capture systems, force plates, pressure sensors and templates

Tests with volunteers

The project leader says that on completion of the tests with volunteers, a statistical analysis was made of the physical measurements and key parameters were obtained. These include a template of the angle of the ankle or knee, calculated using mechanical engineering algorithms.

“With this information, the statistical data and the results of the survey, we were able to determine which parameters were more closely linked to the comfort perceived by the user”.

The CREB, which forms part of the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CIT UPC), is currently exploring the possibility of starting similar studies to the one underway at the moment with Camper with other brands from the footwear industry.

Mathematical models

The project started in 2012 and has now entered the second phase. According to Font, Camper, longstanding shoemaker’s, has a lot of knowledge about shoe’s comfort. “With this study the firm wants to improve this knowledge using a scientific approach which could be measured objectively using mathematical models”.

Therefore, when Camper wants to launch a new shoe model to the market, it can first take the shoe to the CREB laboratory, where the parameters determining its comfort can be measured. “This will provide the company with tangible references and data that will enable them to objectively improve new models”, concludes the researcher.