Physical sciences, Earth sciences

Through a unique training programme that brought industry and academia together, the EU–funded MARE-WINT project has helped to fill a significant skills gap in the burgeoning offshore wind energy sector.

Studying the response of living organisms to climate change is essential in the face of what increasingly looks like an irreversible trend. However, unlike other species which have gathered much scientific attention, insects seem to have been left behind. An EU project is seeking to bridge this knowledge gap while taking insects’ specific features into account.

Researchers have developed an offshore wind turbine system that can be completely pre-assembled and pre-commissioned in controlled harbour conditions.

The EU-funded TOWERPOWER project is developing reliable new techniques to continuously monitor the structural condition of offshore wind turbines. Optimising maintenance and inspections is a key way to help the sector achieve cost efficiencies.

Environmental Impact Assessments – which generally tend to be completed before offshore renewable energy plants can be built – could be delivered much more cost-effectively through applying a risk-based approach, say EU-funded researchers.

Following its final conference that took place in Brussels on 4 October 2016, the EU-funded HERCULES consortium has provided stakeholders with a detailed set of policy recommendations that will preserve Europe’s diverse heritage in cultural landscapes.

Collaborative research funded by the ERC’s CACH project has announced the first real evidence that deep-sea animals are ingesting microplastics that are finding their way into the world’s oceans. This comes at a poignant moment as several governments are considering a ban on plastic microbeads, most often found in toiletries and cleaning products.

During its final conference in Brussels from 27 to 28 September, the FESSUD project brought together leading academics, economists and financial experts to disseminate its key results and discuss how Europe’s financial system can be better structured to serve economic, societal and environmental needs.

The EU-funded ATBEST project has recently hosted its final international conference from 7 to 8 September 2016 in Linköping, Sweden, where it outlined its toolbox of innovative solutions to support and promote the future growth and sustainability of the European biogas sector.

New methods for achieving efficient paper recycling have been developed, creating new business opportunities in sustainably managing waste.

Researchers have combined sugar alcohols with carbon nanotubes to create a material capable of storing renewable energy as heat.

Existing methods to capture CO2 suffer from a series of drawbacks directly affecting their output. Aiming to improve the situation, Dr. Sonia Zulfiqar has been investigating the CO2 absorption capacity of new materials based on amide polymeric ionic liquids.

Research partly supported through the EU-funded EXPEER project has found that plants are increasingly adapting to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), which could have important implications for global food security and nature conservation.

Businesses looking to cut costs and reduce their carbon footprint now have access to a new tool that evaluates the energy performance of data centres.

A new study has argued that major earthquakes, such as those that devastated Chile in 2010 and Japan in 2011, are more likely to occur during full and new moons – the two occassions during each month when tidal stresses are highest.

EU-funded researchers are studying how a changing climate affects hoverflies, which mimic bees and wasps, and the evolutionary consequences of these changes.

Located nearly 11 000 light years away, a recently discovered star could provide EU-funded astronomers with new clues as to how the universe’s most massive stars are formed.

The EU funded GEOPLATE project uses magnetic sensing techniques to expand our understanding of the earth’s tectonic past, while also offering tools to help locate future natural resources.

After cancer, heart disease or acute respiratory infections, scientists may have just lift the veil on another consequence of pollution on human health – Alzheimer’s disease. They found microscopic magnetic particles from air pollution in human brains and linked them to the production of free radicals, which are themselves linked to the infamous form of dementia.

First results from the EU-funded DACCIWA project have revealed that air quality in the West Africa region has been seriously affected by the burning of charcoal, rubbish and agricultural waste.

EU-funded researchers have unveiled a set of tools that will make computer systems more energy efficient, providing large data streaming aggregations 54 times more efficient than standard implementations.

Did you sleep badly on the night between Thursday 18 August and Friday 19 August? Perhaps you had a particularly vivid nightmare or inexplicably woke up much earlier than usual. On that night there was a particularly large full moon, known in August as a Full Sturgeon Moon. Traditionally, a full moon is not only said to be able to turn humans into werewolves, but less excitedly, is a harbinger of a restless night’s sleep.

Researchers from the EU-funded VUELCO project have found that the build-up of magma 6 kilometres below El Salvador’s Ilopango caldera means that the country’s capital, San Salvador, may be at risk from future volcanic eruptions.

EU-funded research shows that when climate change policy focuses only on mitigation without considering adaptation costs and residual damages, unintended inequalities result.

Research stemming from the EU-funded TERRAGEN project has found that forest fragmentation has prompted a decline in species sensitive to changes in light, moisture and temperature.