New actions agreed by COST committee
The COST committee of senior officials agreed in principle on the 5 and 6 October to the launch of nine new actions during the course of the year. The meeting also saw the creation a new technical committee on medicine and health, with a mandate of three years. The new actions fall into six categories: materials, environment, agriculture and biotechnology, social sciences, medicine and health and miscellaneous. -Materials Two actions were agreed in principle. 'Efficient lighting for the 21st century' will seek new concepts and materials for the lighting industry, which avoid any known environmentally harmful substances through the study of the feasibility of high efficacy, novel, light source technologies. 'Life-cycle inventories for environmentally conscious manufacturing processes' will be aimed at increasing knowledge with regard to the environmental impacts of manufacturing processes in order to develop and apply environmentally friendly processes, reduce environmental impacts and costs, and take knowledge-based decisions. -Environment 'Life-cycle assessment of textile products, eco-efficiency and definition of best available technology (BAT) of textile processing' will aim to expand multi-disciplinary life cycle assessments to cover the whole of the textile processing and textile product chain, and develop indicators for evaluations of cleaner textile processing alternatives with respect to their ecological and economic performance. -Agriculture and biotechnology Two actions were agreed in this category. The first, 'parasitic plant management in sustainable agriculture' will see attempts to increase our understanding of the interaction between parasitic plants and their hosts, in order to implement sustainable means of control. The second, 'bio-control symbioses' will seek to develop a better understanding of interactions taking place in those biocontrol symbioses that may be used against insects and slugs in Europe. -Social sciences 'Children's welfare' is an action aimed at enhancing knowledge of children's welfare in both private and public realms in terms of their access to and use of income, service, space and time. The second action in this category, 'the impact of the internet on the mass media in Europe' will accumulate knowledge in order to understand the various changes that mass media industries are undergoing now, and will undergo in the future as a result of the development of the internet. -Medicine and health 'Corpus cavernosum EMG in erectile dysfunction' will seek to determine the value of EMG in the investigation and management of erectile dysfunction. -Miscellaneous The final action, 'non-destructive analysis and testing of museum objects' will have as its objective better preservation and conservation of European cultural heritage through the increase of knowledge of museum objects, and through the improvement of the synergy between art, historians, archaeologists, conservators and natural scientists. The next meeting between COST senior officials will take place in Brussels on 14 and 15 December. A ministerial conference is scheduled to take place in Copenhagen in September 2002. An assessment of COST activities and achievements, as well as the promotion and dissemination of results obtained in the various ongoing COST actions (around 200 annually) will be performed before this ministerial meeting.