‘Gaming for Peace’ will train all military, police and civilian personnel being deployed on EU conflict prevention and peacebuilding missions.

Entering the game as avatars, users will role-play as members of another organisation, a different gender or a different nationality, and face simulations of different conflict zone scenarios in order to develop their communication and co-operation, gender awareness and cultural competency skills.

“Current training for personnel involved in conflict prevention and peacebuilding missions does not prioritise the critical softer skills of communication and gender and cultural awareness,” explained project co-ordinator Assistant Professor Anne Holohan, of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland.

“Most missions require a variety of organisations to co-ordinate and co-operate together – militaries from different nations in Europe, police from all over Europe, civilian actors from different countries. Success in preventing conflict is to a considerable extent dependent on their ability to work together well in the mission.

“The ‘Gaming for Peace’ tool will allow personnel to role-play someone of a different gender or ethnicity or who is part of a different type of organisation, leading to greater understanding, better communication and co-operation, and a more optimal performance as peacebuilders will result.”

The game has been funded by a €2m grant from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme and is being supported by the European Security and Defence College, which oversees the training of all EU personnel deployed on peacekeeping missions, NATO and a number of UN bodies.

Led by TCD, the project brings 14 collaborative partners together from academia, military, police, civil actors and business, including the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Finnish and Polish militaries, Laurea University in Kerava, Finland, the Ted Kennedy Institute at NUI Maynooth, Ireland, and Irish computer games company Haunted Planet.

“Training a large number of personnel before deployment on a mission is expensive and logistically difficult, with most training involving travel and fixed times and, consequently, many personnel get little or sporadic training, particularly in the area of soft skills such as communication and gender and cultural awareness,” added Holohan.

“‘Gaming for Peace’ will produce a game that is accessible to all personnel before deployment at minimal cost. The only thing that is required is an internet connection.”

The game is due for completion by 2018.

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Superconductors, materials that conduct electricity without losing power and produce strong magnetic fields, at present only work at very low temperatures and require liquid nitrogen or helium to maintain that temperature. But an international team of scientists has discovered a way to make certain materials superconduct at higher temperatures, as well.

Researchers shone a laser at a material composed of potassium and carbon atoms arranged in ‘buckyball’ (football-like) structures and found it was still superconducting at more than 100 degrees Kelvin (around −170°C).

“If we can design materials that superconduct at higher temperatures, or even room temperature, it would eliminate the need for cooling, which would make [superconductors] less expensive and more practical to use in a variety of applications,” explained Dr Stephen Clark, theoretical physicist at the UK’s University of Bath, which assisted in the research.

He added that his next step will be to “find other superconductors that can be coerced to work at even higher temperatures, possibly even at room temperature”.

The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging, Germany; INSTM UdR Trieste-ST and Elettra – Sincrotrone Trieste, Università di Roma ‘Sapienza’ and Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy; Oxford University, UK; and the National University of Singapore also collaborated in the research, which was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme.

The study has been published in the journal Nature.

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Although an independent trust fund, Norrlandsfonden collaborates with banks, venture capital companies, auditors, county councils, local business development agencies and other players to augment viable and sustainable enterprise in northern Sweden. In one such case, Norrlandsfonden is collaborating with the European Investment Fund (EIF) and benefitting from the support of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) under the Horizon 2020 programme’s InnovFin initiative.

European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen said: “The Investment Plan for Europe is bearing fruit across the EU and I am pleased to see Sweden benefitting from the EFSI. The guarantee agreement signed today between the EIF and Norrlandsfonden will help small Swedish companies get access to the financing they need for their businesses to grow.”

The deal, InnovFin’s first transaction in Sweden, is designed to reflect the Commission’s diverse and swift response to demand for funds and make it possible for Norrlandsfonden to offer favourable lending conditions for Sweden’s up and coming, innovative enterprises.

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They were selected by the European Commission on the basis of a search process carried out by an independent identification committee and will serve a four-year mandate.

Sir Christopher is currently Regius professor of history at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of Iron Kingdom (2006), a history of Prussia, and The Sleepwalkers (2012), on the origins of the First World War, among other titles, and is internationally regarded as a leading historian of modern Germany.

Romanowicz serves as chair of physics of the Earth’s interior at Collège de France, Paris, and professor of geophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, US. Between 1982 and 1990, while a researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), she developed GEOSCOPE, a then state-of-the-art global network of digital seismic stations for the study of earthquakes and the structure of the Earth’s interior. Following this, in 1991 she became director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory (BSL), a position she held until 2011. During this time, she helped to establish a joint real-time earthquake notification system for northern California between the BSL and the US Geological Survey.

The ERC Scientific Council comprises 22 distinguished scientists and scholars representing the European scientific community and is the governing body of the ERC. Its main role is setting the ERC strategy and selecting the peer review evaluators.

The identification committee is currently working on the identification of another two new members.

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Around two-thirds (70%) of equity funding was granted to London-based (including southeast of England) SMEs, although data shows that lending has been distributed more evenly.

