What good is an empty clinic? The brain drain that is depleting health care services in many parts of Africa is leaving entire communities stranded. An EU-funded project is looking into ways to mobilise more human resources for primary health care across the continent.
Access to healthcare is a basic human need, but efforts to provide affordable public care in many developing nations have had mixed results. EU-funded researchers sought to find out why through a landmark evaluation of healthcare systems in six Asian countries. The conclusions highlight the influence of insurance schemes’ affordability, understanding what motivates people to take out insurance policies, and how public money is spent.
Freely accessible online tools to enable sustainable and efficient water resource management are being developed by the EU-funded SWITCH-ON project. The initiative is currently building a web portal to host innovations such as a virtual water-science laboratory, product marketing point and meeting place.
Aircraft maintenance companies are under a great deal of financial pressure from carriers, which require consistent and low cost repairs using high quality processes and spare parts. EU-funded researchers studying future repair and maintenance say digital manufacturing technologies will put increased automation and fewer production stages within grasp. The result could be more competitive providers, cheaper flights and fewer emissions.
The EU-funded FUSENET project created new learning opportunities for Europe’s future fusion scientists by developing educational materials, organising internships and bringing academia and industry closer together. While the project may be officially over, the concept has been kept very much alive through the ever-expanding FUSENET Association.
The EU is investing in research to counter rising obesity among Europeans. Ongoing projects such as SATIN, Full4Health, I.Family and EarlyNutrition are leading to a better understanding of why more people are becoming obese – research that could save lives and reduce the burden on national health systems.
An EU-funded project has developed a cheaper, energy-efficient and mercury-free water purification system that could be a viable alternative to current technologies in use. The breakthrough could help cut the costs of cleaning water for a range of industries – including aquaculture.
An EU-funded project has resulted in the commercialisation of natural bakery products in line with consumers’ tastes. The project has developed cost-effective means of producing bread products with nutrition content at least similar to wholegrain. It has also helped some of Europe’s small bakers launch new products in line with consumers’ tastes, and led to the coordinator being named “Bakery Personality of the Year 2014”!
Rail companies looking for possible energy savings have to consider the different parts of a rail network together – no easy task. EU-funded researchers are building decision-making tools and setting standards to make this mission more manageable. The approach could cut energy use by 10%, says the project team.
Lung cancer is the leading killer of all cancers worldwide. The outcome depends heavily on when the disease is diagnosed. But therapeutic strategies are also key, and those currently available are only making modest inroads into mortality rates. The EU-funded project WINTHER set out to improve methods for predicting the efficacy of drugs in cancer patients in a ground-breaking new approach to targeted therapies.
Effective, evidence-based policy-making requires contributions from various sources. So-called ‘knowledge brokering instruments’ can boost the sharing of the necessary information and knowledge between stakeholders, policy and science. Choosing water policy as the focal point, the EU-funded project PSI-CONNECT put knowledge brokering activities to the test.
Sewage may not look like a particularly precious resource, but it is home to phosphorus and other products, such as metals and biogas. EU-funded researchers are developing and demonstrating more efficient ways to extract these, turning waste into a valuable and renewable resource, creating new opportunities for companies and reducing its impact on the environment.
You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, nor is it something you could hear, taste or smell. Dark matter is all around us, and its mass produces measurable gravitational effects. Other than that, it interacts with the visible universe even less than previously thought, according to the results of recent EU-funded research.
An EU-funded project is developing tasty, nutritious and filling food to help people control their weigh. Among the project’s contributions so far – it has created a screening platform that allows researchers to collect data on food elements that satiate appetites. The approach provides an opportunity for food manufacturers to create new, competitive products for the market.
EU-funded researchers have created a unique database and screening tools to monitor the levels of contaminants in seafood and their effects on consumer health. Coupled with rapid screening tools, their work promises to greatly improve the food safety of each fish, shellfish and mollusc on European dinner tables. Commercial application of the screening tools is potentially on the table.
How can we guarantee the integrity of existing buildings while continuing to develop urban spaces? Professor Debra Laefer's ERC-funded project tackles fundamental problems at the interface between new engineering undertakings and building conservation. The research team will draw on a largely unmined data source to create a system to predict the degree of damage likely to be sustained by buildings as a result of tunnelling.
The consortium of Demo ShopInstantShoe project presented the results in Villena, Spain, at Calzamedi’s facilities. A new adjustable female shoe based on a new memory shape composite leather/nithynol material, is now available! The new material allows fitting the shoe to the foot shape, after getting anthropometric measurements through the Shopintantshoe portable scanner and modifying it through the “Shoptool”, a machine that completes the process directly into the shop.
Strong and reliable authentication is key in our digital society. The existence of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), the technology that implements the electronic fingerprint of devices, has been demonstrated by the PUFFIN FET project in standard devices. The applications for mobile phones are now implemented by its SME partner Intrinsic-ID.
Does Saturn’s moon Mimas have an underground ocean? EU-funded researchers think this is a distinct possibility. The clues are in the way the moon wobbles, which scientists now understand better. This breakthrough and others made by the ESPaCE project are providing new insights into the origins of our solar system.
A lack of clear data on how ecosystems deal with carbon dioxide has hindered understanding of how they are affected by land management and climate change. For a clear picture, scientists need accurate information on which ecosystems release or retain carbon and greenhouse gases (GHGs) and how much. Through detailed measurements and data analyses, EU researchers have the first answers to these pressing questions.
