Categoria: Últimas

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…

Each time a plane takes off or lands, flaps on the wings extend or retract to maintain stability and serve as a visual reminder that an aircraft is composed of thousands of complicated parts. Redesigning some of these components might also reduce the greenhouse gases – including carbon dioxide – that aircraft emit. Aviation accounts…

Cancer of the colon and rectum is a pernicious killer. A colorectal tumour, for example, can be removed completely from a patient but then pop up elsewhere in the body in another guise.  Researchers in Spain believe they’re on the right track to stop this type of cancer from spreading. Deadly wanderers  A colorectal tumour…

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…

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…

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…

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…

About 20 years ago, Matteo Martelli was browsing in a bookshop when he chanced upon an intriguing work. Opening the pages of “The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt”, he became engrossed. Martelli is a professor at the University of Bologna in Italy who trained in the history of classical languages. His interest was piqued…

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…

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…

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…

Dr Janina Seubert believes the path to healthier human diets is through the nose. Seubert, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is researching the role of smell in shaping public preferences towards foods. She’s curious whether scents could help people embrace protein sources such as insects as alternatives to meat and dairy.…

In the prehistoric times of Neanderthals and early modern humans, one of Europe’s largest-ever bear species roamed the land and inhabited its caves. But the cave bear, weighing up to one tonne, died out some 25 000 years ago. Its bones have been found in caves located from England to Russia. Competing views Possible reasons…

Switzerland is renowned for its mountains, cheese and chocolate. Less well known is how Lindt, a Swiss chocolate producer, is packaging the delights in greener ways. The paper packaging used for some of Lindt’s products has green fibres running through it. More than just a splash of colour, the green is actual grass to replace…

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…

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…

Near the north-western Italian town of Asti, known for its vineyards and sparkling white wine, Alberto Mossino helped cultivate a different crop: maize. On a farm surrounding a 19th-century villa he revived the production of Ottofile maize, which is used to make polenta. Ottofile, a red-orange, creamy-tasting grain type typical of the region, has been…

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…

It’s sometimes called the “white-coat” syndrome – when a stressed-out person goes to a doctor and the nervousness causes the patient’s blood pressure to spike. Researchers who enjoy the same authority as doctors can often have a patient-like apprehension about something very different: being in the spotlight. Into the limelight Yet many will overcome such…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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.…

Livestock farmers in Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK are trying a new method to produce milk and meat: feeding their cows mainly or only grass. Cattle diets usually include a variety of grains, which make the animals grow faster and – by extension – their meat and milk cheaper. But the practice has hefty…

Trees and other vegetation grow on the site of a former soap factory in northwestern France. While the greenery suggests all is well in the Ploufragan commune near the Brittany coast, the truth is that a plant for making cleaning products has left a mess. The surrounding soil is saturated with toxic hydrocarbons – byproducts…

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…

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…

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…

Armed with headlamps and tweezers, American evolutionary ecologist Jonathan Shik and his team spent more than 100 hours lying on the floor of a tropical forest in Panama watching leafcutter ants going about their business. First the researchers wanted to learn about the ants’ foraging paths and preferences. Then, with the tweezers, they would withdraw…

Ann Trappers harnessed a shock in her native Belgium to help heal social wounds across Europe.  After Islamic terrorist attacks in Brussels in March 2016 left 35 people – including three suicide bombers – dead and more than 300 injured, Trappers and her colleagues at a non-governmental organisation called Foyer sought to rebuild community trust…