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They can burn and blister your skin, stop you from getting a mortgage, and even kill you.Plants and animals carried around the world by tourists and trade are costing the European Union over EUR 12 billion per year. Even these estimates are conservative as the data relates mostly to land-based invasive species.

Ash dieback is an invasive fungus that threatens to decimate stocks of European ash.

The industrial revolution made the world wealthy through a simple idea: to replace the physical labour of humans and animals with energy from fossil fuels. Two-and-a-half centuries after the revolution started, however, it is in trouble. The oil that powers much of the world’s economy is running out, and the greenhouse gases given off by the fuels are harming the planet. 

Among the vineyards and wheat fields of north-eastern France, a revolution in chemical manufacturing is quietly gathering momentum. Here, biomass is turned into valuable components and energy.

Doctors should routinely test people’s feet to check for diabetes, that’s according to a former UK Health Minister and MEP who has become a campaigner for the disease after being diagnosed with it himself.

An experimental tablet treatment for child diabetes, where youngsters have traditionally had to inject themselves with sugar controlling insulin, could end up eradicating the disease altogether, according to the scientist leading the European NAIMIT project.

Diabetes is on the rise all around the world. In the EU alone, there are 33 million people diagnosed with diabetes. They include people of all ages and from all walks of life. The two main forms are insulin-dependent Type-1 diabetes and non-insulin-dependent Type-2 diabetes. Type-1 diabetes, which develops mainly in children and adolescents, is more aggressive. However the disease is not a tragedy, as three ‘Type-1’ patients explain. 

‘You will never become a scientist!’ For his teachers, a science career for John Gurdon, was no more than hypothetical. But the British professor who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine has only one piece of advice for aspiring researchers: ‘Don’t give up!’

Africans and Asians who migrate to Europe have a higher risk of diabetes than indigenous people as they adjust to a different diet and lifestyle. By looking at the development of diabetes in these groups, researchers hope to find out more about the disease and how to combat it both in Europe and worldwide.

Eat well and exercise. That is the simple message that could help reverse the spread of one of Europe’s most troubling epidemics – Type 2 diabetes.