PACIFICSTREAM PROJECTS
8:06 am | 
Posted by
Artypig
VirIncCreate - virtual incubator for the creative industries
This Leonardo Pilot project will develop a virtual business incubator for the creative industries using innovative ICT including, CMS, SMS and RSS feeds.
The project will provide specific business support and training for start-up creative companies.
Three key modules for the project will be
1. Content development
2. Online environment and collaborative communication tools development
3. Training programme
The content will include: Virtual Business Support, Virtual Mentoring, Networking and Collaborative Working, and a training programme covering generic and specific support. The virtual incubation process will follow these stages: ENTRY Protocol (Counselling and Application) - Pre-Incubation Activity - Incubation - Green housing (Preparation for independence and progress towards a stand-alone company) - EXIT Protocol.
Research into best practice clearly illustrates how effective business incubation is. However, within the creative industries graduates move towards self-employment in specialist workshops with only 11% of graduate designers progressed into major design companies. The traditional incubator environment is not suitable because of the specialist resources and needs of the industry yet these companies require generic and specialist business support that is delivered in suitable and appropriate modules with on-line support and training. Design graduates are reluctant to develop business skills and entrepreneurial acumen.
Additionally:
Traditional areas of business support were not geared up to dealing with creative businesses
There are challenges with persuading talented entrepreneurs of the importance of commercial skills
There are challenges with clients of the worth of their IP
This project will address the issues above and alleviate the lack of skills necessary to deal with them within the creative industries.
The virtual incubator will support start-ups from the creative content sector, that is, those developing innovative content within art and design industries. It will be developed as a best practice model for business incubation with the specific focus on developing an environment condusive to success within the Creative Industries. This will allow the virtual incubator model that will be developed to be flexible in it’s’ design and implementation and allow it to be adapted to a wide range of industrial sectors.
The aims of the project are to develop, research best practice, test, evaluate the impact, improve and disseminate and exploit an innovative ICT approach to targeted business training and development based upon business incubation.
Partners: Vefsn videregaende skole - Mosjoen Norway, Universitatea “Danubius” - Galati Romania, University of Antwerp - The Centre for Language and Speech - Antwerp Belgium, LYNfabrikken - Aarhus Denmark, Network for Experience Industries- Malmo Sweden, Technická univerzita v Kosiciach - Kosice Slovakia, Design Initiative - Liverpool UK, ANNUR-FORMACION-CULTURA - Badajoz Spain, Splinter Ltd - Liverpool UK, University of Central Lancashire - Preston UK, Innovationworks Ltd - Stockport UK.
Leonardo da Vinci
Period: October 2006 - September 2008
Medics on the Move
In collaboration with Universiteit Antwerpen, Applied Linguistics, Research Unit Language Studies, (BE)
The motivation for medical professionals to work abroad can range from a desire for greater practical experience, financial gain, challenging job conditions and/or scientific curiosity. According to a survey carried out by EMSA, the European Medical Students' Association1, German students for their specialist training preferably select England because of the good training facilities and the growing need for doctors, or Switzerland because of the good salary. But also France and the Nordic countries are very popular. Suffering from a shortage of qualified medical professionals, nearly every European country welcomes and even specifically encourages this “doctor traffic”. In 2004, Germany, to stick to the initial example, had around 18,0002 foreign doctors registered. 7,072 migrated from another EUmember state, mainly from Greece (1,265), Austria (1,130) and Poland (1,086). The biggest group of foreign doctors from outside the EU came from Russia (1,591), followed by Iran (1,265). Generally speaking, half of these people work in a hospital; the other half has his/her own practice. Also in other countries the percentage of foreign doctors is considerable. According to the General Medical Council in the UK only 162,000 of the 230,000 doctors registered are UK nationals; 12,000 come from EU countries as well as Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein and 60,000 from the rest of the world. These highly skilled medical professionals who, are mobile citizens, do not lack the motivation to study a foreign language to its full potential. However, in practice they are so busy acquiring all kinds of other knowledge and skills that they often just not seem to be able to interculturally operate as near-native professionals and remain stuck at a level of acquisition hovering around B1 (Common European Framework of Reference). On the part of the professional this does not only lead to faceloss when in an unequal power relation with his interactant (whether a professional or a patient), but often also to miscommunication and even communication breakdown. This has an adversary effect on the professional status of the practitioner, because these linguistic deficiencies can easily be interpreted as professional unqualification.
