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New modular synchronous source measure system from Lake Shore Cryotronics

This video examines the unique measurement capabilities of the modular M81-SSM synchronous source measure system from Lake Shore Cryotronics. In this hands-on demonstration, Lake Shore looks at its components, including four types of amplifier modules that are combined with the M81-SSM instrument to enable low-level DC, AC and mixed AC/DC measurements.

The video discusses how all source and measure channels are simultaneously sampled at a very high rate and provide DC to 100 kHz operation – including lock-in operation – on up to three source and three measure channels at the same time to ensure time-correlated synchronous measurements.

Also demonstrated is how quickly and easily the M81-SSM can measure various values of resistance using very low DC and AC currents, illustrating the limitations of DC methods and the advantages of AC lock-in methods as the signal of interest becomes affected by thermal offsets and other parasitic effects.

Unique MeasureSync™ signal synchronization technology

The M81-SSM’s MeasureSync™ technology ensures inherently synchronized measurements from one to three source channels and from one to three measure channels per each half-rack instrument. Amplitude and frequency signals are transmitted to/from the remote amplifier modules using a proprietary real-time analogue method that minimizes noise and ground errors while ensuring tight time and phase synchronization between all modules. Because the M81-SSM sources and measures channels synchronously, multiple devices can be tested under identical conditions so users can easily obtain time-correlated data.

Connect up to three source modules and up to three measure modules at once

The M81-SSM provides DC to 100 kHz precision electrical source and measure capabilities with 375 kHz (2.67 μs) source/measure digitization rates across up to three source and three measurement front-end modules.

Users can choose from differential voltage measure (VM-10) and balanced current source (BCS-10) modules, and single-ended current measure (CM-10) and voltage source (VS-10) modules. All modules use 100% linear amplifiers and are powered by highly isolated linear power supplies for the lowest possible voltage/current noise performance — rivalling the most sensitive lock-in amplifiers and research lab-grade source and measure instruments.

On the VS-10 module, dual AC and DC range sourcing allows for precise full control of DC and AC amplitude signals with a single module and sample/device connection. And on the VM-10 module, seamless range change measuring significantly reduces or eliminates the typical range change-induced measurement offsets/discontinuities in signal sweeping applications that require numerous range changes.

For details, visit the M81-SSM webpage at www.lakeshore.com/M81.

Nanoflake-based breath sensor delivers ultrasensitive lung cancer screening

**Gas sensing cell** Schematic depicting the internal structure and the gas sensor’s working status. (Courtesy: Reprinted with permission from *ACS Sensors* 10.1021/acssensors.4c01298 ©2024 American Chemical Society)

Analysis of human breath can provide a non-invasive method for cancer screening or disease diagnosis. The level of isoprene in exhaled breath, for example, provides a biomarker that can indicate the presence of lung cancer. Now a research collaboration from China and Spain has used nanoflakes of indium oxide (In₂O₃)-based materials to create a gas sensor with the highest performance of any isoprene sensor reported to date.

For effective cancer screening or diagnosis, a gas sensor must be sensitive enough to detect the small amounts of isoprene present in breath (in the parts-per-billion (ppb) range) and able to differentiate isoprene from other exhaled compounds. The metal oxide semiconductor In₂O₃ is a promising candidate for isoprene sensing, but existing devices are limited by high operating temperatures and low detection limits.

SEM micrograph of nanoflakes — **Detecting lung cancer** SEM micrograph of the Pt@InNiOx nanoflakes. (Courtesy: Adapted from *ACS Sensors* 2024, DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.4c01298)

To optimize the sensing performance, the research team – led by Pingwei Liu from Zhejiang University and Qingyue Wang from Institute of Zhejiang University – developed a series of sensors made from nanoflakes of pure In₂O₃, nickel-doped (InNiO_x) or platinum-loaded (Pt@InNiO_x). The sensors comprise an insulating substrate with interdigitated gold/titanium electrodes, coated with a layer of roughly 10 nm-thick nanoflakes. When the sensor is exposed to isoprene, adsorption of isoprene onto the nanoflakes causes an increase in the detected electrical signal.

“The nanoflakes’ two-dimensional structure provides a relatively high surface area and pore volume compared with the bulk structure, thus promoting isoprene adsorption and enhancing electron interaction and electrical signals,” Wang explains. “This improves the sensitivity of the gas sensor.”

