European Union News - Research & Innovation

A team of EU-funded scientists has come up with a way of generating rotating electron beams. The technique, described in the journal Nature, could be used to probe the magnetic properties of materials and could even be applied to manipulate minute particles and set them in motion.

More than 200 events will are held across the European Union on 24 September as part of the sixth annual 'European Researchers' Night'. Around 500,000 people are expected to attend this event which aims to promote careers in science and research.

Researchers from Europe and China warn that little can be done to stop dangerous increases in the global sea level, as it will rise between 30 to 70 centimetres (cm) by 2100 even if all but the most aggressive geo-engineering schemes are undertaken to mitigate the effects of global warming and stringently control greenhouse gas emissions.

European researchers are attempting to unravel the causes of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders by examining the role that genes and different environments play in the onset of these conditions. Epidemiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, pharmacologists, biostatisticians, and geneticists will all play a role in this unique large-scale project.

The European Commission has been tackling the urbanisatios issue head-on. It recently published the 'World and European Sustainable Cities' report, which highlights European research activities designed to reconcile urbanisation with the need for sustainable and inclusive growth.

The European Commission completed on 17 September the launch of the CO2 capture and storage (CCS) Project Network, the EU tool that supports early large-scale demonstration of technologies, which will accelerate learning and ensure that the Commission can assist CCS to safely fulfil its potential and become a commercially viable technology. The CCS is the world's first network of CCS demonstration projects to foster knowledge sharing and raise public understanding of the role of CCS in cutting CO2 emissions.

Cooperation in science and technology is high on the European agenda, and this is particularly obvious under the COST programme, an intergovernmental framework that fosters networking in European research investments and strengthens the European Research Area's (ERA) foothold on the global market.

EU researchers will have sustainable and continuous access to the combined processing power of over 200,000 desktop computers in more than 30 European countries thanks to the European Commission funded European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) project launched. The EGI, the largest collaborative production grid infrastructure for e-Science ever created, will enable teams of researchers in different geographical locations to work on a problem as if they were in the same laboratory.

Fewer people in the EU may be dying of cancer, but its incidence rose by almost 20% from 2002 to 2008, reports a special issue of the European Journal of Cancer (EJC) published on 13 September. Studies presented in the EJC, which is the official journal of the European Cancer Organisation (ECCO), received funding from EUROCADET project.

Despite ever greater efforts to protect biodiversity, this precious resource continues to decline. Now a group of scientists and conservationists warns that to reverse this troubling trend, society must urgently rethink its attitudes to biodiversity and change its behaviour accordingly. The team hopes its message will be heeded by world leaders when they attend the forthcoming 65th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, which will be devoted to the subject of biodiversity. In addition, the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity is scheduled to take place this autumn.

Nearly 5.000 researchers have applied for EU-funded Marie Curie fellowship grants this year, an increase of 20% on last year and 70% on 2008. Around 800 fellowships worth a total of €150 million will be granted to researchers working on projects of up to three years in another country. For the first time, a funding category is available for researchers who want to restart their career after a break.