Tag: science and research

The Slovak Ministry of Transportation said it will reallocate 180 million of EU funding on science, research and education in favour of building road infrastructure, triggering alarm bells within the scientific community. EurActiv Slovakia reports.

The 'Starttech' project in the Czech university town of Liberec seeks to raise interest in the technical sciences among elementary and secondary school pupils. Project managers believe they are succeeding in their goals, but criticised the administrative burden they must face in dealing with EU regional funds. EurActiv.cz reports.

Ireland's Máire Geoghegan Quinn has been handed the newly-created innovation portfolio at the EU executive.

Following in the footsteps of Barack Obama in the United States, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso plans to appoint a chief scientific advisor to assist the incoming EU executive in making tough decisions on everything from GMO authorisations to addressing climate change. 

European companies are finding it increasingly difficult to covert research into innovation as politicians turn to the precautionary principle and Europeans reject science as a 'force of evil', argues David Zaruk, an environmental health risk consultant, in an interview with EurActiv. 

European policymakers face a difficult choice when authorising new technologies such as GMOs, as they often find themselves caught between conflicting expert safety advice and calls to respect the precautionary principle when scientific evidence is insufficient.

The EU needs to improve its "innovation climate" and the speed with which it transforms research into market products, EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik told EurActiv in an interview.

An EU study of future agricultural research challenges reveals that there is general consensus on the concerns, but disagreement over how best to address them. It stresses the need to conduct transdisciplinary research and redistribute roles between the state, markets and civil society to address the vulnerabilities of the present agri-food system.

"Europe would over time widen rather than narrow its distance [in research and development] behind the US" should the current status quo remain, writes Kristian Uppenberg, a senior economist at the European Investment Bank, in a February paper published by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).

A pan-European pension fund for researchers and a system of "portable grants" are among a raft of new measures contained in a European Parliament report aimed at boosting scientists' career mobility.

Scientists should be free to move between the EU and Turkey, according to Turkish Minister of State Mehmet Aydin.

The EU could learn from Australia in combining science with other disciplines, such as law or marketing, to attract more young students, Professor Penny D. Sackett, Australia's newly-appointed chief scientist, told EurActiv in an interview.

Scientists in Europe can count on citizens' support for sustained investment in research and development amid fears that the ongoing economic crisis may lead to cuts, a new survey revealed last week.

Stakeholders called on the European Commission to provide "adequate support" for organic food and farming research at the launch of a new technology platform, TP Organics, on 2 December.

The ongoing economic and financial crisis has increased the need to attract high-skilled migrants via initiatives such as the Blue Card, researchers told policymakers yesterday (17 November).

Ten leading European research institutes have joined forces to expedite the development of new cleaner technologies to steer the EU towards achieving its ambitious energy and climate change agenda.

The European Commission has proposed a series of measures aimed at overcoming weak links between industry and research and market fragmentation in a bid to help turn the 2,000 or so existing European competitiveness clusters into world-class innovation poles amid increased global competition.

The vast majority of European citizens have a general negative perception of animal cloning for food production, saying that too little is known of its long-term health and safety effects, according to an EU-wide poll presented yesterday (9 October) by the European Commission.

The EU executive is calling on member states to take seriously its recent call for joint priority-setting and joint action on science and research policy and implement a coherent EU framework for scientific cooperation with non-EU countries if it is to remain a leading actor, particularly in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT).

The EU executive has launched a public consultation on ICT research and innovation, asking industry, experts and policymakers to help it overhaul the bloc's agenda in this field.

Wind energy could easily provide for more than one fourth of the EU's electricity by 2030 provided that wind farms are better connected to existing electricity grids and that a new grid to exploit the offshore wind industry is built, according to a stakeholder action plan detailing research and political priorities for the sector.

The European Commission wants member states to pool together their money and brains to conduct joint research on major societal challenges such as ageing and energy security, saying purely individual efforts on such vast topics waste resources.

A comprehensive higher education reform with significantly increased funding and university autonomy as well as more specialisation, student selection and competition is needed to make the bloc's universities globally competitive, according to Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.

Guy Riba, the deputy director of the French national institute for agricultural research (INRA), highlights the many challenges the world will have to meet by 2050 if it wants to feed its nine-billion inhabitants without destroying its environment. He spoke to EurActiv ahead of a major conference by the French Presidency today (3 July) in Parliament.