Retrofitting existing buildings with adequate cutting-edge technologies is thought to guarantees spectacular energy savings, by about 50%. The objective of the EU funded project BRICKER is precisely to demonstrate such possibility.

The Cuarto de Marzo district of Valladolid, Spain , is an area spreading over 21,000 square metres with 166 residences. It is now the focus of a retrofitting project , called  R2CITIES , funded by the EU.

African swine fever , or ASF, is a viral disease that kills almost every pig it infects and is likened to Ebola . It gained a foothold in Georgia in 2007, when contaminated pig meat landed from a ship from South-East Africa and was fed to local pigs.

Flash floods in Central Europe in 2002 damaged hundreds of roads, caused electricity failures, contaminated clean water and cost an estimated €150 billion in damage .

One of the  biggest challenges of retrofitting projects  is to make them attractive to residents. Now, one of them, the EU-funded project R2CITIES,  is analysing the initial first feedback received from residents  of the  Cuatro de Marzo  district.

To tackle climate change, new buildings are required to consume as little energy as possible . That’s because, in Europe, buildings are responsible for about 40% of our energy consumption.

In Europe, the population is ageing . In 2010, about 17% of the population were 65 or older. This number is projected to increase to 30% of the population by 2060. New services are already available to meet their needs.

There are two main types of bread , wholemeal, or brown, and white. But most people in Europe prefer white bread. That is a problem because white bread contains very little fibres.

Cuatro de Marzo is a district in the southern part of the Spanish city of Valladolid. It is a dense residential area with 190 privately-owned dwellings, developed in 1955.

The process was developed by the Water Research Institute (WRI) of the Italian National Research Council and tested and scaled-up as part the EU-funded Innowatech project We know that biological processes offer the cheapest way to treat industrial wastewater.

Going from modern energy efficient houses to historic buildings must have been a big leap for you.

Window refurbishments stand out as a viable approach to dramatically reduce energy loss. As their first case of study, the project’s researchers chose to upgrade the windows of the ‘Waaghaus’ (Public Weighing House), a building located in Bolzano, Italy, that is over seven-century-old.

These are key insights from two EC funded initiatives, ProNano and Nanocom , which are joining their forces to tackle the issue of barriers to the commercialisation of European nanotechnologies .

Rebuilding bones out of wood, or cartilage out of algae and chitosan is the most spectacular aspect of this particular bioinspiration field.

You have just turned 89. What is the biggest satisfaction you have had until now? I don’t know what to say since I have had so many satisfactions with my job.

Dr. Mario Conte from the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, is Coordinator of the EU research project ILHYPOS.

In the 21st century several countries have suffered great losses after terrorist attacks. Although the risk of bioterrorist attacks or accidental contamination of our water supply network is low, the consequences could be fatal.

The technology uses several nano-biological sensors to monitor the presence of several bioterrorism agents in drinking water.

The search for a new clean energy increases worldwide as the sources of natural energy diminish. The transport sector is especially vulnerable, by the decline in oil reserves, at the time when number of cars on our roads steadily increases.

The research team has redesigned the batteries which are now also able to store energy during braking and releasing it quickly during acceleration.