Categoria: Internacional
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Severe drought led to below-average yield outlook for summer crops
Severe drought led to below-average yield outlook for summer crops
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Nanotechnology – promoting uses of new assessment methods
NAMs refers to a wide variety of methods for testing and assessing chemicals that do not use experiments on animals or humans. As well as gradually replacing animal testing, these methods can contribute to improved safety assessments by using models that better simulate conditions in humans. NAMs can be performed in test tubes, culture dishes,…
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EFSA identifies 12 bark and ambrosia beetle species posing high risk to EU plant health
Part of the subfamily of bark and ambrosia beetles known as Scolytinae, this high-risk group of pests could enter the EU with wood or wood products, or with plants for planting. Once introduced, they could become established in parts of the EU due to the availability of host plants and climate suitability. Control measures are…
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Europe’s musical and cultural heritage at your fingertips
With all the fanfare of the Eurovision Song Contest in May this year, it is possible that many missed another European song contest that was taking place at around the same time – the Polifonia Song Contest. Organised by Polifonia, an EU-funded research initiative aimed at protecting and promoting Europe’s musical heritage, the competition sought to…
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Genetically modified crops may be a solution to hunger
Hunger and undernourishment are two elements of food insecurity that have plagued Africa for years. And the menace is growing. In 2022, the African region accounted for the highest hunger level as described by the Global Hunger Index. According to the World Health Organization, over 340 million Africans were malnourished and severely food insecure between…
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EFSA’s Advisory Forum supports Europe’s Research Agenda
Europe’s national food authorities have called for a continuous research and innovation (R&I) investment in generating the scientific knowledge needed for risk assessment A specialised field of applied science that involves reviewing scientific data and studies in order to evaluate risks associated with certain hazards. It involves four steps: hazard identification, hazard characterisation, exposure assessment…
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Advanced manufacturing revs up in Europe with 3D printing
If 3D printing makes good on its promise, it will fundamentally change the way things are manufactured. And it could also become everyone’s best friend. Just imagine if for any broken part in your household, you could simply make a new one with your home printer. Thanks to advances made by an EU-funded research team,…
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Every last drop: zero-waste water builds water resilience
The 34 dairy cows chewing the cud on a floating platform in the port of Rotterdam probably aren’t thinking about water scarcity – a major challenge in the world today – but they are participating in a Europe-wide effort to find solutions to this modern-day dilemma. The cows’ home, the Floating Farm, is part of a…
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Seeds of change: Women’s role in greening European agriculture
Dr Maura Farrell grew up surrounded by strong women who played a key role in shaping her ideas about women in farming and rural life. Both of her grandmothers farmed their whole lives and had as much a connection to the land and farming as her grandfathers. In rural business, Farrell cites the example of…
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Use of fertilisers in EU agriculture down 10% in 2022
In 2022, the quantity of mineral fertilisers (nitrogen and phosphorus) used in agricultural production across the EU was 9.8 million tonnes. This represented a sharp decline of 10.3% compared with the quantity used in 2021, and a cumulative decline of 15.9% from the relative peak in 2017. Source …
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Screening newborns to help fight rare diseases
Dr Alessandra Ferlini wants medical help for millions of people in Europe to begin before they even realise it. Ferlini, associate professor in medical genetics at the University of Ferrara in Italy, aims for every child born in Europe to be genetically screened at birth for a range of rare diseases. Such conditions each affect…
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Free movement of research and innovation will be central to renewing Europe’s Single Market
The European Single Market is considered one of the EU’s biggest accomplishments – and for good reason. It enables EU citizens to travel, live, work, study, retire, trade and do business wherever they wish. Simply put, the European Single Market makes the daily lives of European consumers and businesses much easier. In his recently published…
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Mediterranean migration and its lessons for Europe
In June 2007, a boat carrying 28 migrants went ashore on a beach on the southernmost tip of the Italian island of Sicily. Among the personal belongings of the people who made the dangerous crossing from Africa, rescue volunteers found a Bible and a Koran – both underlined and encrusted in sea salt. Mediterranean magnet…
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Want to avoid Europe’s tourist hordes? Try getting off the beaten track
The monastery of San Estevo de Ribas de Sil in northwestern Spain is located within 20 kilometres of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, but for Martín López Nores the two places felt worlds apart. And that gave him an idea. In 2019 López Nores, a professor in the Department of Telematics Engineering of the University…