The researchers – also from Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine and Instituto de Catálisis y Petroleoquímica, CSIC – assessed the isoprene sensing performance of the various sensor chips. All three exhibited a linear response to isoprene concentrations ranging from 500 ppb to the limit-of-detection (LOD) at the operating temperature of 200 °C. Pt@InNiO_x showed a response at least four times higher than InNiOx and In₂O₃, as well as an exceptionally low LOD of 2 ppb, greatly outperforming any previously reported sensors.

The Pt@InNiO_x sensor also showed high selectivity, exhibiting 3–7 times higher response to isoprene than to other volatile organic compounds commonly found in breath. Pt@InNiO_x also exhibited good repeatability over nine cycles of 500 ppb isoprene sensing.

The team next examined how humidity affects the sensors – an important factor as exhaled breath usually has a relative humidity above 65%. The InNiO_x and Pt@InNiO_x sensors maintained a stable current baseline in the presence of water vapour. In contrast, the In₂O₃ sensor showed more than a 100% baseline increase. Similarly, the isoprene sensing performance of InNiO_x and Pt@InNiO_x was unaffected by water vapor, while the In₂O₃ response decreased to less than 0.5% as relative humidity reached 80%.

The team also used simultaneous spectroscopic and electrical measurements to investigate the isoprene sensing mechanism. They found that nanoclusters of platinum in the nanoflakes play a pivotal role by catalysing the oxidation of isoprene C=C bonds, which releases electrons and triggers the isoprene-sensing process.

Clinical testing

As the performance tests indicated that Pt@InNiOx may provide an optimal sensing material for detecting ultralow levels of isoprene, the researchers integrated Pt@InNiO_x nanoflakes into a portable breath sensing device. They collected exhaled breath from eight healthy individuals and five lung cancer patients, and then transferred the exhaled gases from the gas collection bags into the digital device, which displays the isoprene concentration on its screen.

The sensing device revealed that exhaled isoprene concentrations in lung cancer patients were consistently below 40 ppb, compared with more than 60 ppb in healthy individuals. As such, the device successfully distinguished individuals with lung cancer from healthy people.

“These findings underscore the effectiveness of the Pt@InNiO_x sensor in real-world scenarios, validating its potential for rapid and cost-effective lung cancer diagnosis,” the researchers write. “Integrating this ultrasensitive sensing material into a portable device holds significant implications for at-home surveillance for lung cancer patients, enabling dynamic monitoring of their health status.”

Ultrasensitive frequency comb breathalyser targets real-time disease diagnosis

Looking to future commercialization of this technology, the researchers note that this will require further research on the sensing materials and the relationship between breath isoprene levels and lung cancer. “By addressing these areas and finishing the rigorous clinical trials, breath isoprene gas sensing technology could become a transformative tool in the noninvasive detection of lung cancer, ultimately saving lives and improving healthcare,” they conclude.

“Currently, we’re cooperating with a local hospital for large-scale clinical testing and evaluating the potentials to be applied for other cancers such as prostate cancer,” Wang tells Physics World.

The researchers report their findings in ACS Sensors.

Why we need more pride in physics

Ask the average person in the street to describe a physicist and they will probably outline an eccentric older man with grey wiry hair wearing a lab coat or tweed jacket with elbow patches and a pair of glasses. While some members of the physics community do look like that – and there’s nothing wrong with it if they do – it’s certainly not representative of the whole. Indeed, since the 1960s researchers have been regularly testing children’s perceptions of scientists with the “draw-a-scientist test”. This has seen a decrease in “masculine-coded” results from 99.4% in the 1970s to 73% in 2018. That figure is still high, but the drop is a welcome development that is likely due to an increase in female scientists being featured in both traditional and social media.

Despite such progress, however, physics still comes across as a cisgender-heterosexual-dominated subject. Some may claim that science doesn’t care about identity and, yes, in an ideal world this would be true – you would leave identity at the lab door and just get on with doing physics. Yet this is a classic example of inequity. While treating everybody the same sounds great in practice, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t create a conducive atmosphere for work and study. So how do we encourage the queer community into science and make them feel more comfortable?

