Research carried out at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology-FORTH and published today in Cell Metabolism reveals that intrinsic DNA damage triggers a chronic auto-inflammatory response leading to fat depletion.

A new distinction for FORTH, Greece's major Research Centre, came through the recent approval by the ERC (European Research Council) of one more proposal that was submitted by Dr. Xenofontas Dimitropoulos of FORTH's Institute of Computer Science (ICS). This ERC grant will fund Dimitropoulos' "NetVolution" project, to perform research on evolving the routing system of the Internet. ERC starting grants are considered highly honorary: they are given for cutting edge research and they are very competitive -- in 2013, out of 3,329 proposals that were submitted Europe-wide and across all disciplines, only 287 were accepted, i.e. just nine percent (9%); only two (2) of these 287 approved grants are given to researchers in Greek institutions, and "NetVolution" is one of the two. Dr. Dimitropoulos is repatriating to Greece, coming to FORTH and the University of Crete, where he has been elected Assistant Professor, leaving his position with ETH Zurich.

“Creative Crete” is a unique installation of pioneering interactive technologies located at Heraklion international airport “Nikos Kazantzakis”, realized by the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH under the initiative of the Region of Crete.

The Ultrafast Laser Micro- and Nano- processing team led by Dr. Emmanuel Stratakis, Principal Application Scientist of the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL/FORTH) and the Nanomaterials & Organic Electronics (NANO) Group, led by Prof. Emmanuel Kymakis, Associate Professor of the Technical Educational Institute (T.E.I) of Crete, have demonstrated a groundbreaking methodology for controlled in-situ reduction of spin-casted graphene oxide (GO) nanometric films on flexible substrates and the subsequent realization of highly conductive and transparent electrodes for flexible organic photovoltaics (OPV).

The Onassis Seminar Lecture Series of 2013 in Physics and Chemistry is devoted to: “Nanoscience and Nanotechnology” with emphasis on graphene and related applications.

Kostas Tokatlidis, Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Technology at the University of Crete and an affiliated Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas (IMBB-FORTH) has been elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO).

Turn down the volume! Noise in everyday life is a significant and growing problem that, according to the World Health Organisation, is responsible for many healthy years of life lost [1]. And it is not just traffic,mobile devices or so-called personal music equipment that is responsible, but speech itself. Anyone unfortunate enough to spend much time at a public transport interchange or airport is assailed by loud, distorted and repetitive announcements. Keeping the volume high is the easy way to ensure that anyone listening gets the message, especially in noisy environments, but is it the smartest solution?

The paper entitled "AmI-RIA: Real-Time Teacher Assistance Tool for an Ambient Intelligence Classroom", presented by Asterios Leonidis, PhD Candidate at the University of Crete and member of the Human Computer Interaction Laboratory of ICS-FORTH, received the Best Paper Award at the 5th International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning (eLmL 2013, Nice, France, 24 February – 1 March 2013).