Innovative/European dimension • The tool helps medical professionals to overcome their linguistic deficiencies in a very efficient way: A unique vocabulary will focus on their linguistic needs in a way that a general language course can never do. The alternative to enhance the specific language skill would be one-to-one teaching, which is time consuming and not cost-effective. • Learning via a PDA is a flexible and self-directed way to broaden the expertise on medical topics (i.e. legal background) and terminology with tailor made information. • The tool enhances the communication between professionals and patient in a field were perfect understanding and precise communication is vital. • It will foster mobility within as professionals will be provided with a profound tool to progress from a level of acquisition around B1 (Common European Framework of Reference) to a level were they will be able to operate as a near-native. • Especially for this target group, with a heavy workload and often lack of time, a PDA gives the possibility to access the information everywhere and in a matter of seconds. The tool will enable this vocational group to continue learning despite of their busy schedules. • The project combines field expertise (hospitals, schools for Nursing and Social work) and scientific partners (universities/ schools for Nursing and Social work/training institutions). • The tool will also pay special attention to intercultural differences that are so crucial for mutual understanding. Centre for Language and Speech, University of Antwerp (BE)
Leonardo da Vinci
Period: October 2006 - September 2008
Virtual Cultural Perception -
To develop a visual rich asset system for cultural archives (inc.
heritage sites) that is fully navigable and available on
multi-platforms targeted at diverse audiences, from subject specialists
through to the general public
TRET
-The aim of Training in
Renewable Energy Technologies (TRET) is to enable managers and workers
in Environmental and Energy departments to put into practice EU
policies towards the use of Renewable Energy Technologies (RET) as a
basis for conservation and recovery of the environment.
link
to the TRET platform
link to the TRET
web site
link to the Review doc
Artificial
Immune System
Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence
Signal & Image Processing
Pattern Recognition
Immunology
eBusiness
eTraining
Partnership:
Digex Ltd – UK
Petita I Mitjana Empresa de Catalunya (PIMEC-SEFES) Spain
Tomsk University – Russia
Institute of Cybernetics – Uzbekistan
The Immunopathology Centre – Russia
Gomel Fr. Scaryna State University – Belarus
Summary
The purpose of this project is to collect a critical mass of experts
from fields of Mathematics, Information Technology, Life Sciences,
Economics, Social/Human Sciences, and Commercial Exploitation to
construct an ‘Intelligent System’ that builds upon recent advances in
Artificial Immune Systems and Computational Immunology. This will be a
scalable proof-of-concept dynamic parallel self-organising middleware
platform that relies upon web-based cellular automata algorithms to
dynamically mirror the actions and functionality of the human immune
system. Hence, further enabling the application and effectiveness of:
- Distance
spanning eLife (commerce, education, health etc.) - Metadata
ontologies - General
pattern recognition - Network
security
By
developing/implementing algorithmic paradigms that can identify
information from data streams, self-heal, react to friend/foe chaotic
stimuli and detect benevolent/malicious behaviour.
The goal of the project will be to establish a core of expertise and
develop an open source toolkit; the emphasis will be to distribute the
knowledge base via downloadable code/documents, explicit papers in
refereed journals and conference presentations. Besides the
aforementioned networking, this will benefit the academic community and
general society by:
Providing tools that will help shift informatic networks from a rule
configured/relational database centric paradigm to an organic dynamic
based philosophy
Reducing the need for endless software patches, virus detection
upgrades, interfering firewalls and archaic techniques in data
warehousing which tend to be labour intensive, inefficient, prone to
failure and cost organisations time and money
Enabling the automatic detection of security violations and identifying
’interesting’ behaviour by recognising systematic patterns out of
seemingly chaotic data streams. Thus freeing resources spent analysing
redundant data and catching malicious behaviour in the act
It is the hope that the core audience will consist of information
driven organisations which can become more globally competitive by
involving paradigms involving computational immunology and metadata
ontologies to alleviate problems and grasp opportunities.
