To increase the uptake of electric vehicles in European urban areas, the EU-funded WEEVIL project is developing a light three-wheeler that meets users' expectations in terms of comfort, driving experience, innovation and affordability.
An EU-funded project is developing two new deep-water gliders that would expand the ability of scientists and industry to measure the environmental impact of commercial activities such as drilling for oil and gas at sea. The autonomous gliders, sort of deep-sea drones, would also be able to extract better and more meaningful data from greater depths. The insights gained from improved ocean monitoring would contribute to the management of maritime resources.
Conventional industrial chemical production requires harsh conditions and environmentally unfriendly processes to transform raw materials like crude oil into useful chemicals and plastics. But imagine if nature's own chemical cell factories could turn cheap starting materials such as organic waste leftover from farming or food processing into recyclable components for the chemical industry.
In northern Sweden, some 150km inside the Arctic Circle where winter temperatures can fall to -45c, it's thaw season. Futuris went to meet a group of biologists studying the basic mechanisms used by plants to survive in this challenging ecosystem.And the variety of colours of their flowers is one of those survival mechanisms as pollinating insects are attracted by their colours.
As Europe's population ages, cancer has become the leading cause of death. Therapeutic targeting - changing the activity of a protein or nucleic acid with a stimulus - is of limited use because of the complexity of cancer: changes take place within the tumour cell itself, but also in the cell's microenvironment. An EU-funded project will increase understanding of cancer progression and provide the basis for new, targeted approaches.
Using a range of new technologies, EU-funded researchers are on a mission to create greener ships. They plan to cut fuel use and CO2 emissions by 25%, and other emissions (sulphur oxide, nitrogen oxide, particulate matter) by 100%.
EU-funded PhD programme INCIPIT is pooling expertise from different research institutes and non-academic partners, providing innovative training and transferable skills to researchers in the fields of life and biomaterial sciences.
How can we explore the inside of a volcano? What are the conditions in caverns deep beneath the earth surface? FET Open project Phoenix seeks to get information about places where humans have no or only extremely difficult access
What do research on personalised medicine, work towards safer aircraft, understanding turbulence and unravelling the structure of matter have in common? They all require high performance computing (HPC). An EU-funded project is creating the experts we will need to find the answers to these and other global questions using HPC.
EU-funded project SEPCELL will conduct a clinical trial of a stem cell treatment for patients with severe sepsis caused by a severe form of community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. The trial is one of a series of steps in assessing whether the treatment is safe and efficacious for patients with this life-threatening disease.
The sudden earthquakes that hit the headlines can be catastrophic. However, much slower ruptures release energy more safely. An EU-funded researcher is identifying how these little-understood slow ruptures occur, their precursory signals and how they are linked to fast earthquakes - information that could one day help develop early warning systems.
Nanocarriers are tiny substances that can be used to transport other materials, such as drugs, to specific areas of the body. The EU-funded TARGETCARE project plans to use them to treat joint and intervertebral disc diseases - improving patients' mobility and quality of life.
How should the EU respond to ongoing and future crises? The EU-funded research project TransCrisis seeks to advance understanding of the EU's capacity to handle transboundary emergencies.
Researchers are building a diamond-based device that can remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and transform it into valuable chemicals, including fuel.
The EU-funded OCTAVE project is developing an innovative voice verification system combined with user authentication as a cloud service that could replace the use of passwords for online security.
Drugs derived from biological sources play a major role in modern healthcare, but producing them cost-effectively to keep up with rising demand is a major challenge for the pharmaceutical industry. EU-funded researchers are developing more efficient biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes that should expand patients' access to these highly effective therapies.
What if the secret of youth lies under the sea? Marine biodiversity is rich in sources for medicine and cosmetic science, as Spanish researchers are discovering on the Mediterranean coast.
JPI Urban Europe will bring together urban development research and social innovation projects under a single transnational call for projects, ENSUF, in a bid to foster growth, job creation, innovation and sustainability across European cities. Nearly 50 proposals have been received.
How do young people participate in decisions that concern them and their involvement at the local level? There are many ways they get involved, not all of which are recognised in formal ways. A new EU-funded project is exploring how the rising generation engages with public debate.
What is consciousness? Can it be measured? FET-Open project LUMINOUS tries to find answers to fundamental human questions.
