Life ReNatural, the project with European funding, whose main objective is the rehabilitation of buildings with sustainable materials. 75 % of the European Union’s building stock is energy inefficient. That is, every day, the buildings in which we live, work and spend most of the time, waste a lot of energy. Given the current context, […]
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Virtual companions that look and behave like humans
An EU-funded project unveiled AI-powered digital beings that offer the best of visual quality and emotional conversation: they show true sentience, perception and feelings. People increasingly rely on software agents in their lives, from searching for information to chatting with a bot. These goal-oriented computer programmes are spreading wide across many fields to assist, take […]
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Europe boosts the production of water from the air from Cordoba
GENAQ, a young company that has developed a technology capable of obtaining pure water from the air, autonomously, economically, without installation and respectful of the environment. Water is a right, not a privilege. However, this is not the reality that lives much of humanity. One in four people worldwide still lacks access to safe drinking […]
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Why is ice slippery?
In freezing weather, ice causes many a traveller to come unstuck. But as experimental physicist Robin Ras explains, getting to grips with what makes ice so slippery isn’t easy. Whether you’re gliding serenely across an ice rink, or awkwardly down a footpath, the frictionless surface offered by ice can often be surprising. What makes it […]
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How does self-healing concrete work?
EU policies are increasingly geared towards a more circular economy, driven by more sustainable materials, technologies, practices and behaviour. Efforts to decrease needless waste often cite the ‘five Rs’ – refuse, reduce, reuse (or repair), repurpose and recycle – as a means to achieve this. Currently, fixing damage or deterioration to physical infrastructure, such as […]
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Cleaning up our oceans with smart robots
EU-backed researchers are deploying a fleet of autonomous robots to tackle litter on the ocean surface and floor. The EU-funded SeaClear project’s successful development of an autonomous robotic system that can find and remove litter from the ocean floor has led to further European funding under a second project, SeaClear2.0. Launched in January 2023, SeaClear2.0 […]
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Reducing Europe’s reliance on rare earths
A new approach to high-performance magnet manufacturing could make Europe less dependent on rare earth elements as it transitions towards a zero-carbon economy. Scientists supported by the EU-funded ExtendGlass project may have a found a new way to make the high-performance magnets we need for our low-carbon technologies. Described in a study published in the […]
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What can we expect from science in 2023?
From exciting space missions to the place where nuclear waste goes to die, these will be some of Europe’s most fascinating science stories of 2023. The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch the Euclid space telescope to explore the universe’s evolution. It will create a 3D map of the universe as it orbits the […]
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Meet the 2022 Nobel Prize Laureates
Each year, the Nobel Prizes are presented by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Assembly and the Nobel Committee. These renowned awards recognize and reward excellence in disciplines as varied and important as physics, literature, economics, chemistry, psychology, medicine and the well-known Nobel Peace Prize. In the history of the […]
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