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, …
British Telecom's research laboratories in Martlesham, Suffolk, have developed a pocket dictionary-sized box that could replace the wiring needed in offices to connect computers and telephones. Known as passive picocell, the box can fit on the wall or the ceiling of an office. A prototype of the product has been …
The longest court case in Britain's history ended in a costly victory for McDonald's Corp of the US when two British environmental activists were ordered to pay the company US $98,000 in damages. The case cost the company a whopping US$16 million. In a trial that lasted for 314 days, …
ANCIENT coral reefs containing rich bio-diversity in the north Atlantic are being threatened due to deep sea drilling by oil companies. Marine scientists are concerned that the oil industry is trying to exploit an area off northwest Scotland known as the Atlantic Frontier even before biological surveys are completed. British …
THE latest source that promises new hope for cancer patients is an African tree. A drug derived from the bark of the African bush willow has been found to hamper blood supply to cancer cells. Tests have shown that it can kill up to 95 per cent of solid turnour …
A NEW fibre developed by the British textile firm Courtaulds - Lyocell - is causing considerable interest in the markets in Europe, and now in India. Courtaulds claims that Lyocell blends the favourable qualities of cotton with those of synthetic fibre, and can be mass produced in an envirpnment friendly …
THE threat posed by the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, UK, has extended through the Arctic Ocean into the waters of northern Canada. According to a new Canadian study, the radioactive contamination, which had not been previously picked up so far from Britain, is having a bigger impact on …
GETTING drinking water by immediate purification of sewage, inconceivable sopme years back, is now a reality. An Australian company, Memtec, has successfully used microfiltration technology to purify sewage in a small town in the UK. The town had for the past 30 years been dumping untreated sewage into the sea. …
SCIENTISTs at the MRc Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, claim to have unearthed a significant relationship between calcium present in our bodies and cellular responses. Calcium plays an important role in various physio -biological functions ranging from normal development to illness and cell death. Besides, the calcium atom …
EVOLUTION has moulded living creatures in such a manner that their ability to survive an reproduce is constantly improving. on a rough sense, one may say that given two populations, one of ancestors and a second of descendants, the descendants will carry a subset of ancestral genes: genes which contribute …
Women who gave birth to twins may be protected against breast cancer, says a study from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London. This population-based study reports that their risk was reduced by almost a third as compared with mothers who had only one baby. Data was taken by examining 47,000 …
Norman MacLeod of the Natural History Museum in London and his team suggest that most dinosaurs died due to changes in the earthly environment some 65 million years ago than due to exotic visitors like asteroids. They studied the fossil record of extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous period
Twenty four black South African workers are planning to give evidence in London against three British companies, which they say poisoned them with asbestos and mercury. Reportedly, two workers have died from mercury poisoning in 1992, and hundreds from asbestos-related diseases after working at British plants set up in South …
A new type of bullet-proof vest made from liquid crystals has been invented by researchers at the University of Southampton, UK. When applying an electrical voltage to a layer of crystals, researchers discovered that they all turn to face the same direction, forming a long chain of molecules. Hightensile fibres …
tuberculosis (tb), the giant killer, may be effectively contained with the help of a microbe Mycobacterium vaccae, which is closely related to the bacterium that causes the disease. Researchers from the London-based company Stanford Rook Holdings (srh), have claimed that an injection of killed M vaccae, which is usually found …
there is good news for people who have athlete's foot, jock itch and those who have laundry baskets full of smelly socks. An acrylic fibre that can kill irritating, odour-producing microorganisms has been produced by British textile company Courtaulds. The fibres are impregnated with antifungal and antibacterial compounds that slowly …
the successful trial of an experimental vaccine developed by a British healthcare group has given a major boost to researchers looking for an effective remedy for malaria. The SmithKline Beecham group based in Brentford, uk, says that the vaccine was tried on volunteers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of …
herbal medicines are taking a toll of rare plants in several Asian countries. According to a new study conducted by the British firm McAlpine, Thorpe and Warrier, and supported by botanists, 18 species of plants are facing extinction due to sales of herbal potions, growing by more than 10 per …
Discovery of a viral protein that slips in and out of living cells by a mysterious route has raised hopes of making gene therapy more effective. Christened viral protein 22, or VP22, the enigmatic protein is made by the virus that causes cold sores ( New Scientist , Vol 153, …
The Edinburgh event has been followed by one more 'successful' cloning incident. Barely a week after the world said hello to Dolly, a group of scientists in Oregon, US, claimed, albeit unofficially, that from cloned embryos they have produced monkeys. Apparently, the technique used was similiar to the Scottish experiment. …
