With around 3 000 hours of sunshine a year, Malta is ideally placed to harness the sun’s energy. But its scorching summers, salty sea air and occasional Saharan dust storms also make it one of Europe’s toughest environments for solar panels. For Dr Brian Azzopardi, a renewable energy researcher from Malta, those challenging conditions present a unique […]
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In Ranerou, north-east Senegal, locals and environmental experts are working side by side to improve livelihoods and farming conditions, and protect the region’s biodiversity. They are planting and managing trees to improve soil quality and excavating and reinforcing a local pond to help it hold more rainwater. The work is taking place at one of […]
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For researchers at the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) in Slovenia, the realisation that gender-balanced research is better research hit home in 2024. That year, scientists at JSI’s space medicine laboratory, working with the European Space Agency, were testing ways to improve astronauts’ health – but only on men. Around that time, US astronaut Sunita Williams […]
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Getting children ready and on time for school can be stressful. In Finnish Lapland, where winters are long and snowy and some students travel long distances by bus, the challenge is even greater. In two Lapland communities, a school transport app developed through an EU-funded initiative called AURORAL has streamlined school bus pick-ups, reducing morning […]
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For Dr Pavla Bouchalová, a cancer researcher in the department of biochemistry at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, answering complex questions about how colorectal tumours behave requires access to data, samples and analytical tools that go far beyond a single laboratory. Through an EU-backed initiative called canSERV, Bouchalová’s team gained access to colorectal cancer tissue samples […]
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Children in Serbia may soon be learning basic literacy and maths with the help of a friendly virtual alpaca called Alpa, thanks to EU-funded research that is improving access to first-rate educational technology across Europe. Alpa is a key, albeit non-human, member of the team at ALPA Kids, an education technology company based in Estonia […]
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Helping young parents go to research events with their partner and baby, granting benefits to those back from maternity, or the right to take domestic abuse leave. These are some of the measures European research organisations have implemented to boost gender equality in the field. The EU has named four Gender Equality Champions this year, […]
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German scientist Dr Nicole Biebow is keenly aware of how important it is to research and protect the Earth’s increasingly fragile polar regions. The two poles are warming faster than any other area on the planet and are losing ice through increased melting. The Arctic, for example, is warming three times as fast as the […]
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When the makeover of Piazza del Popol Giost is completed this December, residents of Reggio Emilia will find themselves strolling through a tree-lined, pedestrianised square that until recently was just a car park. The overhaul of the 1 300m2 piazza is part of the northern Italian city’s broader sustainable urban mobility planning and was supported by […]
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Dealing with cancer in children is hard enough. Knowing that there are huge disparities in survival rates between higher- and lower-income countries in Europe makes it even worse. But EU-funded researchers are working to address this. Dr Jelena Rascon, a paediatric cancer specialist at the Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Klinikos (VULSK) in Lithuania, places great importance […]
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