Consultation on a sustainable HBM initiative in Europe - Deliverable Report D6.3 WP6 Sustainability and Capacity building.

This deliverable was produced under Task 6.3 of Work Package 6 on “Longer-term needs and expectations of stakeholders (2021-2030)”. The aim of this task was to gather information on the needs and expectations of both the National Hubs (NH) and a broad range of stakeholders regarding a long-term Human Biomonitoring (HBM) programme for Europe, to be establish in follow up to the current project, HBM4EU. Firstly and with a focus on options for financing a future initiative, information was collected on a range of available funding mechanisms at national, regional and international level. In terms of national funding, the results presented rely on responses to a survey with the NH. Unfortunately, the response from NHs was very limited, and as such the report only captures funding mechanisms from a limited number of countries, including Portugal, Spain, France, Germany and Cyprus. In order to gain insight into the status of the National Hubs and their capacities for HBM, a survey was conducted. The results provide an overview of the current situation across the NHs with regards to a range of aspects, including the level of activity of the NH, status of political support, availability of funding, ongoing HBM studies and willingness to align studies with HBM4EU. The results suggest that HBM4EU has raised the political profile of HBM in partner countries. Regarding ongoing HBM studies, only six countries have national HBM programmes, with most countries having only hot spot studies. Despite this, there was support for the alignment of studies to achieve European geographical coverage. Regarding funding, access to European funding is seen as important to leverage funds at national level. A second survey was targeted at a wide range of stakeholders, aiming to better understand their expectations for a long-term sustainable HBM initiative. The survey was followed by a workshop, where a more limited number of stakeholders had the opportunity to discuss the survey results and address such aspects as the scope of a future initiative, how to achieve financial sustainability, how to involve and how a future initiative might contribute to chemical policies. Concerning the needs and expectations of stakeholders, there is a strong interest in and support for a future HBM initiative at European level. The involvement of a European Union (EU) institution as part of a future steering committee was seen as crucial. According to this stakeholders’ consultation, the initiative should focus on protecting human health and the environment in Europe from hazardous chemical exposures by producing harmonised, high quality, transparent and inclusive data for effective risk assessment and management.HBM4EU - Grant agreement 733032 HORIZON 2020 Programmeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

WP6 - Sustainability and Capacity building

This report aims to provide a revision on the national needs (T6.1), the funding mechanisms (T6.2) and the long-term sustainability of HBM4EU (T6.3). Therefore, this report is divided in the three above-mentioned sections, for which the different tasks within work package 6 (WP 6) provided input. Concerning national needs, a survey is conducted annually by the national hub (NH) coordinator to monitor and evaluate the progress and development of all National Hubs involved in HBM4EU. With 2020 being the fourth year of the HBM4EU project, the survey followed many of the questions of previous years. Most NHs are satisfied with their current HBM4EU involvement, but have expressed their concerns regarding the communication, funding and lack of direct involvement. The follow-up to HBM4EU, PARC, was mentioned and the necessary involvement of all countries as well as the importance of communication between NHs and National Hub Contact Points (NHCPs) was highlighted. Inclusivity of smaller countries seems to be a problem through both lack of funding and adequate tasks. Regarding funding mechanisms, the initial list of financing mechanisms in the HBM and environmental health area at national and international level was updated and is available on the HBM4EU website under the “Funding Opportunities” tab. This intends to be an inventory that can be used not only by the HBM4EU consortium but by the entire scientific community to provide an overview of existing funding sources. It comprises of a set of targeted strategies for identification and dissemination of funding which are explained in further detail in section 6 Funding mechanisms. A systematic literature review was also undertaken to understand what the primary funding source of projects in HBM was. The results are not available yet. As part of T6.3 on the long-term sustainability, a citizen survey was developed together with T4.1 – mapping of needs. This survey was initially used for focus groups to better understand their awareness and concerns of chemical exposure and Human Biomonitoring. It was updated to harvest more EU-wide results including chemical exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey took place between September 2020 and February 2021 and the results were organised to cover the same regions as the aligned studies to allow for the organisation of results in a similar way for coherence. In order to produce a short report summarising the outcome of the survey, the questions were grouped for quicker analysis. The majority of the respondents considers HBM a tool that produces important results on human exposure to chemicals and that it should be performed more often and in a more coordinated way. This was a non-representative survey and future work should focus on wider dissemination in other population groups and on understanding how perceptions change over time. The survey’s answers were also distributed to the NHs, so they can produce internal communication briefs on their own data for further dissemination.HORIZON2020 Programme Contract No. 733032 HBM4EU.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sex-specific associations between particulate matter exposure and gene expression in independent discovery and validation cohorts of middle-aged men and women