Chief executive of the British Business Bank Keith Morgan said: “While there are encouraging signs that volumes are up and alternative finance markets are thriving, there remain areas that still require attention.”

Meanwhile, Small Business Minister Anna Soubry said: “Even though the lending landscape is improving, I’m well aware access to finance remains a big issue and want to see even more help for small firms looking to invest and create jobs for people.”

Horizon 2020, the EU framework programme for research, growth and innovation, is defined by the Commission’s website as: ‘a means to drive economic growth and create jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the Members of the European Parliament. They agreed that research is an investment in our future and so put it at the heart of the EU’s blueprint for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs.’

EU contributions to SMEs through the Horizon 2020 programme have also risen since its previous incarnation, the Seventh Framework Programme, from around 16% to just over 20%.

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Global view of the ‘learning factory’ environment for advanced networked and service-based manufacturing systems and organisations

The main research focus of the Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) research and development line is on modelling, organisation and management of industrial and services systems and technology. Research addresses decision making framework modelling for policy prescriptions, including social, environment and economic issues.

The main research and other related activities of the IEM research teams are as follows:

The research area of the Industrial and Systems Management (ISM) team is the design and improvement of production and service systems, particularly the development and performance evaluation of industrial and service systems, under agile and lean production environments. Its research work is now oriented to the development of solutions to improve systems organisation and management in areas of activity such as healthcare, offices and education. One important methodology developed by the ISM team – the waste identification diagram – is a tool that aims to characterise, diagnose and improve the performance of production units by evaluating non-adding value activities. This tool helps in evaluating non-adding value activities (Muda) as well as identifying other production problems and improving opportunities. It facilitates the communication between lean professionals with top management and other professionals with effective visual information.

The SLOTS team – Supply chain, Logistics and Transportation Systems Research – comprises a multidisciplinary and highly skilled research group which concentrates on developing and implementing innovative approaches to supply chain management, logistics and transportation systems, in highly competitive environments. The group focuses on a number of key research areas in order to cope with complex issues that arise both in industrial and transportation systems: supply chain management – integrated approaches based on supply chain quality management and supply chain cost management; logistics – warehousing and transportation;  flexible industries – innovative production planning and control approaches;  transportation systems – solutions for urban systems, integrated mobility and the promotion of interoperability of public transport modes and other services); and modelling, simulation and optimisation – the use and development of modelling approaches (e.g. heuristics and simulation) to improve the efficiency and flexibility of existing and innovative industrial and transportation systems.

Ongoing industrial projects:

‘Introduction of advanced materials technologies into new product development for the mobility industries – 2013’ call for test bed proposals under the MIT Portugal Program – Driving innovation through integrated test bed research

iFACTORY – Industry-University Collaboration – BOSCH Car Multimedia and University of Minho

• Autonomous milk runs;
• Smart internal supply chain; and
• Supply chain quality management.

The research team on the Economics of Engineering Systems (EES) conducts basic and applied research on the economic and social dimensions of engineering and technological systems. The research team provides qualified skills to match technology foresight and companies’ competencies in spotting innovative products, market niches and growth opportunities. The research strategy is focused on the development of methods and tools that support project analysis and management, financial and risk analysis and cost management, on the analysis of complex systems resorting to planning and sustainable scenarios modelling, to participatory methodologies for social evaluation, to benchmarking tools and to the study of innovation systems and processes of science and technology management and policy.

European projects

Co-ordination of NETEP-European Brazilian Network on Energy Planning, FP7-PEOPLE-612263.

Participation on Partnership with Enterprises by Enhancement of Regional Quality Management Potentials Improvement, TEMPUS JP 543662-2013.

Participation on BATinLoko – Environmental Performance Indicators and their Relation with Economic Factors in Textile BAT Implementation, LIFE07 ENV/P/000625.

The Ergonomics and Human Factors (E&HF) research team develops its activities with the aim of understanding the interactions among humans and other elements of a system by addressing current research challenges and by applying theory, principles, data and other methods to design in order to optimise human wellbeing and the overall system performance.

Research is undertaken using an holistic approach by considering physical, cognitive, social, organisational, environmental and other relevant factors.

The E&HF team has been addressing several research topics, including physical ergonomics, occupational biomechanics, risk assessment, integration models for multimodal perception, assessment of the user’s behaviour and human performance, motor control and interaction, and analysis of human-machine interfacing.

The Distributed and Virtual Manufacturing Systems and Enterprises (DVMSE) team research is based on the premise that the increase in the complexity of the industrial environment thrives for the establishment of new organisational meta-enterprises, under large and complex networked and virtual environments, thus potentiating research to develop the introduction and attainment of new manufacturing systems paradigms.

International projects

EUREKA PROJECT E!4177 – PRO-FACTORY UES – “Ubiquitous Oriented Embedded Systems For Globally Distributed Factories Of Manufacturing Enterprises – UES”.

“Adaptive Distributed Manufacturing Systems – A Conceptual Framework for Collaborative Design and Operations of Manufacturing Work System”, Inter-Governmental Science and Technology Cooperation between Portugal and Slovenia, MCTES/GRICES (Ministério da Ciência e do Ensino Superior), University of Minho, University of Ljubljana.