To find out, we surveyed 160 students and staff at UK universities who identify as queer about their experiences and inspirations. When asked to rate how comfortable queer people feel in different scenarios between one (“completely uncomfortable) and 10 (“completely comfortable”), respondents’ average score was 7.96 when it came to how they felt among their peers but just 5.66 in an academic setting. This difference was even starker with people who identify as transgender, who reported a score of 8.0 with peers and as low as 4.96 within academia.

We also did follow-up interviews with respondents who left contact information to get a more detailed picture. From these interviews, the idea of “belonging” came up a lot. Participants stated that if they don’t see people like them at a job interview, they will think twice about accepting a position in that organization. Almost half of transgender respondents say they will have difficulty getting into a science-related career compared with just 8.9% of queer cisgender respondents.

The lack of role models in science is a critical factor. Over three-quarters of respondents generally disagreed with the statement “there are enough queer role models in STEM”, with some saying it is “severely lacking” while also acknowledging how complicated it can be for queer people to put themselves “out there”.

While teachers are an important inspiration for both transgender and cisgender people, fictional role models play a greater role for transgender people. On a scale from one (being no influence) to seven (most influence), transgender people were slightly more inclined towards fictional role models than cisgender people (at 4.25 versus 3.52). This is an important avenue for transgender people through the “queer coding” of traditionally cisgender heterosexual characters. One of the survey responses explained how as a child they interpreted The Doctor from TV’s Doctor Who as a queer role model.

Targeted schemes

Queer people clearly do not feel well represented in science, neither within their institutions nor in the media. The solutions to both issues are intertwined. The media will not see an increase in queer scientists until we have more queer scientists, and we won’t have more queer scientists until queer people can see science as a safe and welcoming career option. Time magazine’s top 100 influential people for 2020, for example, contained 17 scientists, but the Guardian’s list of LGBTQ+ influencers for 2024 contained no scientists at all.

There are things we can do to make science more accepting on a personal level such as displaying pronouns as standard in all communication, and signposting to queer networks within or beyond our organizations. One interviewee suggested queer people wear something like a Pride pin badge to create more visibility within the science community so that newly recruited queer people feel like they belong.

We also need targeted outreach to queer audiences in a similar way to how schemes have been created to increase women’s participation in science. Local Pride events or queer youth group meetings could be a good way to reach queer people without making them feel singled out and “othered”. The Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World, regularly attends Pride events, for example, and this type of activity should be encouraged in other physics and science-based groups and industries to show they are actively seeking and welcoming connections and talent from the queer community.

As well as increasing access to real-life role models, fiction could be used to create accessible role models, especially for the transgender community. More scientific characters in films, books and TV series who identify as queer would help to give future queer scientists people they can relate to and help them feel they belong in science. By making these small but meaningful changes in institutions and supporting related cultural initiatives, we can show that science can indeed be for everybody and not just a select few.

This article is based on the results of a final year BSc project by Artemis Peck.

Quantum showcase sets out next decade of UK quantum

Described as “the Glastonbury of quantum events” by one speaker, the UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase 2024 last week was the first time I have ever queued for a physics event. Essentially a quantum trade show, the showcase has been running for a decade, and in that time its attendance has grown from 100 to nearly 2000. It’s run by Innovate UK in collaboration with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP).

Nearly 100 quantum companies exhibited and there were talks and panels throughout the day. The mood was triumphant – last year the UK government announced the next phase of the NQTP, backed by a £2.5 billion 10-year quantum strategy, and in September, five quantum hubs were launched at British universities (with some overlap with the four previous hubs). However, for a sector that’s still finding its feet, the increasing focus on commercialization and industry creates some interesting tensions.

Commitment to quantum

Most of the funding for quantum technologies research in the UK comes from the public sector, and in the wake of the election of a new government, the organizers clearly felt a need to assuage post-election jitters.

The first speaker was Dave Smith, the UK’s national technology adviser, who gave an ambitious outline of the next decade of the government’s quantum strategy, which he expects to “grow the economy and make people’s lives better”. To do this, the UK quantum sector needs two things: talent and money. Smith’s speech focussed on the need to attract overseas talent, train apprentices and PhD students, and encourage private investors to dip their toes into quantum.

