May 25, 2023
An ENEA-Cnr study published in the international journal Water described a part of the microplastics' journey "from water to the plate", demonstrating how these contaminants are transferred from fresh water to the roots of aquatic plants and, consequently, to the crustaceans that feed on it, damaging their genetic heritage and, in the long term, that of the entire ecosystem.
May 25, 2023
The first patented prototype of a Compact Neutron Generator (CNG) for the treatment of advanced stage solid tumors with intraoperative neutron radiotherapy (nIORT) was installed at the ENEA Research Center in Brasimone (Bologna). Lightweight and self-shielded, it can be and installed on a mobile robotic arm and can generate a powerful radiation field, stronger than traditional forms of radiotherapy like X-rays, electrons or protons, and can be delivered directly to the exposed tumor during surgery.
May 25, 2023
Increasing biomethane production[1] (+66%), reducing production costs (-44%), avoiding greenhouse gases emission (-113 million tons of CO2 equivalent) and creating new jobs (approximately 300,000) in Europe by 2030 are the objectives of the new 10 million euro European Biomethaverse project, which comprises 22 partners from 9 EU countries, including ENEA, ISINNOVA (coordinator), Politecnico di Milano, CAP Group, SIAD and The Italian Composting and Biogas Association in Italy.
May 25, 2023
Using artificial intelligence to prevent outages in data centers and optimize performance is one of the goals of the ENEA ICT research team, which has tested innovative techniques on its CRESCO6 supercomputer. “We started by collecting data on energy, thermal and computational consumption of the ENEA HPC data center to identify, through advanced artificial intelligence tools, work overloads, waste, malfunctions or faults in the cooling system. Frequent overheating and an ineffective cooling system could lead to hardware degradation, reduced server reliability and expensive energy consumption” explained Marta Chinnici, a mathematician with a doctorate in computer science at the ENEA Infrastructures for Scientific and High-performance Computing Laboratory.
May 25, 2023
Providing a common and shared vision of the 'circular city' to accelerate the ecological and energy transition are the objectives of the two ENEA projects ES-PA and RECiProCO contained in the report of the Circular Cities Declaration (CCD), the protocol launched by the global network ICLEI Europe, "Local administrations for sustainability", which includes so far over 70 cities in 22 European countries.
May 25, 2023
Despite the many environmental alarms scientists are sounding, the rate of circularity in the world economy is declining, going from 9.1% to 7.2% in five years. In other words, the Planet recycles and reuses less. Italy -among the top five EU economies- remains the most circular country in Europe, although in the last five years it has lost positions and other states are accelerating: we cannot rest on our laurels, more must be done to maintain our leadership.