Ερευνητικά Αποτελέσματα Ξένων Ερευνητών - Europedirect

All too often, problems starting in early childhood lead to lifelong inequalities in health and well-being. EU funding supported research on developmental disorders in a large metropolitan borough, home to some of the United Kingdom’s most deprived areas.

An EU team studied tomato internal anatomy and response to crushing forces at the cellular level. Researchers simulated and evaluated quantitatively the damaging effects of such forces in order to allow improvements in harvesting and transport.

Tomatoes are soft, fragile fruits that can suffer considerable damage e.g. bruising in harvesting and transport.

Further details: Tomatoes and crushing forces

To support the roll-out of hydrogen transport in Europe, an EU initiative expanded the existing European network of hydrogen demonstration sites into Denmark and the United Kingdom. They represent two of the most promising early markets for hydrogen and fuel cells.

To put the two cities at the forefront of efforts to establish ultra-low carbon hydrogen transport infrastructure in Europe, the EU-funded HYTEC (Hydrogen transport in European cities) project established hydrogen passenger vehicle deployment centres in Copenhagen and London.

Unlike bacteria, unicellular archaea have been much less investigated. Using a genomics approach, European researchers characterised new lineages contributing to the archaeal phylogenetic diversity.

Archaea constitute one of the three major domains of life in addition to Bacteria and Eukarya. Pioneering studies have shown that archaea are ecologically important and have played a major role in the origin of eukaryotes.

An EU-funded study has developed an interdisciplinary approach to explain why gender equality policies are so hard to implement well.

An EU team investigated public attitudes towards mental health and autonomy. Work identified perception of ‘good’ mental illness, where patients deserve recovery, and ‘bad’, where patients fail to meet social expectations.

So-called liberal-individualistic (LI) societies generally emphasise the individual over the group. In such societies, autonomy is required and considered evidence of mental health.

Single cell movement as seen in bacteria and spermatozoa has striking similarities with microswimmers that display complex collective behaviour. EU-funded researchers developed and investigated artificial microswimmers to elucidate the underlying dynamics.

In biological systems, simple individual units commonly form complex structures via dynamic assembly and collective behaviour. Bacteria and biofilm formation or the pairing of DNA strands are classic examples.

Advanced ceramics enhance our lives by their usefulness and are a key component in the development of innovative new products, especially in the fields of electronics, telecommunications, transportation, medicine and space exploration. An EU-funded project boosted research in nanoceramics synthesis and modelling to fully unlock their potential.

Researchers have created a set of guidelines to assist in a social reintegration framework for children born of war in African countries and their ex-combat mothers.

Mainstream politics in most countries sees so-called human trafficking as a migration problem, neglecting the political and economic structures that give rise to and perpetuate exploitative work and mobility. This study shows how policy-makers are consistently mistaking complex realities for simplistic stereotypes.

Networked IT-based approaches can help improve crisis management and recovery by facilitating coordination and cooperation between people struck by crises, responders and volunteers across the world.

Even though safety, security and resilience are considered in the planning and design phase of large building complexes, natural and man-made disasters still take a big toll. An EU initiative sought to better address extreme events in such project stages.

Experts in animal behaviour have studied how birds ‘know’ how to build a nest.

Nest building is a sophisticated behaviour comparable to tool use as it involves selecting, shaping and manipulating material for a specific purpose. Although nearly all bird species build nests, very little is known about how they go about the process of selecting material and building the structure itself.

High-tech aircraft machine technology such as motors and generators are all the rage. A high-strength composite sleeve prototype developed with EU funding can offer unique advantages to machine performance.

Permanent magnet machines have lately attracted a great deal of attention due to their outstanding efficiency, high power density, small size and low weight. However, there is still much room for improvement regarding their performance, and further increasing rotational speed can offer significant reduction in motor size.

Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) is the only numerical dating method that can date Early Pleistocene fossil teeth collected from sites of early hominid occupation in the Mediterranean area. Recent studies have further highlighted the limitations of current techniques.

An EU-funded project developed an alternative coating technology to the commonly used titanium dioxide that imparts whiteness, brightness and opacity to decorative wall panels and ceiling paints.

Human brains easily perform sophisticated tasks such as problem solving. Understanding how the brain carries out complex tasks would allow scientists and engineers to create intelligent devices that would free up human capacity from low-level mechanistic work.

The EU-funded EMCOREP (Emergence of complex internal representations in humans) project investigated the behavioural and computational foundations of human sensory learning in adults and children. They used an integrated interdisciplinary approach based on behavioural studies, computational analyses and theoretical work.

Water treatment works can be subject to contamination by radioactivity, be it an accident or a deliberate malicious act. An EU-funded initiative addressed this threat by developing a system that continuously monitors water supply.

Current national legislation on tap water in European countries requires laboratory tests for radioactivity. However, this can take a full day, making the process unsuitable for monitoring contamination levels, especially in emergency situations.

An EU-funded consortium, driven by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has developed a supply chain for manufacturing dense blanks of technical ceramics.

For myriad industrial applications, where most materials fail, technical ceramics can be used thanks to their hardness, thermal stability, chemical and wear resistance. However, these superior properties also make it difficult to machine ceramics into a finished shape.

EU-funded scientists developed analytical and computational tools to investigate a new class of piezoelectric energy harvesting devices for renewable energy resources.