“We’ve gone from the preserve of academia to real-world applications” said Stella Peace, the recently appointed interim executive chair of Innovate UK, who spoke next. Her address made similar points to Smith, emphasizing that as well as funding quantum directly, Innovate UK aims to create connections between academia and industry that will grow the sector.

One senior figure with experience of the industry, government and academia aspects of quantum technology is the physicist Peter Knight from Imperial College London, who has been involved in the NQTP since it started and is now the chair of its strategic advisory board. Knight gave an insightful first-hand account of the last decade of the UK’s quantum programme. He said he was reassured that the new government is committed to quantum technology, but as with anything involving billions of pounds, making this a priority hasn’t been easy and Knight’s work is far from over. He described the researchers who led the first quantum hubs as “heroes” but added that “you can be heroic and fail”. According to Knight, to realize the potential of quantum technologies, “we need more than heroes, we need money”.

I spent the rest of the day alternating between the exhibition area and the talks. I saw established companies like Toshiba and British Telecom (BT) that are branching into quantum, as well as start-ups including Phasecraft and Quantum Dice.

A lively panel event on quantum skills was a particular highlight. The quantum sector faces a shortage of engineers, and the panellists debated whether quantum science should be integrated into existing engineering degrees and apprenticeships. A dissenting voice came from Rhys Morgan, the director of engineering and education at the Royal Academy of Engineering. “I’m not sure I agree with the need for a quantum apprenticeship,” he said, arguing that quantum companies should be training engineers on the job rather than expecting them to specialize during their degree.

Quantum at the crossroads

The UK government plans to invest £2.5bn in quantum technologies over the next decade and wants to attract an additional £1bn from private investment. The goal is to achieve a “quantum-enabled economy” by 2033. “Over the next 10 years,” states the National Quantum Strategy, “quantum technologies will revolutionize many aspects of life in the UK and bring enormous benefits to the UK economy, society and the way we can protect our planet.”

This is a bold statement. It sounds like the government expects to start getting a return on its quantum investment in the near future. But is that realistic?

“Quantum technologies” is an imprecise term, but where it refers to computing and communications, it’s still firmly in the research phase of research and development. Even quantum sensing start-ups like Cerca Magnetics and Delta G are just starting to move towards commercialization. Quantum research has made huge strides but scientists and companies should be realistic about its current capabilities and advocate for space and time to explore work that might not come to fruition in the next decade.

This was summed up in the final address from Roger Mckinley, the quantum technologies challenge director at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). His message to the government was that quantum commercialization is going to happen, but that they need to ask themselves: “How much do you want this to happen in the UK?”

Whatever you think about the hype over quantum technologies, researchers in the UK can celebrate the last decade, in which the country has punched above its weight in terms of quantum investment and research. However, there’s a lot of work still to do. If quantum researchers are serious about bringing these technologies to the real world, they should be prepared to keep fighting for them.

How Albert Einstein and John Bell inspired Artur Ekert’s breakthrough in quantum cryptography

If you love science and are near London, the Royal Society runs a wonderful series of public events that are free of charge. This week, I had the pleasure of attending the Royal Society Milner Prize Lecture, which was given by the quantum cryptography pioneer Artur Ekert. The prize is described as “the premier European award for outstanding achievement in computer science” and his lecture was called “Privacy for the paranoid ones: the ultimate limits of secrecy“. I travelled up from Bristol to see the lecture and I enjoyed it very much.

Ekert has academic appointments at the University of Oxford, the National University of Singapore and the Okinawa Institute of Technology. He bagged this year’s prize, “For his pioneering contributions to quantum communication and computation, which transformed the field of quantum information science from a niche academic activity into a vibrant interdisciplinary field of industrial relevance”.

Ekert is perhaps most famous for his invention in 1991 of entanglement-based quantum cryptography. However, his lecture kicked-off several millennia earlier with an example of a permutation cypher called a scytale. Used by the ancient Greeks, the cypher conceals a message in a series of letters written on a strip of paper. When the paper is wound around a cylinder of the correct radius, the message appears – so not that difficult to decipher if you have a set of cylinders of different radii.

Several hundred years later things had improved somewhat, with the Romans using substitution cyphers whereby letters are substituted for each other according to a secret key that is shared by sender and receiver. The problem with this, explained Ekert, is that if the same key is used to encrypt multiple messages, patterns will emerge in the secret messages. For example, “e” is the most common letter in English, and if it is substituted by “p”, then that letter will be the most common letter in the encrypted messages.

