News
What is a CIP project?
 
With small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as its main target, the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) is an EU funded programme that supports innovation activities (including eco-innovation), and provides better access to finance and delivers business support services in the regions. It encourages a better take-up and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and helps to develop the information society.

Topic of the project proposal

Tourism is identified as one of the main drivers of economic growth. The pilot study proposal will demonstrate that through tourism local economies can expand, and at the same time and for no extra cost, also provide better online services to their constituents. 
The idea of the "digital tourist" addresses the reality of today’s connected world. Travelers wish to be online at all times to do such things as view maps and guidebooks, upload images to social media, consult online itineraries, read reviews and book tickets. 
This project is a private–public sector partnership involving five countries and nine partners that addresses the needs of municipalities to drive economic growth through innovative ICT solutions. 

Americans replace their cellphones every 22 months, junking some 150 million old phones in 2010 alone. Ever wondered what happens to all these old phones? The answer isn’t pretty.

 

In far-flung, mostly impoverished places like Agbogbloshie, Ghana; Delhi, India; and Guiyu, China, children pile e-waste into giant mountains and burn it so they can extract the metals — copper wires, gold and silver threads — inside, which they sell to recycling merchants for only a few dollars. In India, young boys smash computer batteries with mallets to recover cadmium, toxic flecks of which cover their hands and feet as they work. Women spend their days bent over baths of hot lead, “cooking” circuit boards so they can remove slivers of gold inside. Greenpeace, the Basel Action Network and others have posted YouTube videos of young children inhaling the smoke that rises from burned phone casings as they identify and separate different kinds of plastics for recyclers. It is hard to imagine that good health is a by-product of their unregulated industry.



 
Indeed, most scientists agree that exposure poses serious health risks, especially to pregnant women and children. The World Health Organization reports that even a low level of exposure to lead, cadmium and mercury (all of which can be found in old phones) can cause irreversible neurological damage and threaten the development of a child.
 

The 14th annual Save the Children Mother's Index lists the best and worst places in the world to be a mom. It records both the likelihood of death in pregnancy and labour and the difficulties women face as mothers - scoring countries on maternal health, education, child mortality and women's income and political status.
 
The best place in the world to give birth? Finland, where only one in 345 children die under the age of five, and where children can expect up to 17 years of education.
The worst? The Democratic Republic of the Congo. In general, babies born in sub-Saharan Africa are more than seven times as likely to die on the day of their birth than in industrialized countries, the report claims.
 
"The 10 top-ranked countries, in general, are among the best countries in the world for mothers' and children's health, educational, economic and political status," says the report. "The 10 bottom-ranked countries – all from sub-Saharan Africa – are a reverse image of the top 10, performing poorly on all indicators. Conditions for mothers and their children in these countries are devastating."
 

More than 60 parts of the genome can increase a person’s risk of cancer of the breast, prostate and ovaries, according to the largest ever genetic study.

Imagine a world in which a simple blood test can reveal your genetic risk of developing cancer. A world where your doctor can look at a chart of your genes and tell you exactly which cancers you are at risk of developing and how you can avoid developing these diseases.

It sounds like science fiction. But such a world may actually become reality thanks to a huge international study, which over the past few years has been on the lookout for genetic variants that can trigger cancer of the breast, the ovaries or the prostate.

The research groups, which include two Danish researchers, found a total of 60 positions in the genome that are involved in the development of cancer.

 
 
Students with profound mathematical and verbal reasoning skills at age 13 garner more awards, gather more grant money, have more patents, write more prolifically, are more likely to graduate with doctoral degrees, and are more likely to hold tenured positions at the best universities in the world, according to new research published in Psychological Science.
Psychological scientists Harrison Kell, David Lubinski, and Camilla Benbow of Vanderbilt University were interested in finding out just how successful super smart 13-year-olds would be later in life.
 

The researchers kept track of 320 adolescents who scored in at least the top 1% in mathematical and verbal reasoning ability on the SAT in the early 1980s, and they followed up with the participants more recently, when they were 38 years old.

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