Pork factories now rely on a new kit to examine suspect meat . The technique was developed in an EU funded project called Biotracer . It relies on maths algorithms to pinpoint the most likely origin of harmful bacteria on meat , such as salmonella.

Seaweeds are a traditional accompaniment to many Asian dishes. They have also become increasingly popular across the world as an exotic delicacy.

Following the 2006 ban on sturgeon fishing, the Romanian town of Sfantu Gheorghe, located at the mouth of the Danube river, turned to other income source to replace its fishing based economy.

We can blame all sorts of things on the weather. But a stomach bug?  It seems unlikely. Yet, scientists say greater quantities of rainfall and bigger storms will lead to more stomach upsets in parts of Europe.

Only about 50% of every fish sold as fillet is actually eaten.  Often, fish heads, viscera, skin and bones are discarded.

The building sector has become much greener. To get such credentials it has adopted methods borrowed from other industries, such as life cycle analysis ( LCA ), which looks at the environmental impact of a building at every stage from its creation to its decommissioning.

Scientists keep producing increasingly complex modelling tools to evaluate urgently needed mitigating strategies of our carbon footprint .  However, it is policy makers who have to decide on measures to curb our CO2 emissions.

A delicious tomato and bell pepper soup, a green bean and potato salad and a refreshing strawberry, kiwi and banana smoothy.

The EU’s driest region is Murcia in Spain. But it is also an area of intensive agriculture for such arid land.

In Europe more than 12 million tonnes of mixed plastic waste are dumped on landfills every year, according to a report from NUMIX scientists. The recycling of plastic into usable products has proven difficult .

Eco-symbiosis is en vogue. Indeed, this approach consists in using waste from one industry as raw material for another. It appears like an ideal solution for one of the most challenging type of pollution: oil spills .

Martin McKee recently expressed his views at the 2012 European Health Forum in Bad Gastein, Austria. Can we measure the impact of austerity on people’s health? The human cost of austerity has been largely invisible because of lack of data.

Imagine that a hundred years ago it was possible to take the ‘digital fingerprint’ of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and store it in an international database.

Custom officers are not the only ones with a keen interest in luggage content. Scientists too want to know what travellers are bringing into European airports.

Making planning decisions about cities today means keeping an eye on climate change predictions.  More flash floods are expected, for example.

Staying healthy requires constantly stimulating the immune system. Ingesting non-digestible fibres such as polysaccharides is thought to help. Yet companies including such ingredients in their food products cannot claim that they boost the immune system.

Caring about a sound environment, Stephen Stansfeld has been studying the effect of noise pollution on people’s health and their remedy.

Now European researchers of the projects NanoBioTact and NanoBioTouch delve deep into the mysteries of touch and have developed the first sensitive artificial finger .

An artificial finger could benefit patients with a missing finger in many ways. The most obvious, would be to add sensory feedback to their prosthesis . In addition, remote surgery could also benefit from a well-functioning artificial finger.

“The key factors we are interested in are food choice and physical activity ,” Wolfgang Ahrens, an epidemiologist from the University of Bremen , Germany tells youris.com.