Maths and codebreaking

Ekert said that this statistical codebreaking technique was developed in the 9th century by the Arab polymath Al-Kindi. This appears to be the start of the centuries-long relationship between mathematicians and code makers and breakers that thrives today at places like the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Substitution cyphers can be improved by constantly changing the key, but then the problem becomes how to distribute keys in a secure way – and that’s where quantum physics comes in. While classical key distribution protocols like RSA are very difficult to crack, quantum protocols can be proven to be unbreakable – assuming that they are implemented properly.

Ekert’s entanglement-based protocol is called E91, and he explained how it has its roots in the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox. This is a thought experiment that was devised in 1935 by Albert Einstein and colleagues to show that quantum mechanics was “incomplete” in how it described reality. They argued that classical physics with extra “hidden variables” could explain correlations that arise when measurements are made on two particles that are in what we now call a quantum-entangled state.

Ekert then fast-forwarded nearly three decades to 1964, when the Northern Irish physicist John Bell came up with a mathematical framework to test whether an entangled quantum state can indeed be described using classical physics and hidden variables. Starting in the 1970s, physicists did a series of experiments called Bell tests that have established that correlations observed in quantum systems cannot be explained by classical physics and hidden variables. This work led to John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger sharing the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Test for eavesdropping

In 1991, Ekert realised that a Bell test could be used to reveal whether a secret communication using entangled photons had been intercepted by an eavesdropper. The idea is that the eavesdropper’s act of measurement would destroy entanglement and leave the photon pairs with classical, rather than quantum, correlations.

That year, Ekert along with John Rarity and Paul Tapster demonstrated E91 at the UK’s Defence Research Agency in Malvern. In the intervening decades E91 and other quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols have been implemented in a number of different scenarios – including satellite communications – and some QKD protocols are commercially available.

However, Ekert points out that quantum solutions are not available for all cryptographic applications – they tend to work best for the exchange of messages, rather than the password protection of documents, for example. He also said that developers and users must ensure that QKD protocols are implemented properly using equipment that works as expected. Indeed, Ekert points out that the current interest in identifying and closing “Bell loopholes” is related to QKD. Loopholes are situations where classical phenomena could inadvertently affect a Bell test, making a classical system appear quantum.

So, there is much more work for Ekert and his colleagues to do in quantum cryptography. And if the enthusiasm of his talk is any indication, Ekert is up for the challenge.

Physicists in cancer radiotherapy

The programme focuses on the cancer radiation therapy patient pathway, with the aim of equipping students with the skills to progress onto careers in clinical, academic research or commercial medical physics opportunities.

Alan McWilliam, programme director of the new course, is also a reader in translational radiotherapy physics. He explains: “Radiotherapy is a mainstay of cancer treatment, used in around 50% of all treatments, and can be used together with surgery or systemic treatments like chemotherapy or immunotherapy. With a heritage dating back over 100 years, radiotherapy is now highly technical, allowing the radiation to be delivered with pin-point accuracy and is increasingly interdisciplinary to ensure a high-quality, curative delivery of radiation to every patient.”

“This new course builds on the research expertise at Manchester and benefits from being part of one of the largest university cancer departments in Europe, covering all aspects of cancer research. We believe this master’s reflects the modern field of medical physics, spanning the multidisciplinary nature of the field.”

Cancer pioneers

Manchester has a long history of developing solutions to drive improvements in healthcare, patients’ lives and the wellbeing of individuals. This new course draws on scientific research and innovation to equip those interested in a career in medical physics or cancer research with specialist skills that draw on a breadth of knowledge. Indeed, the course units bring together expertise from academics that have pioneered, amongst other work, the use of image-guided radiotherapy, big data analysis using real-world radiotherapy data, novel MR imaging for tracking oxygenation of tumours during radiotherapy, and proton research beam lines. Students will benefit directly from this network of research groups by being able to join research seminars throughout the course.

