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.

Opponents to wind turbines often claim that the noise and vibrations from the turbines affect their health , leading to sleep disturbance, headaches and a host of other problems.

In January 2005, a severe storm swept across Northern Europe, from Ireland to Russia. More than 500,000 homes were left without power, with Denmark and Southern Sweden being particularly hard-hit.

About 75% of the new diseases that have affected humans over the past 10 years have developed from animals or products of animal origin.

Traditionally our electricity grids were designed to move power from large nuclear and fossil fuel power plants to consumers, but renewable energy will see changes to allow smaller power generation from wind and solar to be hooked up to the grid.

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 .

The marine aquaculture sector has grown continuously over the past years, according to the FAO’s world review of fisheries and aquaculture.

Every year nearly 50.000 dialysis patients worldwide receive a kidney transplant, but depending on the type of donor between 20 to 60% of the implanted kidneys are not working .

Aspiring new drugs face long and stringent tests on safety and effectiveness before making it to market. And rightly so. But giving drugs special designations that bring with them the right incentives can help bring them to patient.

We all get vitamin D in two ways – from our diet and from exposure to the sun.  A lack of this vitamin puts young children at risk of bone diseases like rickets and older children and adults at risk of bone softening .

Smoking is the largest single cause of preventable premature death and disease , accounting for some 650,000 premature deaths each year in the European Union, according to official EU statistics.

Food scare make authorities uneasy. In previous cases, national food safety agencies have not always known how to react , making the public wary. For example, in 2011, the German health authorities incorrectly linked the deadly E.

Sepsis, commonly known as blood poisoning, is a bacterial infection of the blood. It is dangerous for adults. And it is often mortal for young children, if left untreated.

After personalised medicine, we are entering the era of personalised nutrition. But this approach requires testing before being applicable. This is what a new EU-funded research project, called food4me , is attempting to do.

Food’s microstructure can explain many of its characteristics—be it cake’s sponginess, bread’s crispness, cracker’s crunchiness or fruits’ inner gas and water transport system and even colour.

Grass could be used to produce biofuels. The advantage of using grass crops is that they can be grown in marginal lands that would otherwise not be used .

What happens to research findings once the researchers have gone away? A web site run from the University of Stuttgart in Germany offers scientists an opportunity to bring their own data from completed research project on environmental and health risks and contribute to an Integrated Environmental Health Impact Assessment System, dubbed IEHIAS .

The barely explored marine environment has already thrown-up a vast treasure-trove of high-value biomolecules .

Might it be possible to make better plants more quickly than we do today? And without the public objection that accompanies genetic manipulation? Climate change means that this is now an urgent question.

Seaweeds are not only tasty, but they are a source of nutrients that could be beneficial for health and wellbeing. And like terrestrial plants, seaweeds also contain significant portions of fibre that reach the colon undigested.