Research & Innovation eBooks

The economic crisis forced healthcare budgets to be reduced throughout Europe, putting pressure on officials trying to tackle major health challenges. With an ever growing population, addressing these challenges has become a key priority. Health and social care is a key policy throughout Europe, and whether it be the...

Non-chemical cell communication (NCCC) refers to cellular communication that is not based on chemical signals (such as e.g. neuro-transmitters, hormones, or kairomones) but on physical signals like electric current, electrostatic fields, and acoustic or electromagnetic waves. Why is there so little known about NCCC in life sciences? Has it to...

Physicians have long been aware of the subtle differences between patients and their responses to medications. The recognition that a part of this variation is inherited, and therefore predictable, created the field of pharmacogenetics several years ago. Pharmacogenetics studies the influence of genetic variation on drug response. Genetic variation is...

Healthcare providers are challenged daily to rapidly diagnose and treat life threatening respiratory illness. Ultrasound is a non-invasive, rapid bedside tool that enables providers to quickly identify and treat undifferentiated shortness of breath. The BRIPPED project is a rapid, acute approach to using ultrasound in the evaluation of shortness...

Cancer is the second cause of death in developed countries, and its incidence is steadily on the rose. In general, since 1930, cancer death rates have increased with age for both males and females, and the age-specific occurrence for cancer was similar for both genders. Furthermore, the 5-year mortality...

Founded in 1998, Skaginn are already a fishing industry leader in Iceland when it comes to efficient pelagic processing, freezing and chilling solutions.  Skaginn’s growing reputation for its adaptability to tailor make solutions to individual assignments if needed, is fast establishing the company as a key player in a...

The term ‘fields of the cell’ refers to the fact that electrodynamic fields surround every cell and cellular organelle. It includes fields belonging to all charged cell components, i.e ions and polar molecules, as well as those components generated by cell chemistry. This further refers to the modal of...

Because of their size, making them comparable to a DNA molecule or a protein, one hundred to one thousand times smaller than a cell, the nanoparticles have different physical properties from those of common objects. Evolving to the same scale as the biological mechanisms of the body, they are...

From stem cell biology to tissue mending In the last 25 years, tremendous advances have been made in the identification and generation of stem cells (SC) from diverse organisms, generating a wealth of knowledge in various fields from embryology to development. SC not only have the ability to differentiate into...

Imagine that the sounds you hear become progressively attenuated every day and eventually you are cut off from music, laughter, and any other communication you enjoyed throughout your life. Words you hear may become ambiguous (for example, ‘someday’ and ‘Sunday’ may sound alike) and this word confusion confounds further...

Growth promoters can be classified into four groups; those that increase growth and also increase feed consumption, those that increase growth without altering feed consumption, those that do not alter growth but decrease feed consumption (generally referred to as the feed consumption ratio; FCR=kg feed consumed/kg body weight), and...

Dr James F Harbertson elucidates the growing field of oenology and explains how collaboration with industry can help to highlight and solve the problems associated with the production of wine.

The Laboratory of RNA Biology and Biotechnology at the Centre for Integrative Biology (CIBIO) of the University of Trento, Italy, is focusing on RNA to develop better diagnostic tools and therapeutics for a range of genetic diseases and cancers. The research projects developed in the laboratory also aim at...

All available data shows that, despite a better understanding of the biology of tumour cells, the treatment of most cancers has not significantly changed for the past three decades. For the main types of cancer, survival rates for people diagnosed when their tumours were in an advanced stage has changed...

The production of cosmogenic radionuclides on Earth result from nuclear reactions initiated by primary and secondary energetic cosmic ray particles which, during their passage through the atmosphere and into the first few meters of the Earth’s crust, interact with various atoms of atmospheric gases and surface rocks, respectively, as...

A government agency under the auspices of the Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) is Norway’s main institution for research, environmental monitoring and topographic and geological mapping in Norwegian polar regions. The Institute also advises Norwegian authorities on matters concerning polar environmental management and runs...

Health expenditure has reached above 10% of the gross domestic product in most Western countries with an upward trend indicating that 20% may already be reached in the present decade, unless something drastic can turn the tide (1). Prevention is the vision, but many such efforts remain to translate...

In the last 30 years, there has been an unprecedented increase in pest and pathogen invasions into Europe, impacting on agriculture, horticulture and forestry. Numerous tree pests and diseases are spreading through the continent, with damaging organisms introduced from elsewhere in the world. Most of these species have been...

Mike Cawthorne, Director of the Institute of Translational Medicine at the University of Buckingham, on the need for better and more effective treatments for diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s. The most recent estimate of the world diabetes population published by the International Diabetes Federation is 381 million – up by...

“Central nervous system diseases are on their way to become as abandoned as infectious diseases, in spite of the enormous need for new treatments to reduce the suffering and the huge societal costs handling these diseases.” Appropriate drug delivery to the brain is one of the main hurdles for treating...