CORDIScovery – unearthing the hottest topics in EU science, research and innovation

From the domestic to the international, how can we anticipate, mitigate, and come to terms with violence? This episode of CORDIScovery looks at how victims of domestic violence can be better served. We ask what role violence plays in distracting communities from preparing for climate change. And we explore how the perception of historic violence plays into a culture’s notion of ‘self’.

Catharina Vogt’s project IMPRODOVA, set out to train responders to help the victims of domestic violence more effectively. The team developed tools that are now being used across the board by the police in France, resulting in more charges being pressed than before.

Halvard Buhaug, lead writer on a chapter of the IPPC's latest climate change report, ran the CLIMSEC project. He tells us that the relationship between climate change and violence might not be what we imagine.

Senior lecturer in political theory at the University of Edinburgh, and the co-director of the Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought, Mihaela Mihai’s research focuses on political memory, art and politics, theories of oppression and political emotions. Her GREYZONE project considered how the perception of historic violence plays into cultural identity.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!rnKqRQ

Let’s talk volcanoes! Are we close to being able to monitor and predict volcanic activity in real time? In this episode of CORDIScovery we take a look at what crystals in magma can tell us, hear what it takes to make lava flow in a lab, and find out about the well-named ‘extremophile’ bacteria that thrive in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

When not monitoring volcanic activity in the field, Stephan Kolzenburg, who took part in the DYNAVOLC project, is recreating lava flow in his lab to model and predict how lava and magma will behave during an eruption.

Jane Scarrow is also working on ways to predict eruptions and how they will evolve. Her VESPER project looked at processes in magmatic reservoirs beneath active volcanoes, and she has also been involved in the response to the Palma eruption.

What can bacteria that live in some of the world’s most inhospitable environments reveal about how methane is fixed in our atmosphere? Huub Op den Camp worked on the VOLCANO project, the findings of which could improve our climate models.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!qmNhC8

Finding missing children with real-time input and geofencing, helping a visually impaired person navigate a challenge that crops up in their daily lives, fake news: sorting the wheat from the chaff – this episode we are looking at the bright side of our use of technology.

Christian Erfurt launched his first healthcare start-up while still in high school. He is behind the BEMYEYES app that’s available in 150 countries and has almost 5 million volunteers supporting 313 000 users with visual impairment.

We have all seen missing children flyers. But how best to move from paper notices to digital tools? Christos Ntanos tells us how the ChildRescue project, a collective awareness platform, is being used to find and rescue missing children.

The internet is like rocket fuel when it comes to the spread of misinformation. Francesco Saverio Nucci’s project FANDANGO is using AI to turn the tables, helping news agencies identify what looks suspicious.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!Wk9QmR

The International Day of Persons with Disabilities is on the 3rd of December, so this episode we are considering disability from three perspectives: the perception of disability across the world and how awareness-raising helps, actions targeted at supporting disabled women, and the impact of the very first robotic exoskeleton developed for children.

Monika Baár is professor of Central European Studies at Leiden University. Her research focuses on disability, what is understood by the word in different cultural contexts and how to promote inclusion. 

She is joined by Cinzia Leone, whose research topics are disability, equality, gender, diversity and inclusion. Cinzia’s work has helped highlight ways organisations can make workplaces more welcoming for disabled women.

Elena Garcia Armada is a robotics engineer and research scientist at the Spanish National Research Council, where she applied biomimetics to the development of exoskeletons to help children affected by neurological diseases walk. She founded Marsi Bionics to take the idea out of the lab and into healthcare systems.

The antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, organisms are developing, and our bid to counter that with new ways of controlling them, is like an arms race – one we stand a better chance of winning if we use the antimicrobials that are still effective, more carefully. This special episode of CORDIScovery, timed to coincide with the WHO’s annual World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, invites three guests to share the work they are doing to win the race between the resistance microbes develop, and the ways we have to control them.

Fredrik Almqvist, co-founder of QureTech Bio AB, explains the work the QTB4AMR project is doing to change the chemical relationship between an antibiotic and its target bacteria. The weird and wonderful world of soil microbes and the ways in which they communicate could give rise to a new generation of biopesticides. Ana Bejarano explains how her RhizoTalk project will help.

How did farming become so systemically dependent on antibiotics and is it too late to turn that around? Nicolas Fortané, who coordinates the ROADMAP project, shares his findings.

The past is shadowy but the objects that mattered to the societies that came before us illuminate those who produced and used them. So, in this episode we are considering cloth, glass and stone, and what they reveal about innovation and cultural connections in the Middle Ages.

