We are what we eat. However, little is known on how a specific dietary regime can impact the life of the elderly . Now, researchers from an EU funded project called NU-AGE are investigating the effects of the Mediterranean diet on older people.

Several hundred thousands of Europeans are affected by food borne diseases every year . Only a shift in perception of how food safety should be achieved could help avoid these illnesses.

Now European researchers of the projects NanoBioTact and NanoBioTouch delve deep into the mysteries of touch and have developed the first sensitive artificial finger .

An artificial finger could benefit patients with a missing finger in many ways. The most obvious, would be to add sensory feedback to their prosthesis . In addition, remote surgery could also benefit from a well-functioning artificial finger.

Gold nanoparticles ( AuNPs ) present the many advantages of displaying relative biocompatibility, high light absorption and strong optical scattering properties. They are therefore good candidates to be used as probes for cancer imaging .

Artificial noses have, until now, been used to detect diseases such as urinary tract infection, Helicobacter pylori, tuberculosis, ear, nose and throat conditions and even lung cancer.

Chances of survival of prostate cancer depend strongly on the stage at which the disease is diagnosed. Now scientists have developed new methods relying on an electronic nose and optoacoustics to improve the diagnosis techniques and avoid fatal treatment delays.

Spinal cord repair focuses on finding ways to make axons regrow and connect properly, replace damaged neurons, protect surviving neurons from further injury and retrain neural circuits to repair body functions.

Researchers are trying to find out more about the relationship between different NPs’ shapes, sizes and surface chemistries and how they behave in the human body.

During the European-funded RESCUE project they also proved that, by cultivating these cells in vitro, they can give not just neuron themselves, but also vitally important glial cells such as oligodendrocytes and astrocytes, which provide nourishment and help to control neuronal activity.

Cancer – one of the most widespread diseases of the industrialised West. Lung cancer is the most common among these. It is caused by smoking, air pollution and genetic predisposition – killing 240.

Professor Markus Affolter is in charge of a zebra fish embryo study researching angiogenesis, which means the recruitment of new blood vessels as a normal process in growth and development, but also as an essential component of tumours’ metastatic pathway.

Spinal cord injuries cause myelopathy or damage to white matter or myelinated fiber tracts that carry signals to and from the brain. It also damages gray matter in the central part of the spine, causing segmental losses of interneurons and motorneurons.

Reconstructing the neuronal circuitry of a damaged spine looks like a much closer goal now.

Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN) is a project that has gathered together Europe's leading experts in computer-integrated eye tracking. The benefit of their work goes to all citizens with physical motor impairments.

Hear My Voice, Read My Lips Andreas Dahl has been hard of hearing since early childhood. He is not deaf, but he needs to look at the person he is talking to, to be able to lip-read and understand the conversation.

If aliens were to examine a human, they would think we were just slavish organisms designed to feed microbes and carry them around. Our bodies contain ten times more bacteria than cells , and there are an estimated 3.