European Union News - Research & Innovation

The ConTemp project has as main goal to develop self-learning adaptive process controls to stabilise machining conditions in order to help out the European manufacturing industry. In particular, a part of this project is focused on tool temperature as it does have a significant influence on workpiece quality and tool wear and in turn on manufacturing productivity.

Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn announced on June 21st the outcome of the competition "You Name it" launched to name the future EU funding programme for research and innovation. This name was suggested both by a Czech student, Marcela Endlova and a Polish teacher, Beata Zyngier.

Thanks to a new EU-funded research, communication between rescue workers after a terrorist attack or a natural disaster could soon be made more efficient. Researchers constructed an Internet-based 'app' that can keep rescuers and their central control room in touch independently, opposed to relying on central wireless access points or the TETRA police radio system.

The new VLT (Very Large Telescope) Survey Telescope (VST) the latest addition to the four VLT unit telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at the top of Cerro Paranal (Chile) and has got images from Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation located about 5,500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation and from Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest of all known globular star clusters.

At their annual meeting held in June in San Antonio, USA, the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) awarded the University of Heidelberg with the 'Young Investigator Award'. The research offers a hope for patients suffering from neuro-endocrine cancer who do not respond well to standard therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy and certain types of radiotherapy.

This is one of the main conclusions put forward by the European Commission's 2011 Innovation Union Competitiveness Report, which also point out the need for Europe to attract more and "smarter" investment in both public and private research and development. The Report also highlights the need for more cooperation in research within the EU and internationally, as well as a better use of its results and the adaptation of education systems to the requirements in business innovation.

The European Commission announced on World IPv6 Day that the Europa website is accessible for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) users as well as IPv4 users. By making its website IPv6 accessible, the European Commission is setting an example and hopes to encourage other public sectors to persuade European companies and manufacturers to make their new smart devices and servers IPv6 compatible.

The proposal on the creation of a unitary patent protection system, which has been introduced by the enhanced cooperation procedure, has now to deal with the complaint lodged by Italy and Spain to the European Court of Justice before pass to the Council and European Parliament final approval.

In the project AIRPROM ('Airway disease predicting outcomes through patient specific computational modelling'), which is funded with EU resources, researchers and industry experts in Europe have joined forces to deliver an innovative tool targeting the well-being of sufferers of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

A EU-funded research studies to bring the Internet and everyday objects together. In this way, the IOT-A project is developing an architecture reference model that will enable all objects to connect to the Internet. Whatever the technology, everything will be connected, making interoperability issues a thing of the past. The advantages to such a model are many, ultimately leading to better healthcare, cuts in energy costs, securer supply chains and less traffic.

The European Council of 4 February, in its conclusions on the "Innovation Union", invited the Commission to make proposals to accelerate, simplify and modernize standardization procedures, notably to allow standards developed by industry to be turned into European standards. Now, the European Commission proposes a package of legislative and non-legislative measures to develop more and faster standards.