BACKGROUND: Particulate matter (PM) exposure leads to premature death, mainly due to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. OBJECTIVES: Identification of transcriptomic biomarkers of air pollution exposure and effect in a healthy adult population. METHODS: Microarray analyses were performed in 98 healthy volunteers (48 men, 50 women). The expression of eight sex-specific candidate biomarker genes (significantly associated with PM(10) in the discovery cohort and with a reported link to air pollution-related disease) was measured with qPCR in an independent validation cohort (75 men, 94 women). Pathway analysis was performed using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis. Average daily PM(2.5) and PM(10) exposures over 2-years were estimated for each participant’s residential address using spatiotemporal interpolation in combination with a dispersion model. RESULTS: Average long-term PM(10) was 25.9 (± 5.4) and 23.7 (± 2.3) μg/m(3) in the discovery and validation cohorts, respectively. In discovery analysis, associations between PM(10) and the expression of individual genes differed by sex. In the validation cohort, long-term PM(10) was associated with the expression of DNAJB5 and EAPP in men and ARHGAP4 (p = 0.053) in women. AKAP6 and LIMK1 were significantly associated with PM(10) in women, although associations differed in direction between the discovery and validation cohorts. Expression of the eight candidate genes in the discovery cohort differentiated between validation cohort participants with high versus low PM(10) exposure (area under the receiver operating curve = 0.92; 95% CI: 0.85, 1.00; p = 0.0002 in men, 0.86; 95% CI: 0.76, 0.96; p = 0.004 in women). CONCLUSIONS: Expression of the sex-specific candidate genes identified in the discovery population predicted PM(10) exposure in an independent cohort of adults from the same area. Confirmation in other populations may further support this as a new approach for exposure assessment, and may contribute to the discovery of molecular mechanisms for PM-induced health effects. CITATION: Vrijens K, Winckelmans E, Tsamou M, Baeyens W, De Boever P, Jennen D, de Kok TM, Den Hond E, Lefebvre W, Plusquin M, Reynders H, Schoeters G, Van Larebeke N, Vanpoucke C, Kleinjans J, Nawrot TS. 2017. Sex-specific associations between particulate matter exposure and gene expression in independent discovery and validation cohorts of middle-aged men and women. Environ Health Perspect 125:660–669; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP37

Non-Human + Human Deep Space Exploration: By The NEP INPPS Flagship

INPPS Flagship Structure & Subsystems, Ground Based Tests, Pure NEP, International Electric Thrusters, Humans Internationally To Mar

Mars- plus Europa-INPPS Flagship Missions with High Power Electric Thrusters and Heavy Science Payload

2020/2021 orbit calculations (DLR Bremen + MAI Moscow): 3 Orbits for one non-human MARS/EUROPA-INPPS flagship 1. Orbit Earth (11 Oct 2026) => Mars (28 Jan 2028); 2. Orbit Mars (22 Sept 2028) => Earth (29 Jul 2029); 3. Orbit Earth (12 Oct 2031) => Jupiter / Europa (6 Dec 2035) 22 ETs (for the INPPS flagship CET): example - gridded CET plate with combined ET

Humans to Mars: by MARS- plus EUROPA-INPPS Flagship Mission

The first non-human INPPS (International Nuclear Power and Propulsion System) flagship flight with orbits Earth-Mars-Earth-Jupiter/Europa (after 2025) is the most maximal space qualification test of INPPS flagship to carry out the second INPPS flagship flight to Mars with humans (in the 2030th). This high power space transportation tug is realistic because of A) the successful finalization of the European-Russian DEMOCRITOS and MEGAHIT projects with their three concepts of space, ground and nuclear demonstrators for INPPS realization (reached in 2017), B) the successful ground based test of the Russian nuclear reactor with 1MWel plus important heat dissipation solution via droplet radiators (confirmed in 2018), C) the space qualification of the Russian reactor by 2025 and D) the perfect celestial constellation for a Earth-Mars/Phobos-Earth-Jupiter/Europa trajectory between 2026 and 2035. Therefore the talk sketches the preparation status of INPPS flagship with its subsystems. Critical performance will be studied by parallel realizations of the ground and nuclear demonstrators of DEMOCRITOS (until 2025). The space qualification of INPPS with all subsystems including the nuclear reactor in the middle of the 2020th plus the INPPS tests for about one to two years - first in high Earth orbit robotic assembly phase of INPPS and later extended in nearby Earth space environment flight - means a complete concepts driven approval for all applied INPPS space subsystem technologies. It is also important to consider wider aspects for the overall mission implementation phase. Component like the nuclear reactor as the power source for the propulsion system will have to agree with the 1992 UN principles relevant to the use of nuclear power sources (NPS) in outer space. Therefore this talk will look into the legal and policy issues of nuclear space systems related to the international realization of mission design, requirements of associated safety regulations (including AI applications in the subsystems) and new aspects for INPPS flagship commercialization and new media communication on board

Ultra-Low Voltage Datapath Blocks in 28nm UTBB FD-SOI

This paper demonstrates a wide supply range multiply-accumulate datapath block in 28nm UTBB FD-SOI technology. Variability and leakage reduction strategies are employed in this new technology to achieve a state-of-the-art low energy performance. The design uses a wide range of supply voltages to reduce energy consumption per operation. The extensive back-gate biasing range allows to adapt the minimum energy point (MEP) of the circuit to the desired workload. Measurements showcase the speed/energy trade-off of both the design and the technology and lead to a MEP of 0.17pJ at 35MHz with a supply voltage of 250mV and a back-gate bias of 0.5V.status: publishe