Physical sciences, Earth sciences

Turkey faces a wider range of temperatures from hot summer days to very cold nights, which means it has both substantial heating and cooling needs for its building stock. Energy efficiency measures need to be earthquake resistant as the country lies one of the world’s most seismic zones.

Uneven road surfaces cause breaking and variable speeds both of which increase emissions, while low car occupancy rates mean duplicated journeys. An EU project is combining data from trip-sharing communities and phone sensors for feedback on road quality to make road travel greener.

We can never know how many species go extinct before we realise they exist. But in the case of the first new species of orangutan to be identified in almost 90 years, pressure is on to preserve the 800 individuals now living, to avoid witnessing the discovery and extinction of the species in a lifetime.

As most cities-dwellers know, urban environments offer both challenges and opportunities. But when it comes to birdlife, can telomeres provide an insight into which tips the balance?

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) the level of CO2 recorded in earth’s atmosphere in 2016 was up 50 % on that of last ten-year average.

Carbon dioxide is an essential part of our atmosphere, but industrial and commercial activities over the past 150 years have seen CO2 emissions rise to problematic levels. EU-funded research is examining how to capture the gas at source and safely store it deep beneath the sea.

When cells are threatened, for example by viral infection, special sensors are activated to kick-start the immune system. Now, new genetic techniques are increasing our knowledge about how this response mechanism actually unfolds.

Researchers find that the decline of cold regions called periglacial zones is now inevitable. Even based on optimistic future carbon emissions estimates, they predict a 72 % reduction of the periglacial zone in their study’s northern Europe region.

Quantization (the act or process of dividing) is the process of constraining an input from a continuous or otherwise-large set of values to a discrete set. The discovery of quantized quantities has often been associated with a revolution in our understanding of the laws of nature. EU-supported researchers have now predicted a novel form of quantization law.

According to a study recently published in the ‘The Lancet Planetary Health’, global warming could impact about two-thirds of the European population a year, 351 million people, by 2100, resulting in 152 000 deaths annually.

Current methods of measuring electron transfer in photovoltaic panels are ambiguous, but new research supported with EU funding is helping to distinguish between the response of the substrate and that of the sensitiser.

Fish population dynamics models are essential tools used to estimate fishing impact and provide key indicators of exploitation. A EU-funded project is helping to provide a new generation of models harnessing the progress made in monitoring using in situ and satellite data.

As a debilitating heatwave, nicknamed ‘Lucifer’ by the press, currently engulfs southern Europe, a new study part-supported by two EU-funded projects has warned that a rise in global temperatures of three degrees would reverse Europe’s dedicated efforts to reduce ozone pollution.

Before they can be licensed by public authorities and welcomed by the public, CO2 storage plans first need to be perceived as safe and reliable. A key concern in this regard is the prevention of CO2 leakage. Numerous options and strategies exist, but it’s not always easy to identify the most suitable one.

A novel gas combustion method removing the need for expensive gas separation has been successfully scaled-up. The novel method has gas-to-steam efficiency penalties much lower than alternative CO2 capture technologies, as well as a CO2 avoidance cost reduced by 60 % compared to amine scrubbing. The consortium is already looking to extend it to biomass combustion.

With the objective of facilitating access to loans for environmental investments by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the European Commission, in partnership with the European Investment Fund, has launched the "Growth and Environment" pilot programme.With support fr...

The European Commission, DG XVII, has published the July 1994 issue of "Energy in Europe" on energy policies and trends in the European Union.The multilingual report presents a series of articles on energy policy and programmes in the European Union and in an international c...

Among second generation carbon capture technologies stands ‘Calcium carbonate looping’ (CCL). But even though it is considered less toxic than alternatives and proved to yield low efficiency penalties, the method is still far from being market-ready. SCARLET-enabled breakthroughs are expected to give it a push.

Climate change is increasing water scarcity around the world and the inter-dependencies of global trade mean that the impact could ripple far and wide, including across Europe, as the EU-funded project IMPREX warns.

How best to defend the rights of small-scale fishermen, ensure they receive fair pay and boost their competitiveness? The EU-funded SUCCESS project thinks one key step is to raise awareness and they are proposing to do so by labelling.

The size of Delaware, four times as big as London, quarter the size of Wales – whatever the description it is clear that one of the largest icebergs ever recorded has calved from the Arctic ice shelf, a NASA satellite confirmed on 12 July.

Bus operators from Germany and South Tyrol, Italy are partnering to procure 63 fuel cell buses for their public transport systems as part of the EU-funded JIVE project.

Recent archaeological analyses of ochre finds in Ethiopia builds on a previous EU-funded project which discovered the emergence of symbols usage by homo sapiens, earlier than previously thought

Findings from the EU-funded ALP-AIR project indicate that current assessments of nitrogen oxide pollution from traffic are underestimated, by up to a factor of four.

Subtropical ocean gyres are known to be zones of accumulated floating plastic debris. However, accumulation at the polar latitudes has been less studied. A recently published study extensively sampled the Arctic Ocean for floating debris and uncovered some interesting findings.