Working with clinical scientists

The master’s course is taught together with clinical physicists from The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, one of the largest single-site cancer hospitals in Europe and the only UK cancer hospital connected directly to a research institute. The radiotherapy department currently has 16 linear accelerators across four sites, an MR-guided radiotherapy service and one of the two NHS high-energy proton beam services. The Christie is currently one of only two cancer centres in the world with access to both proton beam and an MR-guided linear accelerator. For students, this partnership provides the opportunity to work with people at the forefront of cancer treatment developments.

To reflect the current state of radiotherapy, the University of Manchester has worked with The Christie to ensure students gain the skills necessary for a successful, modern, medical physics career. Units have a strong clinical focus, with access to technology that allows students to experience and learn from clinical workflows.

Students will learn the fundamentals of how radiotherapy works, from interactions of X-rays and matter, through X-ray beam generation control and measurement, and to how treatments are planned. Complementary to X-ray therapy, students will learn about the concepts of proton beam therapy, how the delivery of protons is different from X-rays, and the potential clinical benefits and unique difficulties of protons due to greater uncertainties from how protons interact with matter.

Delivering radiation with pin-point accuracy

The course will provide an in-depth understanding of how imaging can be used throughout the patient pathway to aid treatment decisions and guide the delivery of radiation.

The utility of CT, MRI and PET scanners across clinical pathways is explored, and the area of radiation delivery is complemented by material on radiobiology – how cells and tissues respond to radiation.

The difference between the response of tumours and normal tissue to radiation is called the therapeutic ratio. The radiobiology teaching will focus on how to maximize this ratio, essentially how to improve cure whilst minimising the risk of side-effects due to irradiation of nearby normal tissues. Students will also explore how this ratio could be enhanced or modified to improve the efficacy of all forms of radiotherapy.

Research and technology

A core strength of the research groups in Manchester is the use of routinely collected data in the evaluation of improvements in treatment delivery or the clinical translation of research findings. Many such improvements do not qualify for a full randomized clinical trial. However, there are many pragmatic methods to evaluate clinical benefit. Through studying clinical workflows and translation, these concepts will be explored along with investigating how to maximise results from all available data.

Modern medical physicists need an appreciation of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is emerging as an automation tool throughout the radiation therapy workflow; for example, segmentation of tissues, radiotherapy planning and quality assurance. This course delves into the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, giving students the opportunity to implement their own solution for image classification or image segmentation. For those with leadership aspirations, guest lecturers from various academic, clinical or commercial backgrounds will detail career routes and how to develop knowledge in this area.

Pioneering new learning and assessments

Programme director Alan McWilliam talks us through the design of the course and how students are evaluated:

“An aspect of the teaching we are particularly proud of is the design of the assessments throughout the units. Gone are written exams, with assessments allowing students to apply their new knowledge to real medical physics problems. Students will perform dosimetric calculations and Monte Carlo simulations of proton depositions, as well as build an image registration pipeline and pitch for funding in a dragon’s den (or shark tank) scenario. This form of assessment will allow students to demonstrate skills directly useful for future career pathways.”

“The final part of the course is the research project, to take place after the taught elements are complete. Students will choose from projects which will embed them with one of the academic or clinical groups. Examples for the current cohort include training an AI segmentation model for muscle in CT images and associating this with treatment outcomes; simulating prompt gamma rays from proton deliveries for dose verification; and assisting with commissioning MR-guided workflows for ultra-central lung treatments.”

Develop your specialist skills

The Medical Physics in Cancer Radiation Therapy MSc is a one-year full-time (two-year part-time) programme at the University of Manchester.

Applications are now open for the next academic year, and it is recommended to apply early, as applications may close if the course is full.

Find out more and apply: https://uom.link/medphyscancer

EU must double its science budget to remain competitive, warns report

The European Union should more than double its budget for research and innovation in its next spending round, dubbed Framework Programme 10 (FP10). That’s the view of a report by an expert group, which says a dramatic increase to €220bn is needed for European science to be globally competitive once again. Its recommendations are expected to have a big influence over the European Commission’s proposals for FP10, due in mid-2025.

The EU’s current Horizon Europe programme, which runs from 2021 to 2027, has a budget of €95.5bn. In December 2023, the Commission picked 15 experts from research and industry – led by former Portuguese science minister Manuel Heitor – to advise on FP10, which is set to run from 2028 to 2034. According to their report, Europe is lagging behind in investment and impact in science, technology and innovation.

