Tag: ESF

Food for Thought: delivering the promise of food processing

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Humans have transformed raw ingredients into food since prehistoric times. But scientists are still looking for new ways to make food taste better and survive longer. Presenting their findings at a recent European Science Foundation (ESF) and European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST) conference, scientists show how new food technologies are changing European diets.

The industrial revolution brought the advent of modern food processing technology. Whether you credit the Frenchman Nicholas Appert in 1809, or British born Peter Durand in 1810, the invention of the tin can has revolutionised the way people eat. The motivation behind its invention was simple – make food last long. Two hundred years on, food scientists are still trying to improve the shelf life of food.

:: Read more at European Science Foundation ::

Far flung food: Europe’s distant diets

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Across the European Union, food is travelling more, and not always in ways that make sense. Consider the chocolate covered waffle: Last year, Britain both imported 14,000 tonnes, and exported 15,000 tonnes. And it is not just waffles that are travelling further, as Europeans are eating – and importing – more food from outside the EU than ever before.

At a recent conference, funded by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST), scientists and policy makers gathered to consider the problems that face future European food supplies. One important area of research looks at where food comes from, and how that food gets from the field to the fork.

:: Read more at European Science Foundation ::

Watching what we eat: food systems in Europe

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Food has never been more of a global commodity than it is today. But there is an urgent need to understand the problems that face future European food supplies within this global market. And so scientists and policy makers gathered in Budapest last week to push for a more holistic approach to the study of what Europeans eat.

The conference, supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research (COST), looked at where food comes from, the ways in which it is processed, packaged and distributed, and how it is sold and eventually eaten.

:: Read more at European Science Foundation ::

All matter great and small

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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 the common features – and essential differences – in the movement of matter of all shapes and sizes.

At the recent CCP2007 conference supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF), researchers describe how molecules, particles and subatomic particles move and interact with each other. Using their expertise at macroscopic scales they have developed models that explain the movement of matter at the microscopic level. “Well known equations that explain the flow of water or the movement of air over an airplane’s wing can also be used to explain the way molecules move in our bodies or how protons collide at great speeds”, says Professor Raymond Kapral, a chemical physicist at the University of Toronto in Canada.

:: Read more at European Science Foundation ::

Immune systems are anything but simple

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A hundred years since Russian microbiologist Elie Metschnikow first discovered the invertebrate immune system, scientists are only just beginning to understand its complexity. Presenting their findings at a recent European Science Foundation (ESF) conference, scientists showed that invertebrates have evolved elaborate ways to fight disease.

:: Read more at European Science Foundation ::