It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Dr Laura K. Taylor receives European Research Council Consolidator Award to explore how identity can influence peacebuilding
Dr Taylor will receive €2 million for her GENERATION EU project, which will explore how young people develop and align with a ‘European’ identity, and the implications that this can have for social cohesion and peace.
The ERC today announced a total of €728 million in Consolidator Grants for 349 mid-career researchers. With funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, these grants will support cutting-edge research at universities and research centres in 25 EU Member States and associated countries.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said, “Congratulations to all the researchers on winning the ERC grants. The record budget of 728 million euro invested to support these scientific projects shows the EU is serious about making the continent attractive for excellent researchers.”
Professor Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council, said, “To see all this talent with groundbreaking ideas, based in Europe, is truly inspiring. This bold research may well lead to new industries, improve lives and strengthen Europe’s global standing. This was one of the most competitive ERC calls ever, with record demand and also many excellent projects left unfunded. It is yet another reminder of how urgent the call for increased EU investment in frontier research has become.”
Professor Niamh Moore Cherry, College Principal at UCD College of Social Sciences and Law, said, “Recognition of Assoc Prof Taylor’s research by the European Research Council through this award is most welcome given the timeliness of her GENERATION EU project on understanding how young people are developing and identifying with the idea of being European amidst great geopolitical uncertainty and polarisation. The GENERATION EU project builds on her previous work with children and young people in divided societies and will help us to better understand and foster inclusivity and social cohesion. We look forward to following this important research as it progresses.”
The ERC received 3,121 applications for this very competitive call - a 35 percent increase compared with the previous round. Recognising outstanding scholars, the Consolidator Awards aim to support those at a career stage where they may still be consolidating their own independent research teams to pursue their most promising research ideas.
The GENERATION EU Project
Children and adolescents account for 1 in 5 people in Europe today, and a significant number of these youths are within the first generation of native EU citizens in their country. Their support for, and identification with, Europe will have significant implications for peace on the continent.
The GENERATION EU project will investigate how European identity develops across childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, and the impact that this can have on peacebuilding and wider society.
Project PI, Dr Laura K. Taylor, explains, “Superordinate identities, or overarching categories, like ‘European’, can be used to include or exclude. Such identities may help unite conflict rivals. My research in conflict zones across the continent shows that children who felt more European were more likely to act prosocially - to help and share - with conflict-rival peers. However, at a national level, there are examples where such categories have also been used to exclude and penalise minority groups.
“GENERATION EU comes at a critical time, to enhance understanding of how we can build peace on the continent. This project explores how youth come to identify with superordinate identities, examining the potential positive impact that this can have on society, as well as the unintended negative consequences.”
GENERATION EU takes an intergroup developmental approach to study risk and resilience processes for children, families and communities in settings of protracted conflict. Combining cross-national surveys, field experiments, archival research and large-scale quantitative text analysis, the project will generate a new comprehensive model and interdisciplinary data and tools for the fields of psychology and peacebuilding. This will have implications not only for European social cohesion and peace, but also for other global regional identities.
Learn more about the ERC Awards and see the full list of Awardees for this round here.
A freely available tool to document wartime destruction
Destruction analysis of all 10m×10m building pixels in Beirut over 12-day periods from July 11 to July 23 (left), July 23 to August 4 (middle), August 4 to August 16 (right; all 2020). Lower p-values indicate a higher likelihood that part of a building was destroyed. The harbor explosion on August 4 is denoted by the red dot in the middle image, with radii of the blast wave with varying distances (also in red). Buildings located directly next to the sea are missing some pixels due to the processing of the images.
Researchers develop a method to detect the destruction of buildings using freely available satellite radar imagery. Daniel Racek and colleagues’ algorithm analyzes publicly available Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar images from the European Space Agency to identify destroyed buildings in conflict zones. The method statistically assesses the visual similarity of locations over time, enabling detection of destruction from a single satellite image every 12 days, without requiring labeled training data or expensive proprietary imagery. Unlike optical satellites, radar operates through clouds and darkness. The authors validate the approach across three case studies: the 2020 Beirut harbor explosion, the 2022 siege of Mariupol, Ukraine, and the 2023–2024 Gaza conflict. In Beirut, the algorithm achieved precision of 86%, correctly identifying most buildings destroyed by the explosion. In Mariupol's Zhovtnevyi district, the method estimated 2,437 buildings were destroyed, some 22% of all buildings in the district. In Gaza, destruction estimates tracked closely with UN satellite analysis. According to the authors, the method democratizes access to conflict monitoring tools and enables near real-time assessment of building destruction for humanitarian response, human rights monitoring, and academic research on armed conflict.
