The European Commission has recently decided the continuation of the European Nanotechnology Research Infrastructure NFFA-Europe (2015-2021) by the NFFA-Europe Pilot (NEP, 2021-2025), with a budget of 15M€. NEP constitutes an expanded network of European Nanotechnology research facilities from 10 countries, which have a high impact on the way Nanoscience is promoted in Europe. The Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) of FORTH is a founding member of NFFA and acts as the leader of the joint research activities of the consortium.

The research is carried out by the Remote Sensing Laboratory of FORTH operating the Flux Towers and processing the valuable data extracted.

Until now, Europe has had two major collaborative networks for ground-based astronomy, one in the optical domain (OPTICON) and the other in the radio-wave domain (RadioNet). These two networks, having successfully served their respective communities over the past twenty years, now come together to form Europe’s largest ground-based astronomy collaborative network. In Greece the network includes the Institute of Astrophysics FORTH and the National Observatory of Athens. During the ORP kick-off meeting on Tuesday 23 March 2021, the Director of the Institute of Astrophysics, Prof. Vassilis Charmandaris, was unanimously elected as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the network, having served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the OPTICON network for the past 2 years. The project is coordinated by CNRS (France), together with the University of Cambridge (UK) and the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) (Germany) and it involves astronomers from 15 European countries, Australia and South Africa, amounting to 37 institutions.

LETHE (λήθη) – A personalized prediction and intervention model for early detection and reduction of risk factors causing dementia, based on AI and distributed Machine Learning

A recent tide observed at the beaches of Crete has reasonably aroused public interest or concern, for upcoming consequences. But was it just a local phenomenon? Which areas were most affected? How does it evolve over time?

Honey bees pollinate the majority of crops, but their survival is under threat and the parasitic mite Varroa destructor may be a major cause of honey bee decline. Beekeepers use selective chemical acaricides with low bee toxicity to control Varroa infestation, a powerful “pro-drug” approach relying on species-specific bioactivation, to attain this selective toxicity and protect bees.

Research by the teams of Prof. Athanasios Nenes and Spyros Pandis of the Center for Studies on Air Quality and Climate Change (C-STACC; http://cstacc.iceht.forth.gr) of the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (ICE-HT/FORTH; http://www.iceht.forth.gr) led to the discovery of a chemical mechanism that rapidly produces air pollution from biomass burning, during the night.

Nektarios Tavernarakis, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) and Professor at the Medical School of the University of Crete, was unanimously re-elected Chairman of the Board and Director of the Central Administration of FORTH, by a 7-member Evaluation Committee of distinguished scientists, headed by Dr. George Pavlakis (Head of Human Retrovirus Section, National Cancer Institute – NCI).

The Coastal and Marine Research Laboratory of FORTH, carried out field surveys at the coastal zone of the Municipality of Chersonissos on Friday 11 December 2020, to have an overview of the situation of the areas that were affected by the recent storm, in the framework of its collaboration with the Directorate for Environment and Hydro-economy of the Region of Crete.

The unprecedented rainfall of high amount and intensity that hit the island of Crete during the 9-10th of November, 2020 had as a result the occurrence of extensive floods and landslides in residential and rural areas of the island. Among the severely affected areas was the Regional Unit of Rethymno, with the effects of severe weather on both infrastructures (damages to constructions and road network) and in its primary sector (destruction of crops) being characterized as incalculable.