“Normalization of the primitive manufacturing resources for dynamic integration of distributed, virtual and ubiquitous manufacturing systems”, Inter-Governmental Science and Technology Cooperation between Portugal and Slovenia, MCTES/GRICES (Ministério da Ciência e do Ensino Superior), University of Minho, University of Ljubljana.

“Innovative PROduction Machines and Systems Network of Excellence – I*PROMS NoE”, Network-of-Excellence, FP6, Contract Nº: 500273-2.

IEM’s researchers also deal with quality management and assurance, reliability and maintenance issues and their specific applications, namely performance indicators modelling and development, and quality engineering tools.

Madalena Araújo,
Coordinator,
Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM),
,
http://algoritmi.uminho.pt/

The post Industrial engineering and systems management appeared first on Horizon 2020 Projects.

The SME Innovative Associate programme intends to provide small companies with increased access to specialised skills and knowledge by encouraging mobility.

It will award 90 SMEs with individual grants covering the salary and related costs of employing a postdoctoral research associate, including full training costs, from anywhere across the globe.

In turn, researchers will gain a wealth of experience in the business innovation process, learn industrial innovation and business management skills, and be able to boost their CV with business experience abroad.

The programme is available to all SMEs and start-ups established in the member states and countries associated to Horizon 2020. Researchers must at minimum hold a PhD (or equivalent), have demonstrated expertise in line with the job advertisement, and comply with the transnational mobility criteria.

Applications are open here from 11 February 2016.

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DComm will see 13 different projects explore deictic communication over the next four years in an attempt to gain further insight into human to human and human to system interaction.

Its results could pave the way for improved mobile phones and intelligent robots and to enhanced clinical and educational interventions; for example, for stroke patients and those with autism spectrum disorder.

“Communication involves a combination of language and gestures that act together,” explains Professor Kenny Coventry, head of the School of Psychology at UEA and DComm co-ordinator. “Deictic communication is critical to understanding not only how communication develops typically in a range of spoken and signed languages, but also when communication can potentially break down in a range of clinical and atypically developing populations.”

He adds: “UEA is delighted to be leading this interdisciplinary training network that brings together an exciting mix of leading scientists and industrial partners to understand deictic communication both conceptually and in application.”

UEA will lead two of the projects, one exploring deictic communication in development and how children learn to direct attention using language and gesture, and the other investigating deictic communication in stroke patients with visual neglect.

Other projects will focus on deictic language and gestures in developmental deficits, deictic communication in sign languages, applications in robot language learning, deictic communication and mobile phones, improved motion capture methodology and tools in linguistic research, iCub robot hand redesign for gestural and deictic interaction, and deictic communication in architectural and urban design.

DComm has been funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and will see UEA work alongside 11 European partner organisations, including the UK’s Plymouth University, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the Sweden-based motion capture specialists Qualisys and Italian automation company Telerobotlabs. Additional support will come from organisations specialising in software and technology development, architecture and brain rehabilitation.

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“I have instructed my services to mobilise €10m for urgently needed research on the Zika virus in response to the upsurge in cases of severe congenital brain malformations across Latin America and their suspected link to Zika virus infections,” Moedas said.

The money contributed by the EU will come from Horizon 2020 for investment in diagnostics and experimental drug candidates research. At least three pharmaceutical companies, including French giant Sanofi, have also announced their commitment to tackling the mosquito-borne virus.

Following criticism for a slow response regarding the Ebola outbreak of 2014, for which the EU pledged around €25m, the World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak a global public health emergency and anticipates infection of up to four million people in the South and central American regions so far this year.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) declares that the risk in the EU of transmission remains extremely low: ‘There is no evidence of transmission Zika virus in Europe to date and imported cases are rare’, its website states.

There are currently five invasive Aedes mosquito species known to be established in Europe, namely Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti, Aedes japonicus, Aedes atropalpus and Aedes koreicus. A rapid risk assessment compiled by the ECDC can be found here.

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A total of 1,284 SMEs have now been selected under Phase 1 of the programme since its launch on 1 January 2014.

The European Commission had received 2,057 proposals under Phase 1 by 25 November 2015, the fourth and last cut-off date for that year. A total of 175 projects will be funded (multiple SMEs can be involved in one project), bringing the success rate of funded proposals up to 8.4%.

The winning projects will each be given €50,000 in order to finance feasibility studies for new products that can disrupt the market. Participants will also receive three days of free business coaching.

Most of the projects funded were in the area of low carbon energy systems, followed by food production and processing, and biomarkers and medical devices.

Spanish SMEs proved the most successful with 39 beneficiaries accepted for funding, and then firms from Italy (37) and the UK (20).

The results for Phase 2 of the SME Instrument, where companies receive funding of up to €2.5m to make their products ready for the market, will follow around mid-February.

The next cut-off for Phase 1 is 24 February.

Go here for a full list of beneficiaries.

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