Destruction analysis of all 10m×10m building pixels in Gaza over 12-day periods from September 18, to December 11, 2023. Lower p-values indicate a higher likelihood that part of a building was destroyed. The timeline at the bottom denotes key events taking place between image acquisition dates.
Credit
Racek et al.
Journal
PNAS Nexus
Article Title
Unsupervised detection of building destruction during war from publicly available radar satellite imagery
Article Publication Date
9-Dec-2025
Residential solar panels can raise electricity rates
A modeling study shows how under some conditions, increasing numbers of households with rooftop solar panels can lead to higher rates for those without their own solar system. When utility customers cancel their accounts after switching to residential solar panels, the utility must spread their fixed costs around to a smaller number of remaining customers, which can lead to rate increases. Charles Sims and colleagues studied how this pecuniary externality affects different income groups using agent-based computational economic modeling of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), an area with some of the highest poverty rates in the United States. The authors asked 2,307 TVA residential customers whether they would be willing to invest in a rooftop battery-plus-solar system given varying upfront costs, savings on electric bills, and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The model predicts that as the cost of a solar system falls, 30% of customers defect from the grid and retail rates rise by 10% by 2051. Those higher rates become another factor pushing customers towards solar, in what the authors term a “utility death spiral.” Five percent more high-income than low-income customers leave the grid, raising equity concerns as the rates go up for the remaining customers. According to the authors, utilities and policy makers concerned about the equity implications of a transitioning electric grid should consider the use of grid access fees for customers with solar panels to recoup fixed costs.
Journal
PNAS Nexus
Article Title
The equity implications of pecuniary externalities on an electric grid
Article Publication Date
9-Dec-2025
NUS scientists create microneedle system to deliver biofertiliser directly into plants, boosting growth with less waste
A dissolving patch delivers beneficial microbes into leaves and stems, speeding growth in vegetables while using over 15 per cent less biofertiliser than soil application
Dr Arya Gopinath Madathil Pulikkal (left) and Assistant Professor Andy Tay (right) in front of a small greenhouse containing Choy Sum plants. Their team developed dissolving microneedles patches that deliver biofertiliser directly into plant tissue, boosting plant growth while using over 15 per cent less biofertiliser than conventional soil inoculation.
Credit: College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore
Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed dissolving microneedle patches that deliver living “biofertiliser” straight into plant tissue. In greenhouse tests, Choy Sum and Kale grew faster — by shoot biomass, leaf area and height — while using over 15 per cent less biofertiliser than standard soil inoculation.
The approach points to more precise fertiliser delivery, less waste and potentially lower off-target environmental impact, with near-term fit for urban and vertical farms and for high-value crops that benefit from controlled dosing.
Biofertiliser, which contain beneficial bacteria and fungi that help crops absorb nutrients and tolerate stress, are usually added to soil. There, they must compete with native microbes and can be hindered by acidity and various other conditions. Much of the input never reaches the roots. By placing beneficial bacteria or fungi directly into leaves or stems, the new method developed by the NUS team bypasses those hurdles and accelerates early gains.
“Inspired by how microbes can migrate within the human body, we hypothesised that by delivering beneficial microbes directly into the plant’s tissues, like a leaf or stem, they could travel to the roots and still perform their function, but much more effectively and be less vulnerable to soil conditions,” said Assistant Professor Andy Tay from Department of Biomedical Engineering at the College of Design and Engineering at NUS, and Principal Investigator at the Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech), who led the work.
The team fabricated plant-tuned microneedles from polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a biodegradable, low-cost polymer. For leaves, a 1 cm by 1 cm patch carries a 40 by 40 array of pyramids about 140 μm long, while a short row of roughly 430-μm needles suits thicker stems. Microbes are blended into the PVA solution, cast into tiny moulds and locked in the needle tips. Pressed by the thumb or with a simple handheld applicator that spreads force evenly, the needles slip into plant tissue and dissolve within about a minute, releasing their microbial cargo.
In laboratory tests, the patch barely disturbed plant tissue or function. Shallow indentations in leaves faded within two hours; chlorophyll readings remained stable; and stress-response gene expression, which briefly rose after insertion, returned to baseline within 24 hours. The patches maintained high microbial viability after storage for up to four weeks – this means the patches can be prepared in advance – and importantly, loading concentration translated to delivered dose, which enables controlled application that is difficult to achieve in soil. A 3D-printed applicator provided uniform insertion across large leaf areas and could become an integral component in future robotic automation.
