Ερευνητικά Αποτελέσματα Ελλήνων Ερευνητών - Europedirect

Urban planning design needs to account for social and environmental factors to improve efficiency and minimise energy demand, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of buildings and determine overall urban structure.

A study has examined the connection between insular space and the expansion of economic structures in early modern Cyprus and Crete. The data collected refer to the patterns of agricultural production in the eastern Mediterranean in the 17th century.

Bacterial infections are one of the major causes of death worldwide and incur billions of euros in healthcare costs. European scientists developed a revolutionary approach for coating objects with anti-bacterial materials.

Good hygiene practices are necessary to prevent transmission of bacterial infection to vulnerable populations. Personal hygiene such as hand washing or object disinfection constitutes a valid preventative measure, but has proven insufficient to address the problem.

Bladder cancer annually accounts for more than 350 000 new cases worldwide. Novel urine biomarkers for disease recurrence and progression could potentially offer reliable non-invasive diagnosis at a fraction of the cost.

Bladder cancer is characterised by a high recurrence rate and the highest per patient treatment costs, posing a significant healthcare burden. Currently, clinical diagnosis and monitoring relies on invasive cystoscopy, emphasising the need for non-invasive and cost-effective solutions such as the identification of urine biomarkers.

An EU research team worked on ways to stream video over standard wireless networks. This was achieved through improved algorithms, coding and networking, leading to a mature software product.

Continuous video monitoring places great demands on wireless computer networks. Wireless video streaming applications, such as traffic monitoring or fire detection, currently require special high-performance networks.

An EU initiative gathered researchers in science, philosophy and history to boost efforts to better establish science in our society.

Recognising a strong need to re-establish science in society and engage its wide range of stakeholders, the Programme of History, Philosophy and Didactics of Science and Technology (HPDST) brought together two interdisciplinary teams from Greece to conduct advanced related research.

Researchers within the EU-funded BIOFOS project have created a portable, multi-analytic bio-sensing device to detect contaminants in olive oil, nuts and milk.

An EU team developed a self-cleaning, antibacterial material for common surfaces. When tested in hospitals, the substance reduced the infection risk by over 60 %.

In the EU alone, approximately 3 million people per year contract infections from hospitals, of whom about 25 000 die as a result. Self-cleaning antibacterial surface coatings would help to reduce the infection rate.

Meeting the world’s increasing energy demands in a clean way is a worldwide priority. Towards this goal, European researchers developed a novel fuel cell.

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) produce electricity by oxidising hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas or biofuel. Composed of an anode and a cathode made of solid oxide or ceramic electrolytes, SOFCs operate at extremely high temperatures.

The aerospace industry’s efforts to reduce product development times and costs are hampered by the need to build several physical prototypes for verifying various factors during design. An EU initiative used virtual reality technology to accelerate the design process while enabling faster and more flexible aircraft cockpit prototype creation.

EU-funded researchers proposed active thermoelectric cooling solutions to increase the reliability of aircraft electronics and reduce their overall power consumption.

A well-designed thermoelectric cooler drives heat from a cold surface to a hot one, maintaining an electronic device below its safe temperature. Over the past years, pulse-width-modulation (PWM) control of the supplying current has been used to improve the performance of these systems.

EU-funded scientists have found that the gravitational well residing at the heart of a nearby galaxy radiates sufficient energy into local space to change the star formation rate.

The jets produced by supermassive black holes are known to heat up surrounding gas, making it impossible for birth clouds to condense and collapse into stars. In the EU-funded project BHS SHAPING GALAXIES (Black holes altering galaxy evolution: how to find them?), this effect has been witnessed in detail.

Open rotor aircraft engines promise dramatic fuel savings over conventional turbofans. EU-funded research focused on one of the two barriers that could prevent their use in next-generation airliners: noise and safety.

Open rotors can burn less fuel than turbofans because they support large diameters, resulting in high bypass ratios without the drag and weight penalties of a large nacelle. The first ‘unducted fan’ was demonstrated in flight in the late 1980s, but the concept was shelved until recently.

Experts from earthquake-prone EU nations Greece and Cyprus have helped engineers, researchers and scientists from developing nations to build better structures. This can lessen the chances of casualties and destruction when an earthquake hits.

For millennia, earthquakes around the world have caused significant loss of life and property, with societies struggling to find better ways to build their structures, towns and cities.

An EU initiative has developed or adapted several materials and technologies for more structurally sound, energy efficient and sustainable steel lightweight buildings.

Climate change, earthquakes and fires stress the need for building concepts that can reliably address such challenges. With this in mind, the EU-funded ELISSA (Energy efficient lightweight-sustainable-safe-steel construction) project worked to provide solutions for modular lightweight construction that will offer excellent thermal, fire, sound and earthquake protection.

Advancing our capacity to predict ‘Solar energetic particle’ (SEP) events is essential to the smooth running of human spaceflights beyond Earth. New space weather prediction tools developed under the HESPERIA project have reached a milestone, notably by enabling earlier prediction of ‘Ground level enhancement’ (GLE) events — which pose severe radiation hazards to astronauts and tend to disrupt airline communication.

Researchers have built an online resource to help governments and policymakers choose sustainable ways of using water for agriculture and sanitation. This kind of water resource management has gained importance in light of a growing world population and climate change.

There are many available options and technologies for water reuse and recycling (R&R), but these are often poorly or incorrectly implemented. A thoroughly researched decision-making tool will provide valuable assistance in choosing and implementing the right water management schemes.

The advent of satellite altimetry technology has revolutionised the study of sea level on both local and global scales. The challenge today is ensuring the accuracy of altimetry measurements, and this was undertaken by an EU-funded consortium.

Changes in the mean sea level allow scientists to understand the response of the ocean to continued global warming. This requires observation of the thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of major ice sheets.

The idea of driverless pods for transporting passengers that could be moved from trains to aeroplanes is gaining ground and could redefine air transport as we know it.

An EU group has devised new approaches to building design that provide full control of a building's anticipated response to earthquakes. These include methods for assessing various building types prior to damage and quantifying human factors, among other consequences.

Recent earthquakes have shown that while modern design approaches may reduce fatalities, damage to buildings may still financially cripple cities or countries. Hence, structural engineers need more effective methods to construct better buildings.