One of the great ongoing challenges of astrophysics, to find out how stars evolve and die, is to be tackled in an ambitious European research programme. This will involve studying in the laboratory over 25 critical nuclear reactions using low-energy stable beams of ions, in order to understand... [more]
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... [more]
Jeroen Cornelissen of the Institute for Molecules and Materials at the Radboud University in the Netherlands has received €1million from EURYI (European Young Investigator Awards). The award will allow Cornelissen (35), an assistant professor at Radboud and a member of the scientific board of a... [more]
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has not only demonstrated a remarkable commitment to the dedication of the worldwide experts’ effort into climate change research it has also highlighted the spirit of collaboration that has been avidly... [more]
There is more to a grain of dust than meets the eye, at least for astronomers as they attempt to probe deeper into distant galaxies. Until now dust has been a nuisance because it has obscured galaxies, and the stars within them, by absorbing the radiation they emit. But more recently dust has... [more]
York University's John Goodby is Project Leader of the European Science Foundation (ESF) SONS 2 programme LC-NANOP, but it was perhaps only by chance that he and his colleagues entered into a unique Europe-wide collaboration on fundamental science. Goodby's colleague Isabel Saez discovered the ESF... [more]
SONS 2 scientist Dr Saif Haque of Imperial College London, is to receive the Royal Society of Chemistry's Edward Harrison Memorial Prize for his research on developing solar cells based on self-organising organic materials systems. Haque first became involved with the ESF through its SONS 2... [more]
The way things move has fascinated physicists from Newton to Einstein. But until now few physicists appreciated how widely the laws of movement apply. From understanding how cell membranes let in proteins to how elementary particles behave at the speed of light, scientists are realising... [more]
European supercomputing made a great leapt forward today after more than a dozen countries signed a pact to create a pan-European infrastructure for high performance computing. These countries which include Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain,... [more]
Robust statistical analysis methods capable of dealing with large complex data sets are required more than ever before in almost all branches of science. The European Science Foundation’s three-year SACD network, which was completed in December 2006, developed new methods for extracting key... [more]