It says Europe’s share of global scientific publications, most-cited publications and patent applications have dropped over the last 20 years. Europe’s technology base, it claims, is more diverse than other major economies, but also more focused on less complex technologies. China and the US, in contrast, lead in areas expected to drive future growth, such as semiconductors, optics, digital communications and audio-visual technologies.

The experts also say the “disruptive, paradigm shifting research and innovation” that Europe needs to boast it economies is “unlikely to be fostered by conventional procedures and programmes in the EU today”. They want the EU to set up an experimental unit to test and launch disruptive innovation programmes with “fast funding” options. It should develop programmes like those of the US advanced research projects agencies and explore how generative AI could be used in science.

Based on analysis of previous unfunded proposals, the report claims that FP10’s budget should be doubled to €220bn to “guarantee funding of all high-quality proposals”. It also says that funding applications need to be simplified and streamlined, with funding handed out more quickly. It also calls for better international collaborations, including with China, and disruptive innovation programmes, such as on military-civilian “dual-use” innovation.

Launching the report, Heitor said there was a need “to put research technology and innovation in the centre of European economies”, adding that the expert group was calling for “radical simplification and innovation” for the next programme. Europe needs to pursue a “transformative agenda” in FP10 around four interlinked areas: competitive excellence in science and innovation; industrial competitiveness; societal challenges; and a strong European research and innovation ecosystem.

Space travel: the health effects of space radiation and building a lunar GPS

We are entering a second golden age of space travel – with human missions to the Moon and Mars planned for the near future. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we explore two very different challenges facing the next generation of cosmic explorers.

First up, the radiation oncologist James Welsh chats with Physics World’s Tami Freeman about his new ebook about the biological effects of space radiation on astronauts. They talk about the types and origins of space radiation and how they impact human health. Despite the real dangers, Welsh explains that the human body appears to be more resilient to radiation than are the microelectronics used on spacecraft. Based at Loyola Medicine in the US, Welsh explains why damage to computers, rather than the health of astronauts, could be the limiting factor for space exploration.

Later in the episode I am in conversation with two physicists who have written a paper about how we could implement a universal time standard for the Moon. Based at the US’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Biju Patla and Neil Ashby, explain how atomic clocks could be used to create a time system that would making coordinating lunar activities easier – and could operate as a GPS-like system to facilitate navigation. They also say that such a lunar system could be a prototype for a more ambitious system on Mars.

Hybrid irradiation could facilitate clinical translation of FLASH radiotherapy

Dosimetric comparisons of prostate cancer treatment plans — **Dosimetric comparisons** Treatment plans for a prostate cancer patient, showing the dose distributions for a conventional dose rate (CDR) plan, a hybrid ultrahigh-dose rate (UHDR)–conventional (HUC) plan, and the UHDR part of the HUC plan, delivered by a 250 MeV electron field. (Courtesy: CC BY 4.0/*Radiother. Oncol.* 10.1016/j.radonc.2024.110576)

FLASH radiotherapy is an emerging cancer treatment that delivers radiation at extremely high dose rates within a fraction of a second. This innovative radiation delivery technique, dramatically faster than conventional radiotherapy, reduces radiation injury to surrounding healthy tissues while effectively targeting malignant tumour cells.

Preclinical studies of laboratory animals have demonstrated that FLASH radiotherapy is at least equivalent to conventional radiotherapy, and may produce better anti-tumour effects in some types of cancer. The biological “FLASH effect”, which is observed for ultrahigh-dose rate (UHDR) irradiations, spares normal tissue compared with conventional dose rate (CDR) irradiations, while retaining the tumour toxicity.

With FLASH radiotherapy opening up the therapeutic window, it has potential to benefit patients requiring radiotherapy. As such, efforts are underway worldwide to overcome the clinical challenges for safe adoption of FLASH into clinical practice. As the FLASH effect has been mostly investigated using broad UHDR electron beams, which have limited range and are best suited for treating superficial lesions, one important challenge is to find a way to effectively treat deep-seated tumours.

In a proof-of-concept treatment planning study, researchers in Switzerland demonstrated that a hybrid approach combining UHDR electron and CDR photon radiotherapy may achieve equivalent dosimetric effectiveness and quality to conventional radiotherapy, for the treatment of glioblastoma, pancreatic cancer and localized prostate cancer. The team, at Lausanne University Hospital and the University of Lausanne, report the findings in Radiotherapy and Oncology.

