There are significant barriers preventing many users, often disadvantaged citizens such as people with disabilities and elderly people, from accessing many services and information provided by e-solutions, especially governmental and commercial web sites and public access systems. Tenuta is a project funded by the European Union (EU) that is helping improve the usability and accessibility of es...

Long-term birth cohort studies are essential to understanding the life course and childhood predictors of allergy and the complex interplay between genes and the environment (including lifestyle and socioeconomic determinants). Over 100 cohorts focusing on asthma and allergy have been initiated in the world over the past 30 years. Since 2004, several research initiatives funded under the EU Fra...

Rare diseases represent an important public-health issue, affecting 26-30 million persons across Europe, and a major challenge for research. The fragmentation of resources and knowledge for the 6000-8000 rare diseases and the lack of efficient treatments for many of them necessitate a coordinated European approach to unravel the underlying molecular defects and pathophysiological mechanisms. Th...

This article describes the current evolution of QoS architectures, mechanisms, and protocols in the Internet, as it is ongoing in the framework of the European Union funded research projects on premium IP networks. A short review of the proposed standard approaches to QoS (e.g., differentiated services, integrated services, and label switching technologies) is given. Then we focus on the state-...