The European Commission has developed a medical intelligence system that constantly collects and sorts information from more than 1000 news and 120 public health websites in 32 languages. Complementing traditional approaches, the system, called MediSys, will provide health authorities with real-time knowledge about disease outbreaks or industrial accidents, thereby helping to identify such incidents as early as possible and so react in a timely way. It can also provide invaluable information to authorities tackling a major incident such as a bio-terrorist attack.

An EU-funded project has begun work on setting up a European infrastructure for the testing and certification of biometrics components and systems.

Biometric recognition systems measure the behavioural or physical traits of people. These can be as varied as iris images, fingerprints, the structure of veins in the hand, or even an individual's typing rhythm.

Australian researchers are welcoming the announcement of AUD 5.2 million (EUR 3.2 million) for 19 research projects involving international partners. Seven of the new projects involve cooperation under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) for research, and 14 in total involve European partners.

"World-class science is currently being undertaken in Australia and these projects allow these leading researchers to participate further in the international science community, enriching our partnership with other countries," said Australian Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop.

Proposals to the eHealth Standardization Bodies represents a novel dissemination approach of the RIDE Project achievements and in special a web based representation of the Deliverable D.5.3.1 – Proposals to Standardization Bodies.

eHealth Ontology Project has launched a Section which collects 22 Recommendations to the eHealth Standardization Bodies, all interested eHealth professional are welcome to rate and to comment all published Recommendations.

Making calls from a cell phone with no battery, using just the warmth of your hand? Perhaps that's no more than a pipe dream right now. But new circuits are already making it possible to harness body heat for generating electricity.

The European Commission has launched a consultation on the future of pharmaceuticals for human use in Europe, as a part of its programme to improve the regulatory, non-regulatory and research, technology and development framework for pharmaceuticals.

COST, the European Cooperation in Science and Technology, will continue to be managed by the European Science Foundation (ESF) under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The European Commission and ESF signed a contract to this effect at the end of July.