Combined device

This hybrid treatment could be facilitated using a linear accelerator (linac) with the capability to generate both UHDR electron beams and CDR photon beams. Such a radiotherapy device could eliminate concerns relating to the purchase, operational and maintenance costs of other proposed FLASH treatment devices. It would also overcome the logistical hurdles of needing to move patients between two separate radiotherapy treatment rooms and immobilize them identically twice.

For their study, the Lausanne team presumed that such a dual-use clinically approved linac exists. This linac would deliver a bulk radiation dose by a UHDR electron beam in a less conformal manner to achieve the FLASH effect, and then deliver conventional intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) or volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) to enhance dosimetric target coverage and conformity.

Principal investigator Till Böhlen and colleagues created a machine model that simulates 3D-conformal broad electron beams with a homogeneous parallel fluence. They developed treatments that deliver a single broad UHDR electron beam with case-dependent energy of between 20 and 250 MeV for every treatment fraction, together with a CDR VMAT to produce a conformal dose delivery to the planning target volume (PTV).

The tumours for each of the three cancer cases required simple, mostly round PTVs that could be covered by a single electron beam. Each plan’s goal was to deliver the majority of the dose per treatment with the UHDR electron beam, while achieving acceptable PTV coverage, homogeneity and sparing of critical organs-at-risk.

Plan comparisons

The researchers assessed the plan quality based on absorbed dose distribution, dose–volume histograms and dose metric comparisons with the CDR reference plans used for clinical treatments. In all cases, the hybrid plans exhibited comparable dosimetric quality to the clinical plans. They also evaluated dose metrics for the parts of the doses delivered by the UHDR electron beam and by the CDR VMAT, observing that the hybrid plans delivered the majority of the PTV dose, and large parts of doses to surrounding tissues, at UHDR.

“This study demonstrates that hybrid treatments combining an UHDR electron field with a CDR VMAT may provide dosimetrically conformal treatments for tumours with simple target shapes in various body sites and depths in the patient, while delivering the majority of the prescribed dose per fraction at UHDR without delivery pauses,” the researchers write.

In another part of the study, the researchers estimated the potential FLASH sparing effect achievable with their hybrid technique, using the glioblastoma case as an example. They assumed a FLASH normal tissue sparing scenario with an onset of FLASH sparing at a threshold dose of 11 Gy/fraction, and a more favourable scenario with sparing onset at 3 Gy/fraction. The treatment comprised a single-fraction 15 Gy UHDR electron boost, supplemented with 26 fractions of CDR VMAT. The two tested scenarios showed a FLASH sparing magnitude of 10% for the first scenario and more substantial 32% sparing of brain tissues of for the second.

“Following up on this pilot study focusing on feasibility, the team is currently working on improving the joint optimization of the UHDR and CDR dose components to further enhance plan quality, flexibility and UHDR proportion of the delivered dose using the [hybrid] treatment approach,” Böhlen tells Physics World. “Additional work focuses on quantifying its biological benefits and advancing its technical realization.”

Trailblazer: astronaut Eileen Collins reflects on space, adventure, and the power of lifelong learning

In this episode of Physics World Stories, astronaut Eileen Collins shares her extraordinary journey as the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft. Collins broke barriers in space exploration, inspiring generations with her courage and commitment to discovery. Reflecting on her career, she discusses not only her time in space but also her lifelong sense of adventure and her recent passion for reading history books. Today, Collins frequently shares her experiences with audiences around the world, encouraging curiosity and inspiring others to pursue their dreams.

Joining the conversation is Hannah Berryman, director of the new documentary SPACEWOMAN, which is based on Collins’ memoir Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars, co-written with Jonathan H Ward. The British filmmaker describes what attracted her to Collins’ story and the universal messages it reveals. Hosted by science communicator Andrew Glester, this episode offers a glimpse into the life of a true explorer – one whose spirit of adventure knows no bounds.

SPACEWOMAN has its world premiere on 16 November 2024 at DOC NYC. Keep an eye on the documentary’s website for details of how you can watch the film wherever you are.

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