News

European group aims to make maths teaching more rigorous and inspiring

An attempt to re-energise mathematics teaching in Europe is being made in a new project examining a range of factors thought to influence achievement. Mathematics teaching is as vital as ever both in support of key fields such as life sciences, alternative energy development, or information...

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Unravelling the “Inconvenient Truth” of glacier movement

Predicting climate change depends on many factors not properly included in current forecasting models, such as how the major polar ice caps will move in the event of melting around their edges. This in turn requires greater understanding of the processes at work when ice is under stress,...

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Finding out what the big bang and ink jets have in common

ESF workshop tackles the mathematics of singularities

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European light research opens door for optical storage and computing

The goal of replacing electronics with optics for processing data in computers is coming closer through cutting edge European research into the mysterious properties of “fast and slow” light. The long term aim is to boost processing speeds and data storage densities by several orders of magnitude...

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Computation and experiment combine to unravel how genes are regulated and shed light on how cells become different

A closer alliance between computational and experimental researchers is needed to make progress towards one of biology’s most challenging goals, understanding how epigenetic marks contribute to regulation of gene expression. This emerged from a recent workshop organised by the European Science...

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Europe develops new technologies to boost health of livestock

A range of new technologies including genetic modification (GM) and RNA Interference are being deployed to improve the health of farm animals in a series of European and global initiatives. The ground was laid for a European platform to develop new treatments that exploit these technologies at a...

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Big molecules join together will lead to better drugs, workshop found

Bacteria can be made to spin spider silk

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Novel organic metal hybrids revolutionise materials science and chemical engineering

A novel class of hybrid materials made from metals and organic compounds is changing the face of solid state chemistry and materials science just 10 years after its discovery, with applications already in safe storage of highly inflammable gases such as hydrogen and methane.  Europe is aiming...

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Economists help climate scientists to improve global warming forecasts

Climate scientists are collaborating with experts in economic theory to improve their forecasting models and assess more accurately the impact of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Although there is broad consensus that there will be a significant rise in average global temperature, there is...

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The construction of heart modelling leads path to new therapies

Heart disease is still a major killer, especially in the western world, but new therapies based on stem cells and other techniques could now be imminent. Progress is being held back however by the difficulty testing new therapies on human heart tissue, with animal models being only of limited value...

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