Information Technology

A man gets lost when hiking. He is unable to tell the rescue service his exact position even though his mobile is working. Meanwhile, a pedigree dog, the apple of the owner’s eye, runs off. What to do these people do?

Mobile phone positioning helps locate lost people quickly and reliably. In the future, the volume of positioning services is expected to grow and their quality improve when the US GPS service is complemented by the European Galileo satellite positioning system.

During a ceremony held in Toulouse on 11 May 2006, ESA officially awarded EADS Astrium the contract to develop and build the Gaia satellite. The goal of this space mission, currently planned for launch in 2011, is to make the largest, most precise map of our own Galaxy to date.

The contract, worth 317 million Euros, has been jointly signed by ESA’s Director of Science, Professor David Southwood, and Antoine Bouvier, Chief Executive Officer for EADS Astrium. The Toulouse branch w

Developing ways to connect homes and businesses to the internet without using wires is the aim of a new project announced today. The research at Imperial College London could help users across Europe to access the internet, by removing the need to lay out connecting phone lines or other cables between the public internet and a user’s building or network.

At present, although it is possible to make use of wireless technology within homes and office buildings, the connection from th

Genes are the underlying cause of a large number of disorders. But identifying and studying these genes more closely is a major challenge for biotechnologists worldwide. Researchers from ESAT-SCD (Engineering Sciences) and the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to the Catholic University of Leuven have now developed ENDEAVOUR: a computer program that compiles and processes data from a variety of databases and identifies the genes that play a key role in the origin o

A pet dog sits on command, but nobody expects an insect to follow human instructions. So it may come as a surprise to learn that researchers recently succeeded in controlling cockroaches with tiny mobile robots. The results hint at a future where we can interact and communicate with many different kinds of animal.

Little larger than a thumbnail, the cubic insect-like robots or ‘insbots’ are technological marvels. Developed under the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies (

New method can identify what genes do, test drugs’ safety

Utah and Texas researchers combined miniature medical CT scans with high-tech computer methods to produce detailed three-dimensional images of mouse embryos – an efficient new method to test the safety of medicines and learn how mutant genes cause birth defects or cancer.

“Our method provides a fast, high-quality and inexpensive way to visually explore the 3-D internal structure of mouse embryos so scientists