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 scientists on a worldwide drive to screen marine fungi for possible use as rugs have found one on the Malaysian coast that can destroy leukaemia (blood cancer) cells (Spectrum, No 245). Gareth Jones of Portsmouth University, whose researchers did the screening, confirmed the lethal effect of the fungus on …
If an abnormality shows up in an ultrasound scan of a foetus, the image can now be transmitted to experts hundreds of kilometres away through a special fibre optic cable and their opinion received - all within a matter of minutes (Spectrum, No 245). The new technology is being tried …
A 29ft rubber whale, Molly the Minke, is being paraded on the back of a truck in the UK. The float will go through 38 towns and cities before it gets shipped to Dublin for the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is meeting at the end of May. Greenpeace, the …
AN OPEN invitation to devastation was given on April 26, when the United Kingdom- owned vessel, the Pacific Pintail, finally docked at Japan's Mutsu Ogawara port and its 14-tonne cargo of nuclear waste headed for a nuclear dump built over an earth fault. The ship's arrival was just as stormy …
The London High Court's recent intervention in a case could make the difference between life and death for an anorexic girl. In late April, she had won the right to be treated at a special adolescent unit for eating disorders after her parents were given a go-ahead by the High …
One of the most frustrating things about laptop computers is changing their batteries. Now, a London-based company, Radix Techno-logies, has developed a gizino that can circumvent the exorbitant new bat- teries by recharging those stone dead from a car engine. The device, which plugs into the car's cigarette lighter, converts …
British researchers are developing a voice recognition system that can identify a speaker if he or she is drunk or even has a cold. This could help reduce fraud involving cash machines and credit cards, which British banks say costs them over f,150 million annually. The new system, called Time-Encoded …
BRITAIN's criminals could well be in a biological trap. Their DNA combination, a deadly giveaway of their true identity, will be stored in a bank, the world's first of which was launched in Birmingham on April 10 this year. It will primarily support the national police network and is expected …
Upjohn Company of the UK, the manufacturer of the once popular sleeping pill Halcion, is trying hard to get a ban on its drug revoked. In a fresh move, the company is contemplating asking the Court of Appeal to refer its case to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. …
DESPITE widespread apprehensions about its potential health hazards, super-unleaded petrol is set to stay in the UK. In late March, the British govemment rejected the calls bya group of mps to ban the sale of unleaded petrol, which accounts for around 6 per cent of petrol sales in the country. …
The British government's volte face on the ban on advertising breast milk substitutes has triggered alarm in medical circles. On March 1, the government tabled before Parliament a watered down regulation that will allow advertising in publications distributed through the public healthcare system. This law is at odds with a …
ONLY the pathologically optimistic expected the recently-concluded un World Summit for Social Development to trumpet to a momentous, pathbreaking climax. "Anything that we developing countries wanted, they (the industrialised nations) voted as a bloc against us," said a disgusted Mercedes Arzu Wilson, a Guatemalan government delegate, at the end of …
THEY may have been born in dust, but seem destined to rise in esteem. Organic food -- vegetables and fruits -- is now making deep inroads into the marketplaces of the affluent economies; even carving out a niche in their cultural make-up. The interplay of both these factors in relation …
IT looked like 2 successive success stories for the animal rights activists in Britain. But now the script has turned sketchy. Their struggle against export of livestock to France and the Netherlands won the first round when they successfully blocked shipments of lambs and calves from the West Sussex port …
British farmers are on the defensive as opposition mounts from animal welfare groups on current animal farming practices. In early February, a group of about 2,000 animal lovers clashed with the police in an attempt to prevent a truckload of veal calves from reaching the small port of Brightlingsea in …
Britain's us $28 billion roads programme will now receive a touch of green. End-January, the government unveiled plans to establish a new unit which will lead in planning, construction and maintenance of the country's 30 trunk roads and motorway schemes. A bulk of the work will involve coordinating the Highway …
READ this carefully and between the lines: "British Nuclear Fuels (BNF) has just lost a multimillion pound German contract for its Thorp reprocessing plant because of pressures from the anti-nuclear lobby." Effectively, this means that that legendary part of zealous anti-nuclear mythography the world over, the reprocessing plant at Sellafield …
PROTEIN engineers at the Institute of Food Research, Reading, in the UK have found the means to produce rugged and more efficient versions of a key enzyme -- phospholipase A2 or PLA2 -- used in the food and pharmaceutical industries. PLA2 activates the breakdown of phospholipids, which are fat molecules …
For US armed forces it is now adieu metals, and welcome plastics. Researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have designed plastic-composite nosecones for shoulder-fired missiles for the marines. Plastic composites are inexpensive and lighter than metal parts. Difficult to produce, they were ignored by manufacturers. But the researchers have developed …
British scientists at the Zeneca a multinational seed company, claim that they are on the verge of developing a "natural biodegradable plastic" from rapeseed (canola) oil. Tony Fentem, the project manager, said smallscale trials will begin next year and he is "very confident" of succeeding. The company already produces 1,000 …
