The number of science graduates has been declining over most of Europe but there are no short-term solutions to reverse a trend that threatens the continent’s longer term prosperity and competitiveness. This established drain away from science and engineering taking place both at university level... [more]
Researchers are on the verge of unleashing the power of the element boron in a new generation of drugs and therapies, as decades of research begins to bear fruit. Boron has to date far been one of biology’s best kept secrets, but is now attracting fast growing research interest and investment from... [more]
Emerging cryopreservation techniques are increasing hope of restoring fertility for women after diseases such as ovarian cancer that lead to destruction of reproductive tissue. The same techniques can also be used to maintain stocks of farm animals, and protect against extinction of endangered... [more]
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... [more]
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,... [more]
ESF workshop tackles the mathematics of singularities [more]
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... [more]
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... [more]
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... [more]
Bacteria can be made to spin spider silk [more]