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Mental stress can be a real heart breaker
In June 2016, the German national football team was gearing up to face Slovakia in the European championship. With pulses set to race among thousands of fans in the crunch match in host country France, a group of scientists in Germany was watching with interest. Their aim? To explore the link between short-term, acute mental…
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Electronics made of wood and paper
To develop eco-friendly electronics such as sensors and circuit boards, Dr Valerio Beni is following the paper trail – literally. An expert in green chemistry at Swedish research institute RISE, Beni has switched his focus to wood from pulp in a bid to make consumer electronic devices that have no carbon footprint and are easier…
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The bottom-up Brussels green revolution
In the EU and Belgian capital Brussels, Barbara Trachte reflects the strengths of a third governmental layer in Europe: its numerous regions. Trachte is secretary of state of the Brussels-Capital Region responsible for the economic transition and scientific research. The first member of Belgium’s French-speaking Green party to be put in charge of an economic…
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From cycling to sex, skin patches promise to make their mark
What do cycling, showering and making love have in common? All three activities prove the usefulness of a new generation of skin patches that can monitor people’s vital signs like blood pressure and heart rate, according to Professor Klas Hjort, head of the microsystems technology programme at Uppsala University in Sweden. Patch work While “smart…
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The hydropower renaissance in Europe
Dr Jeremy Bricker, a hydraulics and coastal engineer, is dreaming big. Somewhere on the North Sea coast, he imagines construction of a dam to manage the supply of clean energy to Europe’s “lowlands”. Dam good Bricker is also working towards that goal. He and other engineers are part of a project that received EU funding…
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The woman who built a biotech business from an EU science contest
Andrea Stephany Diaz gushes with enthusiasm when talking about how she created her own biotechnology company two years ago at the age of 24 in a bid to revolutionise the detection of lung cancer. ‘I’ve always had a passion for science and human health,’ said Stephany Diaz, who was born in Venezuela and has lived…
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EU Summit: Producers & consumers have high expectations
Brussels, 21st March 2024 – Food and agriculture are at the centre of the meeting of the European Council, taking place in Brussels today and tomorrow. In the invitation letter to the Council, President Charles Michel, states that “European farmers have voiced their concerns loud and clear”. Therefore leaders “need to act decisively on the challenges…
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Plant-based diets improve health and environment, says top EU scientific advisor
Human health is inextricably linked to food and the environment. The world, including Europe, faces emergencies on all three fronts. The current food system is damaging people’s health by contributing to obesity and destroying the environment by, among other things, causing greenhouse-gas emissions and biodiversity loss. Given the high stakes and challenges, Horizon Magazine plans…
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Virtual-reality tech is fast becoming more real
Imagine a single technology that could help a robot perform safety checks at a nuclear plant, cure a person’s arachnophobia and simulate the feeling of a hug from a distant relative. Welcome to the world of “extended reality”. Researchers funded by the EU have sought to demonstrate its enormous potential. Relevant research Their goal was…
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Lynxes and vultures offer insights for European wildlife conservation
Anybody wondering about the hands-on challenges of wildlife conservation in Europe should consider a recent tale. It involves a wild cat, tracking signals and an eye-opening journey. In spring 2023, environmentalists captured an adult male lynx in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains and released it in a Croatian national park called Plitvice Lakes. The move was part…
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Small farms take centre stage in European push to bolster local food trade
When Paolo Colzi left his job in an Italian textile company 23 years ago to take over the family wheat farm, he decided to turn it organic. Colzi says it was big risk that paid off. Now 57 years old, he is running a successful business growing wheat, tomatoes, cucumbers and aubergines on 50 hectares…
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Young cancer survivors in Europe get increased post-cure help
Leontien Kremer shifted the entire focus of her work as a young doctor in 1997 after an encounter she had with a cured cancer patient. ‘We had treated a boy of 16 for bone cancer, but then he came back a fewer years later with severe heart failure,’ said Kremer, a paediatrician and professor of…
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Easing job jitters in the digital revolution
Professor Steven Dhondt has a reassurance of sorts for people in the EU worried about losing their jobs to automation: relax. Dhondt, an expert in work and organisational change at the Catholic University Leuven in Belgium, has studied the impact of technology on jobs for the past four decades. Fresh from leading an EU research…
