From 16% twenty years ago to over 70% today. Our food security may be controlled by a small group, fewer than 10 very large corporations. They decide prices, varieties, conditions of growth. They manage patents and intellectual property rights. They make agreements with governments and public institutions. And they have a strong influence on regulations, laws and treaties. In this three-part series, EuroScientist, publishes the outcome of a data and science journalism investigation, which opens the discussion about the interaction between industry and farmers in the global seeds business. This makes for fascinating reading. Read more [...]
Is it going to be forever difficult for small farmers to enter the market? SEEDcontrol is a project born from the partnership between formicablu, an Italian science communication agency, and Oxpeckers, a South African Center for Investigative Environmental Journalism. Specifically, the project has been designed by Elisabetta Tola and Fiona Macleod. Read more [...]
Innovation hubs have now been mapped out in Europe; And their relative strengths identified. Nesta's 2016 European Digital City Index(EDCi), is a composite indicator which measures the receptiveness of cities across Europe for young digital firms. These indicators include access to funding, business environment and the prevalent entrepreneurial culture in each city. London, Stockholm, Paris, Amsterdam and Helsinki round out the top five spots. Meanwhile, Berlin, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Dublin and Vienna comprising the top ten. Find out more about the role that local conditions can play in encouraging the entrepreneurship and scaling-up of innovative businesses. Read more [...]
In 2008, it was the first time that a software virus replicating the automatic process control system of a nuclear facility was recorded. In this opinion piece, Anastasia Tolstaya, an engineer at the Institute for Cyber-Intelligence Systems, Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, in the Russian Federation, explores what can be done to prevent exposing the safety of nuclear plants, in the case of a cyber attack. Finding solutions, she argues, is not trivial. Read more [...]
The interface between science and business is where innovation is brought to life, but do the two fields always get along? Some of the speakers and session organisers of the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF2016) Business Programme, launching on 11th of April 2016 in London, UK, speak about how best to reconcile the two. Read more [...]
Disruptive innovation has to be accompanied by social and cultural progress. In the provocative opinion piece, Kirsten Drotner from the University of Southern Denmark and Mariachiara Esposito from Science Europe call for policy makers in Europe to abandon the prevailing approach to innovation that has informed European policies and funding programmes, in particular Horizon 2020. Instead, they call for a recognition of the role of arts and humanities research in fostering future innovation. Read more [...]
Welcome to this special issue of EuroScientist focusing on Gender issues in research and academia. We have asked the views of Nobel Laureates, who have an interesting perspective on women in science. You will also discover a wealth of opinions describing what remains to be done to resolve gender issues. Not only do we discuss ways of resolving conscious and unconscious gender bias, but we also look at issues related to how gender perspective affects the nature of research itself. As for solutions, it appears that mentoring is one of the most helpful solution, beyond more interventionist approaches such as quota, which are controversial. Read more [...]
In this opinion piece, Polish entrepreneurship expert Agnieszka Klucznik-Törő shares her view on how female entrepreneurship is changing across Europe. She argues that understanding it better is paramount in devising suitable support mechanisms for women involved. She refers to the on-line resource developed under the EU-funded WINGS project as an example of suitable solutions to help women entrepreneurs tackle typical challenges they face. Read more [...]
The League of European Research Universities, LERU , launches today, 16th September 2015, a new report showing how Gendered Research and Innovation (GRI) can foster new knowledge and solutions to global challenges. And such challenges are not minor. Indeed, research failing to account for sex and gender specificities can put lives at risk and be costly. Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment is a US/EU initiative whose goal is to explore how gender analysis can open doors to discovery. Meanwhile, international, collaborations supported by the European Commission and the US National Science Foundation developed state-of-the art methods for sex and gender research. Read more [...]
The new Juncker Commission is attempting to tackle the sluggish economic climate by introducing a punchy new plan. It involves the creation of the European Fund for Strategic Investment to invest in job creation and growth. This initiative has generally been welcome. Except that the proposal involves taking €2.7 billion away from Horizon 2020, the very programme supposed to produce the innovations that would contribute to the growth of the economy. This has triggered uproar in the European science community. This reaction was further compounded by criticism from the European Court of Auditors pointing to the many gaps in the proposed plan. Finally, additional concerns that further funding restrictions could be imposed on the way structural funds are permitted to be used have also emerged, given that research features low on the list of EC priorities. Read more [...]
The State is not just a market-failure fixer, it has to be active in investing in innovation
Mariana Mazzucato is a professor of economics of innovation at SPRU in the University of Sussex, UK. She presents her research in an internationally known book Read more [...]
Looking East Special Issue is dedicated to research and innovation in Eastern Europe, as deliberately defined in the widest possible geographical sense of what Eastern means. That is referring to any county located East of an imaginary line going from Berlin to Rome, all the way to the Russian Federation. Read more [...]
This post was viewed 39 times.
European science conversations by the community, for the community
