Categoria: Internacional
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Scientists hunt dark matter ‘stars’ that mimic black holes
In 2019, a strange event was observed in the depths of space. Called GW190521, the event sent out gravitational waves – invisible ripples in the universe – that were picked up on Earth. These waves appeared to mark the moment when two massive black holes, dozens of times the mass of our Sun, collided and…
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Episode 37 – No secret sauce: a recipe for transparent science
00:00 Luisa Venier Just to give you a few numbers, in 2025 we processed more than 310 access to documents requests, and we disclosed thousands of documents. So, it’s quite a resource impacting activity. 00:24 Edward Bray Hello and welcome to another episode of Science on the Menu. My name is Ed Bray,…
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Fish and seafood consumption in the EU: awareness of dietary advice on mercury
The European Commission asked EFSA to carry out a survey across the EU, before and after some countries updated their advice on how often to eat fish and seafood that may contain traces of mercury. Examples of these species are large predator fish such as shark, swordfish, and tuna (bigeye and bluefin) because they feed…
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Financing the climate transition : the green deal hits the farm sector, another path is needed
When the European Commission presented its proposals to apply the Green Deal to agriculture, Farm Europe took the lead to point out what they implied for the EU: lower production, higher food costs, less food security, lower exports, lower revenues. That analysis was widely shared. It was followed by a strong reaction from farmers’ organisations…
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European Parliament adopts the 2040 Climate law target: a credible pathway for agriculture needed
This morning the European Parliament adopted the trilogue agreement reached with its co-legislator last December, concerning the European climate law (ECL) amendment introducing a binding intermediate climate target for 2040 of a 90% reduction in net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to 1990 levels. 413 MEPs voted in favour of the text, 226 against, and…
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Tiny particles, big impact: towards less invasive brain stimulation
For decades, treating serious brain disorders has often meant making a difficult trade-off. Symptoms could be relieved, but usually at the cost of invasive surgery and implanted electrodes that stay in the body for life. “Having wires in your body isn’t ideal,” said neuroscientist Mavi Sanchez-Vives, head of the Systems Neuroscience group at the IDIBAPS research…
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Veterinary drug residues in food: what’s the latest in the EU?
EFSA’s yearly report on residues of veterinary medicinal products in live animals and animal products shows continued high compliance with official limits in 2024. The review looks at the presence of authorised and banned pharmacologically active substances and their residues in food derived from animals, including meat (farmed and game), dairy products, eggs, or honey.…
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Severe drought hits East Africa, driving a potential humanitarian crisis
Around 4.6 million people are already affected and over 135,000 displaced in Somalia.
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Provisional safe level for cannabidiol as a novel food
The European Commission considers that CBD qualifies as a novel food provided it meets the conditions of EU legislation on novel foods. Provisional safe level In an updated statement, EFSA’s expert Panel on Nutrition The science of how diet relates to the body’s need for sustenance, Novel Foods and Food Allergens (NDA) set a provisional…
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Em síntese – At a glance note for the Research for the AGRI Committee – Support measures for farmers’ income in different Member States in the context of inflation and rising production costs – 06-02-2026
This study examines recent developments in EU farm incomes, focusing on the heightened price volatility observed since 2020. Sharp increases in energy, fertiliser, and feed costs, driven by multiple factors, have led to significant income variations across Member States and farm types. The report reviews challenges in measuring farm income and proposes improvements to enhance…
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Estudo – Research for the AGRI Committee – Support measures for farmers’ income in different Member States in the context of inflation and rising production costs – 06-02-2026
This study examines recent developments in EU farm incomes, focusing on the heightened price volatility observed since 2020. Sharp increases in energy, fertiliser, and feed costs, driven by multiple factors, have led to significant income variations across Member States and farm types. The report reviews challenges in measuring farm income and proposes improvements to enhance…
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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…