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Rushing to save coral reefs from global warming
Dr Núria Viladrich of Spain was forced by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 to cancel a planned visit to the US Virgin Islands, where white-sand beaches and rum-coconut cocktails weren’t the main attractions. She wanted access to the multi-coloured corals populating the reefs around the islands. Instead, Viladrich ended up in the Florida Keys for…
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The push to turn climate culprit CO2 into a green force
Laura Martinelli has bittersweet recollections about a clean-fuels project that she managed. It was interrupted by the sudden death of a leading researcher but ended up breaking important ground in the field. Martinelli says the project’s ultimate success would have been impossible without the contribution of the late researcher, Arren Bar-Even, an Israeli biochemist who…
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Stars and inner compass guide moths and birds, say researchers
Grey-brown bogong moths may not be much to look at, but every year they perform a nocturnal journey worthy of attention. Billions of them fly as many as 1 000 kilometres from plains in eastern Australia to mountain caves to escape the summer heat. Arriving in late September from their breeding grounds, up to 17…
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Europeans make love but not babies
When demography expert Daniele Vignoli asked young couples for their thoughts about having children, a theme emerged: uncertainty about the future. In an experiment that Vignoli conducted in Italy and Norway in 2019, he showed a total of 800 couples in their 20s and 30s newspaper headlines about the economy. His aim was to explore…
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Clothing manufacturers aim to get fashionable with greener practices
Two textile plants in southern Finland point to the future of the industry. At the sites in Espoo and Valkeakoski, pre-treated textile waste is turned into a cellulosic fibre that looks and feels like cotton. In with the old The activity is part of a research initiative called the New Cotton Project that received EU funding to…
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Rainwater in cities causes more troubles than wet feet
Near the medieval Belgian city of Ghent, in the municipality of Wetteren, researchers are trying to reduce pollutants in rainwater using seashells. Millions of shells from the nearby North Sea collect and filter water that flows during rainfall from a shopping-mall roof and a parking lot. Stormwater challenge The shells, amassed below a surface drain,…
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From rockets to spider silk, young scientists wow the jury – and each other!
Inês Alves Cerqueira of Portugal just spent five days in Brussels and left with a top EU prize for young scientists. But ask 17-year-old Cerqueira what she remembers most about the event, which featured 136 contestants from three dozen countries in Europe and beyond, and the much-coveted award gets hardly any mention. No worries ‘I…
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Autism cures may be closer as focus turns to early treatment
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition that has been intensely investigated since the mid-20th century. It’s estimated that ASD affects around 1 in 100 children and mainly boys. Studies suggest that ASD is closely linked to genetics. The basic challenge is untangling the relationships between the many genes involved and the symptoms.…
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Tropical disease transmitted by worms on verge of being curbed
A disease caused by parasitic worms has long blighted the lives of millions of people in tropical and subtropical countries including Burkina Faso and Madagascar. Now victims of the ailment, schistosomiasis, have reasons for hope. International researchers may have come up with better ways to detect the disease and are on the verge of developing…
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Elephants that once threatened Rome could help save their descendants
More than 2 500 years ago a Phoenician ship, most likely a trader bringing luxury goods from the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, ran into trouble off the coast near Cartagena, Spain. The vessel hit the rock reef of Bajo de la Campana. Lurking just below the surface, this huge lump of rock has been wrecking…
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Ancient chickens, cows and pigs may hold secrets to modern animal diseases
The dubious winners of the agricultural revolution, by sheer numbers, are obvious. Living in the world today are 30 billion chickens, 1 billion cows and almost 800 million pigs. While the dawn of agriculture was 8 000 to 10 000 years ago, only in the past century or so has humankind’s relationship to farming and…
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Alleviating paralysis with new brain-reading technologies
In 2009, a former US policeman named Richard Marsh suffered a severe stroke that left him completely paralysed but conscious – a condition known as locked-in syndrome. Little more than four months later, in a miracle of sorts, Marsh recovered to the point of being able to walk out of his intensive-care facility. Communication breakdown…
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Restoring sight to the blind with cutting-edge brain implants
Berna Gomez, a former science teacher from Spain, became a scientific subject herself in 2021. After being blind for 16 years, she took part in an experiment to restore her ability to perceive light. Gomez, then 57 years old, was fitted with an implant in the area of the brain responsible for visual processing. The…