Scientific Highlights

The EIROforum institutions work in research fields as different as molecular biology and astronomy. Browse through this selection of research highlights of the various institutions and become familiar with those research fields.

ESA, March 2013
Astronauts underground and underwater
In small multicultural teams cut off from the rest of the world, astronauts have to perform physically and mentally demanding tasks.

EFDA, February 2013
Fusion videos and teacher resources
With the help of the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA), teachers can now bring fusion research right into your classroom.

ESO, January 2013
The star-spangled centre of the Milky Way
In October 2012, an international team of astronomers released a catalogue of more than 84 million stars in the centre of the Milky Way.

ILL, December 2012
Terbium: a new “Swiss Army knife” for cancer diagnosis and treatment
First in-vivo study of four clinically interesting terbium radioisotopes produced at the Paul Scherrer Institute, CERN’s ISOLDE facility, and the ILL demonstrates excellent tumour visualisation and therapeutic efficacy.

EMBL, November 2012
Filming life in the fast lane
Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have filmed the development of a fruit fly embryo from when it is about 2.5 hours old until it crawls away from the microscope as a larva, 20 hours later.

ESA, October 2012
Join the asteroid hunt
The European Space Agency has recently joined forces with the UK’s Faulkes Telescope Project to allow students to support the Agency’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme, watching over space hazards, including disruptive space weather and asteroids that pass close to Earth.

European XFEL, September 2012
The data challenge
The X-ray laser facility European XFEL will produce an incredible amount of data – all of which needs to be stored and made available for analysis.

EFDA; August 2012
Robots do the dirty work
The Joint European Torus (JET) is a doughnut-shaped vessel, 6 metres from side to side, in which fusion experiments ten times hotter than the Sun are carried out.

ILL, July 2012
DNA is as stretchy as nylon
Neutron scientists at ILL have measured how fast sound travels along DNA to determine its structural elasticity or ‘stiffness’, and account for the wide variety of values obtained from previous measurements.

ESRF, June 2012
Picasso meets Einstein – a contest for young people
In July 2011, four young artists visited ESRF during one week, and their creations are on display at an exhibition that began travelling across Europe in February 2012.

EFDA-Jet, May 2012
A snowball in hell
During the recommissioning of the Joint European Torus (JET) after an 18-month refurbishment period, scientists have injected the proverbial snowball into hell.

CERN, April 2012
Tantalising hints of Higgs
The hunt for the Higgs boson has entered its decisive phase. If they exist, Higgs bosons are short-lived and decay in many different ways.

ILL, March 2012
Slow cholesterol
Scientists using neutron scattering at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and at the NIST Center for Neutron Research in Gaithersburg, MS, USA, have found that the time cholesterol takes to move within and between cells is in the order of several hours, far slower than previously thought.

European XFEL, February 2012
The light at the end of the tunnel
Scientists examine one of the many tunnels that comprise the European XFEL facility 

ESA, January 2012
Herschel paints new story of galaxy evolution
The rate of star formation peaked in the early Universe, about 10 billion years ago, when some galaxies were forming stars ten or even a hundred times more frequently than our galaxy does today. Astronomers assumed that this had been true throughout history.

CERN, December 2011
Antimatter in the trap
Precision studies of antimatter - the elusive counterpart of matter - should help scientists to find out why all antimatter produced in the Big Bang has disappeared. The most promising new ‘anti-object’ is antihydrogen, the simplest element in a hypothetical anti-world.

EMBL, November 2011
Gut Reaction
One day, your doctor might ask you not just about your allergies and blood group, but also about your gut type.

CERN, October 2011
The 2011 Online Google Science Fair
The 2011 Online Google Science Fair CERN has teamed up with Google, Lego, National Geographic and Scientific American in a global science competition. More than 7500 international entries were received from students aged 13-18, who were competing for great prizes including internships and scholarships.

ILL, September 2011
Analysing gravity at the atomic scale
How does gravity work at the (sub)atomic scale? Do Newton’s laws apply, as they do for stars and planets, or do different laws apply at this scale?

ESRF, August 2011
I can sense your heartbeat
More than a quarter of all drugs work thanks to G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). These proteins are embedded in the cell membrane and bind other molecules, relaying the signals conveyed by them through the membrane.

ESA, July 2011
Walking on ‘Mars’
The first humans have landed on 'Mars'! On 14 February 2011, Italian Diego Urbina, Russian Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Chinese Wang Yue took their first steps on the simulated Martian surface.

EMBL, June 2011
The first annual schools lecture
On 10 December 2010, Dr Jan Korbel addressed 150 school students and their teachers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

EFDA-Jet, May 2011
Fusion energy for schools
Fusion holds many attractions for school students of all ages – the concepts of atoms, the Sun and clean energy resonate just as much with 5-year-olds as with pre-university students

CERN, April 2011
Young scientists in the making
With help from CERN, some 700 Swiss primary-school children from the Geneva area will try out the scientific method for themselves this year.

ESRF, March 2011
New X-ray insight into the human brain
Three-dimensional images of the human cerebellum in unprecedented detail can be obtained using a new X-ray imaging technique