This white paper examines the current challenges for clean energy infrastructure and identifies solutions that industrial clusters, transport and logistics industries, and the wider clean energy value chain can jointly explore in order to accelerate its deployment. Thirteen new industrial clusters from Australia, Brazil, Colombia, India, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, …
SCIENTISTS studying bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease agree that there is a risk that BSE may have passed into flocks of sheep and goats in the United Kingdom. These sheep were fed with BSE-contaminated meat and bone meal till July 1998 which could have infected the sheep …
Net goodies for free Internet will emerge as the communications medium of the next century, say the Netgurus. Many of us are used to services like Microsofts Hotmail at http.//-wwwhotmail.com, which provide free e-mail and file storage facilities through a web browser. But now Dixons, the biggest electronic retailer in …
A GOVERNMENT taskforce investigating ways of reducing business emissions of greenhouse gases has endorsed an energy tax on businesses in the UK. Lord Marshall, chairperson of British Airways, who headed the taskforce said: "My conclusion is that there probably is a role for a tax if businesses of all sizes …
THEY may be bad, but they are worth saving too. That is the message from a team of British biologists who say the millions of viruses, bacteria and fungi that kill or blight plant life across the planet should be conserved with the same urgency as other species. Though harmful …
Belgian park exported to the UK could contain traces of banned drugs used to tranquillise pigs on their way to the battoir. The chemicals could be placing UK consumers at risk claims a division of the British Veterinary Association. The Pig Veterinary Society said it was 'deeply canceracd' that consumer …
DUNCAN WINGHAM is a worried man. Millions of people throughout the world living within one metre of the sea level - half a million in the Nile Delta itself - will lose their homes to the rising sea if his findings are correct. Global warming is causing a rise in …
A survey on artificially-sweetened products found that some firms in the UK were ignoring legal requirements - that is to state, "with sweeteners" - on the packaging of the product. The survey was conducted by the Food Commission, a body incharge of quality control of food items in the UK. …
A GERMAN physician noticed an illness about 250 years ago, which he coined the phrase "the pulse of the doctor". Now, the same illness has got a new name: white coat hypertension. It refers to an increase in the pulse rate and blood pressure (BP) of a patient when he …
The British energy minister John Battle announced funds for 261 pro- jects aimed at generating 1,177 megawatts of electricity from wind, water and waste. This emerged from the latest round of Non Fossil Fuel Obligation (NFFO), which obliges electricity companies to buy from alternative sources. It is a major shift …
Mobile phone company Orange recently displayed a prototype video- capable mobile phone at London's Live '98 technology exhibition. It uses a proprietary image compres- sion system developed at Strathclyde University, that can send 12 frames per second over 9.6 kilobit-per-sec- ond networks. Also in the exhibition was Philips, the Dutch …
Engineers send self-powered robots down oil and gas pipelines to check their condition. So researchers at University College in London have devised similar technique for use inside the human intestine. Two small units, which the researchers have compared to sausages, carry a television camera, a radio transmitter, a battery unit …
AN OIL slick in the English Channel is threatening marine life along a 225 km, stretch of the southeastern coast of England. "This is the first major incident of its kind that we have had since the Torrey Canyon Disaster in 1967," claimed Dennis Fenter, warden of Brent Lodge Bird …
THEY have been mistaken for extraterrestrial visitors, supernatural phenomenon and everything in between. And recently, the crew of an Air UK jet, which was struck by lightning, saw "fireballs in the cabin". Ball lightning is the term that is given to these mysterious balls of fire that usually appear during …
XENOTRANSPLANTATION, the practice of transplanting animal organs in human patients, has been challenged by British human rights group. The report, co-authored by the British Union for Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and Compassion in World Farming (CWF), challenging the usefulness and safety of the practice, says that there was little evidence …
CHIROPRACTIC is a system of treatment where the backbone is treated mainly by manipulations. The treatment does not prescribe drugs or chemicals. It has almost no appeal among pharmaceuticals. And its effectiveness and safety has been questioned more often than not by cynics, other medical professionals and even the public. …
Environmentally-sound farming techniques can be up to 40 per cent more profitable than currently popular methods. Integrated farm management (IFM), a new system, allows insecticides to be sprayed only if pests reach a threshold level. Crops are rotated to suppress weeds and maintain fertility. Those opposed to intensive farming argue …
The popular image of termites as timber-munching pests needs to be overhauled. In tropical forests, the vast majority of termites do not conform to the stereotype, say researchers at the National History Museum in London. Instead, most termites eat rotting vegetation in the soil and nest underground. They may be …
DO NOT go by their looks. They may look tattered and torn, but forests that have been plundered by loggers can still retain most of their tree species diversity. Ecologists studying Southeast Asian forests that have been stripped of their most valuable timber say that the regenerating forest canopy will …
DRUG addiction: every parent's nightmare. What incites their otherwise-normal, teenage children to use drugs? Is it peer-induced, or do genes play an important role? There are several theories on the issue, but none can answer the question satisfactorily. Unable to find any answers, researchers in the UK are now adopting …
STEP aside professor, your computer is about to make an important invention. Yes, intelligent computer programs are beginning to make discoveries of their own, as well as saving valuable research time. Stephen Muggleton, a computer scientist at the University of York, UK, has been working with molecular biologists at the …