Nadine Schibille’s GlassRoutes project looked at the geopolitical, sociocultural and artistic dimensions of glass in the first millennium CE. She is joined by Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert whose project, MONTEX, examined the culture surrounding textile use and production in Egypt, from the Ptolemaic to the early Arab period.

Saša Čaval’s project, SOLMUS, considered the medieval burial stones in the Western Balkans, locally called stećci. Who were the people who carved these monoliths and how did their traditions evolve?

As with all interesting science, we have more questions than answers! For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!wx7X7h

From rabbits plucked out of hats to dark matter, how do we comprehend the inexplicable or the unobservable? What do particle physicists and a magician’s audience have in common? Do we enjoy being baffled? If so, why? What pushes us to seek to understand? Is objectivity so vital in scientific observation and is subjectivity really its negation – or is the relationship between the two more subtle?

As one of our guests puts it: “The energy that drives inquiry is not the pleasure we take in final explanations, but the energy and excitement of curiosity itself.”

From the importance of the communities that foster scientific discoveries to whether objectivity is all it’s cracked up to be, we hear from Jason Leddington, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, whose book on the philosophy of magic and other arts of impossibility is under contract with MIT Press.

He’s joined by Michela Massimi. Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh, and Jan Sprenger, a professor at the Centre for Logic, Language and Cognition at the University of Turin. Michela is the author of Perspectival Realism which will come out in January 2022, published by Oxford University Press, and Jan’s area of interest is the relationship between scientific inference, public trust and the role of objectivity.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!ThwRg3

What can distant planets and their satellite moons tell us about the origins of life on Earth? Is there enough water on the moon to support longer, manned missions? Are there lunar sources of oxygen that could make the moon a gateway to our Solar system?

And beyond the moon: can we look to Titan to better understand our own origins? And how can we build on what we know about the Earth’s geology to better understand Mars, and other planets?

Jeremi Gancet is responsible for the Technologies, Applications and Research Division at Space Applications Services in Belgium. His project is designing a new, lunar rover and sensors – what are they hoping to find? Nathalie Carrasco, professor in planetary science at the University of Paris-Saclay, is mimicking the atmosphere of Titan to trace the origins of life on Earth, what has her work revealed? And Stephanie Werner, professor of geophysics and planetary science at the University of Oslo, has almost completed a database of the composition of rocks on Earth which will be used to profile rocks on other planets, Was Mars ever habitable? Its geology can provide a clue.

For more info on the projects featured: visit: https://europa.eu/!nMNgnd

Virtual reality –  just another bone of contention between screen-addicted adolescents and their frazzled parents? Or can the inherent characteristics of VR, communicating at a distance but in a space that feels intimate, be harnessed to really revolutionise the way we interact?

Can avatars, digital representations of ourselves, foster empathy or are they yet another medium providing a cloak of anonymity that can be abused? And are deep fakes about to go 3D?

Dr Salvador Alvidrez, Marie Curie Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast is interested in the socio-psychological effects of communication technologies. He is looking at VR and its role in tackling prejudice. Can we use VR to walk around in someone else’s shoes? Fancy a digital twin? Dr Verónica Orvalho’s company Didmo has patented technology to generate digital humans. Her inventions have been used by Microsoft, Universal and Sony and others. But how can the general public make the most of VR? I2CAT is making the tech cheaper and more immersive. Sergi Ferandez explains how.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!YtfHQf

In many areas the pandemic has reduced our impact on the natural environment, but what happens when we emerge from the restrictions and fire up our economies again? Will we also be firing up our production of pollution?

From oil spills that threaten our seas, to the stinks that ruin our day, pollution touches us at all levels.

How can citizen scientists help? What can we do to keep the air around us free of viruses and particulate pollution? Can we really make the polluter pay for oil and waste-water spills in our seas and oceans? Our guests today are all leading researchers who have been using support from the EU to get some answers.

Rosa Arias is a chemical engineer with a background in odour pollution. Her particular focus is on citizen science and science communication, and how that supports responsible research and innovation. Rosa is involved in D-Noses project that gives people the tools they need to record data from one of the most sensitive sensors we have, our noses!

Rinsing the air around us to extract viruses and pollution is something Fabio Galatioto has been working on. ISCLEANAIR has come up with disruptive technology to shake up our approach to air purifiers at home, work and on our streets.

Drones come into their own when it comes to spotting oil spills and unmanned vehicles can take the samples that can point the finger at the polluter quickly and safely. Ioannis Dontas, a physicist whose focus is on material and surface sciences, tells us more about how the IMRESSIVE project is using of earth observation data to protect the environment.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!7QD9yj