The European Commission has announced the final and biggest ever set of calls for proposals for research under its Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). In total, €8.1 billion will support projects and ideas that will boost Europe's competitiveness and tackle issues such as human health, protecting the environment and finding new solutions to growing challenges linked to urbanisation and managing waste.

University of Granada researchers have developed an artificial cerebellum (a biologically-inspired adaptive microcircuit) that controls a robotic arm with human-like precision. The cerebellum is the part of the human brain that controls the locomotor system and coordinates body movements.

For people with long term conditions, telehealth can reduce deaths and help patients avoid the need for emergency hospital care, finds a study published on bmj.com. However, the estimated scale of hospital cost savings is modest and may not be sufficient to offset the cost of the technology, say the authors.

Using data supplied by a mobile operator, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have shown that population movements after the 2010 Haiti earthquake followed regular patterns. This information can be used to predict beforehand the movements of people after a disaster, and thus improves chances for aid to be delivered to the right places at the right time.

Sequencing the human genome was just the first step. The next challenge is of the kind that makes history: to decode the genome, and understand how the information needed to construct a human being can be packaged into a single molecule. And there are a lot more than loose ends in the way of a solution.

Scientists have developed an X-ray imaging method that could drastically improve the contrast of computed tomography (CT) scans whilst reducing the radiation dose deposited during the scan. The new method is based on the combination of the high contrast obtained by an X-ray technique known as grating interferometry with the three-dimensional capabilities of CT.

Are you a social media enthusiast or simply a Facebook addict? Researchers from Norway have developed a new instrument to measure Facebook addiction, the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. The use of Facebook has increased rapidly.