Europe

As computer simulations go, Vlasiator is as huge as they come. Developing Vlasiator, Minna Palmroth, professor at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, has succeeded in doing what many of her colleagues thought impossible: Simulating weather in near-Earth space, showing how solar wind affects us, using high performance computing and high speed networks to do so.

The provision of high-speed broadband to many primary and every post-primary school in Ireland affords schools greater opportunity to embed technology in the teaching and learning process. This opens the door to a faster, richer, more interactive and more informative Internet experience than was possible before.

Swedish researchers are incorporating sensitive register data in their cross-border analyses of the interaction between genetic and environmental factors for schizophrenia. Thanks to Tryggve, a new Nordic initiative to advance the utilization of sensitive biomedical data.

“I was curious to explore the possibilities of a poetic approach to concepts of presence and absence in different places," says acclaimed director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, who exploited the brand-new fiber optic connection to the Italian research and education network of major archaeological sites in Rome to create a unique live performance.

The Spanish Institute of Oceanography is one of the first organisations in the world to solely dedicate itself to researching the sea and its resources. Its broad and diversified activities require an accurate database capable of accommodating millions of data items, as well as a powerful connections to researchers and national and international centres with which it shares information.

eduroam (education roaming) is the secure, worldwide roaming access developed for the international research and education community. eduroam is now available in 76 countries worldwide and is expanding beyond campuses to public, commercial and city Wi-Fi initiatives.

The Heat Roadmap Europe project has set out to map the demand for heating and cooling in 14 European countries, along with the potential sources of surplus and renewable heating and cooling that could be used to supply this demand. The aim is to decarbonise the heating sector of Europe over the next 30-40 years.

The DigiBern project is an online portal for information on the history and culture of the city and canton of Bern. Even in such an exemplary case, however, it has become clear that libraries face further tasks after a digitisation project is complete in order to ensure that the data remain accessible over the long term. SWITCHengines is enabling the University Library Bern to build a long-term archive.

The Research and Education Network for Uganda is helping one of the country's universities, the Ugandan Christian University offer PhD and Master of Journalism and Media Studies Progammes online in collaboration with the University of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa and the NLA University College in Norway.

Biotelemetry technology for wildlife and fish monitoring has evolved tremendously since the 1990’s: from moose and reindeer wearing collars with primitive radio transmitters weighing several kilos, to salmon with miniscule bio-sensors, and eagles wearing solar powered GPS-backpacks. But there's a gap between the volumes of data available and the tools for handing it.

Doñana National Park in Andalusia Spain is one of the world's most fascinating nature reserves, a mosaic of ecosystems and home to unique and endangered species. The Park is connected to LifeWatch, a joint European e-infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystem research, which enables scientists to access a vast array of data from multiple resources in real time to learn about the environment.

The Earth is a complex and dynamic system, and the inner workings of our planet have serious catastrophic potential for humans in the form of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Using e-infrastructure resources and supercomputers, a research group at the University of Oslo, Norway, is investigating the link between processes which occur deep in Earth’s interior, and those at the surface.