Proving the approach
The NUS team demonstrated that delivering a plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) cocktail of Streptomyces and Agromyces-Bacillus through leaves or stems improved growth in Choy Sum and Kale compared to untreated controls and gave better results than soil treatments with microbes. PGPR is commonly used to improve nutrient uptake and stimulate growth hormones in plants.
Additionally, the plants grew more as the researchers loaded more microbes into each patch, up to an effective ceiling. Beyond that, extra microbes did not help the plants grow further. This lets growers determine the lowest effective dose, which in turn cuts costs and waste.
“Our microneedle system successfully delivered biofertiliser into Choy Sum and Kale, enhancing their growth more effectively than traditional methods while using over 15 per cent less biofertiliser,” Asst Prof Tay said. “By faster growth we refer to higher total plant weight, larger leaf area and higher plant height.”
The team tracked the bacteria as they moved from the injected leaves to the roots within days. At the roots, the bacteria nudged the root microbiome towards a more beneficial mix without throwing it out of balance. Plant chemical readouts showed that the main energy-production cycle (involves cells turning sugars into usable energy) was working harder, nitrogen was used more efficiently and compounds needed for growth were synthesised at a higher rate. The team also observed stronger antioxidant capacity, a sign the plants were better prepared for stress and growth.
The team extended the approach to beneficial fungi. Patches loaded with a Tinctoporellus strain (AR8) promoted Choy Sum growth and adjusted phytohormones levels – the signalling molecules that guide how plants grow, develop, and respond to their surroundings – helping to keep plant growth hormones in balance. “This work is the first to demonstrate that root-associated biofertiliser can be directly delivered into a plant’s leaves or stems to enhance growth,” Asst Prof Tay added. “With this finding, we introduced a new concept of ‘microneedle biofertiliser’ that overcomes significant challenges of soil inoculation.”
The researchers see early applications in urban and vertical farms where precise dosing matters, as well as in slow-growing, high-value crops such as medicinal herbs. Looking ahead, Asst Prof Tay added, “A major focus is scalability. We plan to explore integrating our microneedle technology with agricultural robotics and automated systems to make it feasible for large-scale farms. We will also test this across a wider variety of crops, such as strawberry, and investigate how these microbes migrate effectively from the leaf to the root.”
A microneedle patch containing biofertiliser is pressed onto the back of the leaf or along the stem of the plant using the thumb or a simple handheld applicator. Within a minute, the microneedles dissolve, releasing beneficial microbes directly into the plant tissue.
Credit
College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore
The microneedle patches are made using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a biodegradable, low-cost polymer, and infused with a plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) cocktail of Streptomyces and Agromyces-Bacillus. A 1 cm by 1 cm microneedle patch (shown in the petri dish on the right) carries a 40 by 40 array of 140-μm pyramids for application on leaves, while a short row of roughly 430-μm needles (shown in the petri dish on the left) suits thicker stems.
Credit
College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore
Researchers at the College of Design and Engineering at NUS have created a innovative dissolving microneedle patch that delivers living biofertilisers directly into plant tissue. The system helps vegetables grow faster while using over 15 per cent less fertiliser than soil application. Watch how this new approach could benefit urban farms, vertical agriculture and high-value crops.
Credit
College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore
Researchers from Rothamsted Research and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul tested two popular viral vectors - barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) and foxtail mosaic virus (FoMV) - to see if they could temporarily switch genes on or off in rice (Oryza sativa). These virus-enabled reverse genetics (VERG) techniques are regularly used in plants to study gene function without permanent genetic modification. These methods have worked well at Rothamsted in wheat and blackgrass producing clear results: plants turn white when a chlorophyll gene is silenced, or glow green when a fluorescent protein is expressed. In rice, no such changes occurred. Despite extensive optimisation across six rice cultivars, the team found no evidence that these VERG techniques work in rice.
“Although we don’t know why they didn’t work, it’s clear they don’t,” said Guilherme Turra, lead author and PhD student at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. “Rather than chase every possible explanation, we focused on rigorously testing variations of established protocols and inoculation methods across different rice types. By using robust scientific methods and clear visual phenotypes, we can be confident these tools simply don’t deliver in rice.”
Building on that point, Dr Dana MacGregor, senior author at Rothamsted, said: “It’s important to trust robust data, even when it challenges your original hypothesis. As scientists, we need to stay open to the possibility that our approach or assumption was wrong. We assumed what works in wheat would work in rice, but our data clearly show otherwise. By sharing these results, we hope to help others avoid the same pitfalls.”
