Innovation ministers came together to discuss the Commission's proposals for Horizon 2020 at a Competitiveness Council meeting in Brussels on 21 February. The plans for a new streamlined EU research and innovation funding programme, set to kick off in 2014, were outlined by Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn on 30 November 2011. At the meeting, presided over by Danish Minister for Science, Innovation and Higher Education Mr Morten Østergaard, ministers discussed cross-cutting issues within the Horizon 2020 programme, with a particular focus on the role of social sciences and humanities, as well as small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) participation.
Quality validation date: 2012-02-22

The quest to drive innovation continues in Europe. And joining the growing list of innovative products and services is the world's first radio frequency identification (RFID) circuit, designed and created by Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum Vzw (imec) in Belgium, the Holst Centre in the Netherlands and the ORICLA consortium. ORICLA ('Towards electronic product coding with RFID tags based on hybrid organic-oxide complementary thin-film technology') is supported under the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) to the tune of EUR 3.
Quality validation date: 2012-02-22

An international team of scientists has discovered that the effect of fishing for tuna and similar species since the early 1960s has led to a decline in these populations by around 60%. The study, presented in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was funded in part by the METAOCEANS ('Elucidating the structure and functioning of marine ecosystems through synethesis and comparative results') project, which clinched a Marie Curie Early Stage Research Training (EST) grant worth EUR 2. 23 million under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).
Quality validation date: 2012-02-22

A new EU-funded biomarker project that aims to get breast cancer therapy more tailored to individual patients has just got under way. By ensuring that breast cancer therapy is specifically designed with an individual patient in mind, medical practitioners can bypass ineffective treatments - saving both valuable time and energy. RESPONSIFY ('Genome-based biomarkers leading to validated molecular diagnostic tests for response prediction in breast cancer') received almost EUR 6 million under the 'Health' Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), and brings together researchers from Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Quality validation date: 2012-02-21

Climate change shows no signs of slowing down. Getting a better handle on forests' influence on climate change and the wildlife habitats within them will give scientists the information they need to monitor carbon stored in vegetation more effectively. Enter a team of researchers led by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that has devised an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of the planet's forests.
Quality validation date: 2012-02-21