EDORCO
- E-Developing of Oral Competence for Power Engineering Specialists
The project has been designed in response to a need brought about by a
new unifying EU markets with power energy. The process of
liberalisation and deregulation of energy markets will start in the
near future in 2004 and will last to 2009. / from the
document "Liberalisation on European energy market", European Union
Issues and Trends, /. As it was stated in the document " the Council
reached an agreement on a draft regulation on cross-border electricity
exchanges, which is crucial to the creation of a single energy market
as opposed to the coexistence of fifteen liberalised markets." The
document "Energy policy of the European Union" indicated energy to be a
key factor for Europe's competitiveness and economic development. The
aim of the project is to develop the online courses enhancing the oral
competence in two official European languages, English and French that
are important for vocational communication of power engineering
specialists (PES) on the European level. It is the first online
language course in English and French for the sector of energy
production and supply aimed at upgrading oral skills in
specific vocational areas.
The co-ordinator of the project is the Technical University of Kosice,
Slovakia. The partner countries involved in the project are the UK,
Belgium, Poland, Greece, Germany and Slovakia. All the products of the
project will be developed and disseminated in mutual cooperation of all
partner institutions within two years. After the procedure of
accreditation of the project products in all partner countries
the online courses in English and French will be delivered across
Europe. During the project EDORCO the learning materials will be
developed in two modules, English and French.
download
Dissemination Guide documents from here
download valorisation presentation from here
VIRCOUNS-
Lifelong Learning and
Carrier Counselling using new ICT approach and Tools
To improve
the access to continuing vocational training and the lifelong
acquisition of skills and competences by developinga new ICT based
approach and methods in vocational guidance and counselling - the
virtual cousellor (VIRCOUNS) The project will also promote
entrepreneurship, envisaging the development of new employment
possibilities
view
Quality Management Background document from here
view Quality
Management Plan example from here
LINGUA 2[04]
view
documents from here [EN]
view documents from here [DE]
DEPTH -Digital
e-procurement
techologies in health
view
documents from here
Health
Technologies Task Force link
Innovations
not reaching patients 17th Nov 04 - BBC News
Measures
are to be taken to speed up the delivery of lifesaving new medical
technologies to patients.
A report by the Healthcare Industries Task Force says
innovations do not reach patients quickly enough, partly due to
structural flaws in the NHS.
It recommends the NHS's Device Evaluation Service be modernised, and an
innovation centre established to stimulate to promote new ideas.
Health Minister Lord Warner has pledged to act on the recommendations.
The task
force was set up by the Department of Health and industry last year,
and charged with drawing up proposals to promote better use of medical
technology in the NHS.
Among its other recommendations is the creation of academic centres of
excellence to pioneer specialist treatments and techniques.It also says
NHS staff require improved training and education on the use of medical
devices.Better information should also be made available to patients
and the public on healthcare products.And a new data collection system
is needed to gain a clearer picture of the industry and its performance.
Sir Christopher O'Donnell is co-chairman of the task force and chief
executive of the medical equipment company Smith and Nephew.
He said: "A lot of technology is available, but it is a case of how can
we speed this up across the whole of the NHS and develop innovation,
and really improve patient health."
Sir Christopher said examples of technology which could be made more
widely available included MRI scanners, deep brain probes for
Parkinson's disease and new materials for orthopaedic surgery.
The NHS is not a unitary market, it is series of trust hospitals.
"What we are looking to do is have a consistent evaluation system for
new medical technology which is also locked into the procurement system
in such a way that once you have tested something, and got a firm
opinion on it, you can get it more widely used more quickly across the
whole of the country."
Sir
Christopher said it was particularly important to help smaller
companies gain access to the huge NHS market.
Health
Minister, Lord Warner, welcomed the report.
He said: "An enhanced Device Evaluation Service and a new Innovation
Centre are particular practical improvements we want to follow through
with. "We will continue to work in partnership to encourage the best
use of NHS resources and stimulate science and industry in the UK."