The findings, now peer-reviewed and published in Annals of Applied Biology, underscore the species-specific nature of VERG and the importance of sharing negative results to guide future research. By publishing these data, the team hopes to prevent others from repeating unsuccessful experiments and to encourage innovation in viral systems tailored to rice.
The work was supported by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Rio Grande do Sul State’s Research Support Foundation (FAPERGS) and Brazil’s CAPES programme.
Professor Masatsugu Toyota from Saitama University received the 9th Tsuneko & Reiji Okazaki Award at Nagoya University on November 27, 2025, for his pioneering research on plant communication systems.
The 9th Tsuneko & Reiji Okazaki Award was presented to Professor Masatsugu Toyota of Saitama University on November 27, 2025, at Nagoya University. The international honor recognizes Professor Toyota’s research on how plants sense and respond to touch and chemical signals. The award ceremony took place during the 11th International Symposium on Transformative Bio-Molecules.
The Okazaki Award, established in 2015, honors early-career scientists who make significant contributions to biology through innovative approaches or transformative technologies.
Professor Toyota was born in Marugame, Kagawa Prefecture, the only son in a family with four sisters. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a physicist. He graduated from Nagoya University’s Department of Physics before moving to the Graduate School of Medicine to pursue his PhD in medical science.
His mentor, Professor Sokabe Masahiro, introduced him to plant science and encouraged him to build custom research equipment. This shaped his unique research approach that combines physics with biology.
How plants warn their leaves and their neighbors
Professor Toyota’s most important discovery involves glutamate receptor channels—proteins found in both human brains and plants. In humans, they help us learn and remember. “We also have a glutamate receptor channel in the brain, and plants have these same proteins that they use to sense insect attacks,” he said.
When an insect bites a leaf, these channels trigger calcium signals that move through the plant at one millimeter per second. This alerts distant leaves to prepare their defenses. Professor Toyota’s work with the carnivorous plant, Venus flytrap, and the sensitive plant, Mimosa pudica, shows that plants can move and protect themselves in surprisingly sophisticated ways.
He also discovered that plants “smell” danger through airborne chemicals released by damaged neighbors and prepare their own defenses before an attack occurs. These findings challenge the traditional view of plants as passive organisms and reveal advanced sensory networks that rival animal nervous systems.
Professor Toyota’s unique background in biophysics allows him to build custom microscopes and imaging systems that show plant behavior invisible to the naked eye.
“If you don’t have a device, you can make it,” he said, explaining his approach to research challenges. His centrifuge microscope and other inventions have opened new windows into the lives of plants.
Professor Toyota’s work has important implications for agriculture, specifically the development of biostimulants—chemicals that protect plants by activating their natural defenses rather than killing insects.
“We are creating new types of biostimulants to protect plants and these aren’t pesticides, so this method solves the problem of insects becoming resistant to traditional pesticides,” he explained.
His research demonstrates that plants possess rapid communication systems that coordinate complex responses across their entire structure, despite their lack of nerves or brains.
Honoring accomplished scientists—past and present
The award commemorates the legacy of Professors Tsuneko and Reiji Okazaki, who discovered “Okazaki fragments,” short DNA segments that form during cell replication. Their breakthrough work in the 1960s solved a fundamental mystery about how cells copy genetic information.
Past recipients of the Okazaki Award include distinguished scientists from institutions such as MIT, Stanford University, Princeton University, and the University of Zurich.
Nagoya University faculty members, including those from the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM), select recipients through a rigorous review process that evaluates both scientific achievement and future potential in the field of biology.
When asked about the secret to his success, Professor Toyota emphasized curiosity and persistence. “You should keep your curiosity from childhood,” he advised young scientists. Rather than seeing obstacles as roadblocks, he views them as opportunities. “I’m always very happy to face limitations or problems, because this is when big discoveries happen,” he said.
Calcium waves move through an Arabidopsis plant being attacked by a caterpillar at nearly one millimeter per second. The bright fluorescence reveals the plant’s rapid communication system responding to a threat, similar to how nerve signals work in animals.
Real-time calcium signals in Dionaea muscipula (Venus flytrap) responding to ants on its leaves. The green glow shows calcium signals moving through the plant as it senses the insects and reveals how plants transmit danger signals throughout their bodies.
Credit
Suda et al., 2025
Mimosa pudica leaves fold within seconds of being wounded. This rapid defensive movement is triggered by electrical and calcium signals that travel through the plant and protect it from further insect damage.
