European Union News - Research & Innovation

Italian authorities criminal investigation concluded that, on the basis of information and assistance received from OLAF and the European Commission, suspected fraud network in EU-funded research projects. The investigation in Italy concerns 22 projects with a total amount of funding paid of more than 50 million euro and is part of a broader OLAF investigation.

The European Commission have chosen the six FET contenders at the FET11 conference and exhibition which will receive around €1.5 million each to refine their proposal for one year, after which only two will be selected. FET Flagship contenders will have to look beyond traditional ICT research and link up with specialists in other fields like health, material and neuro-sciences and neuro-robotics.

The Smart Cities Initiative is a project of European dimension for energy efficiency and for accelerating the large scale deployment of innovative low carbon technologies. On 4 February 2011, the European Council invited the Commission to launch an Industrial Initiative inter alia on 'energy saving solutions in cities'.

This is the interim conclusion based on over 470 responses received so far to the consultation launched by the Commission with its February 2011 Green Paper. In addition, nearly all respondents stress the importance of simplifying procedures for applying for funding and accounting for its use.

First impressions play a critical role in our expectations of people, and first impressions are hard to change, according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Research on Collective Goods in Germany. They have also discovered that people will help their fellow man based on how altruistic others are.

An European research, ESNA project ('European sensor network architecture'), has made communication lines easier for people. The system is based on cheap wireless sensors in various business applications including energy-efficient environmental controls.

A research from the University of Warwick in the UK, partially financed ERDF funds (with European Regional Development Fund) has made this development. Apart from its innovation, is that it could be relatively cheap because the gold used is just 8 billionths of a metre thick.

The European Future Technologies Conference (FET) will take place next 4-6 of May in Budapest and its registration is still open until 28 of April. The conference, as well as an exhibition, it is aimed to be an European forum which facilitates international cross-disciplinary dialogue and discussion on visions and challenges for frontier research in future and emerging information technologies.

The Hungarian EU Presidency is hosting the coming ICT Proposer's Day 2011. The event will take place in Budapest from 19 to 20 of May and is dedicated to networking and partnership building for ICT Calls 8 and 9 of the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission (FP7), offering more than one billion Euros of EU funding.

Johan Richard, a 31-year-old French researcher and his team, has discovered a galaxy 13 billion light years away from Earth. Richard started his research in 2008 whilst a Marie Curie fellow at Durham University in the UK. The discovery of the galaxy was made at the Dark Cosmology Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, using the Hubble Space Telescope, a joint project between the European Space Agency and NASA.

EU Agency ENISA has issued the final report and video clip on on the first Pan-European cyber security exercise for public bodies, ‘Cyber Europe 2010’. The report stressed the need for more cyber security exercises in the future, a increased collaboration between the Member States and the importance of the private sector in ensuring security.