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, …
Britain's ministry of defence is finding it difficult to sell off a few of the 3,400 sites it owns, to raise some urgently required funds. At least 8 sites are assumed to be radioactive from the use of radium-based luminous paint, and at least 1 is contaminated with the First …
Researchers at England's University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne have developed efficient fuel cells based on methyl alcohol for use in electric cars (New Scientist, Vol 144, No 1946). To use methyl alcohol as a fuel requires it to be broken down to yield hydrogen, using a catalyst. But the catalyst was problematic …
A British medical team has found evidence linking chronic fatigue to viral illness (The Lancet, Vol 344, No 8926). Anthony David and his colleagues at the Institute' of Psychiatry, London, England, conducted a study of 618 patients with a general practice diagnosis of viral illness. They found that 6 months …
Small and medium-sized companies are probably in for a better time, with Germany's Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft setting up a branch in Michigan. The group, which has conducted research worth $648 million, stresses on links between universities and industries, especially smaller firms. "We want to work with the Fraunhofer model because it has …
A British firm has developed a needle-less disposable syringe that administers drugs painlessly (New Scientist, Vol 143, No 1944). The new jabber is a pen-shaped device with a button on top. When pressed, the button pierces a vial of compressed gas, allowing it to surge down into a chamber containing …
A British chemical company, Thor Holdings, has been hauled up to the London High Court by 2 workers in South Africa suffering from severe mercury poisoning, and by the family of a man who died from exposure to the metal. It is on the mat for alleged negligence in allowing …
Trees in the cities of the UK are feeling the cutting edge of the latest communications boom. Tree roots are being severed as cable companies dig trenches along an estimated 80 km of streets a day to feed the insatiable public appetite for new television channels. Environmental groups like the …
The green credentials of Body Shop, a highly successful British cosmetics company with a chain of 1,100 outlets in 45 countries, took a beating with allegations of flimsy environmental standards. The controversy was sparked off when Franklin Research & Development Corporation, a US-based investment company, sold off its 50,000 Body …
BRITISH physicist Stephen Hawking, arguably one of the brightest minds of the century and author of the bestseller A Brief History of Time, has been described as a "cerebral man". But his is no mind-over-matter story, nor is he the proverbial Jack-of-all-work-and-no-play. He is a victim of a debilitating affliction …
PEA-SOUP smog-ridden skies don't usually make news in the UK: they are a part of life. However, when pollutants, primarily ground-level ozone, registered a steep increase in July this year, the uk's department of environment (DOE) issued an air quality alert: try not to use cars, jog, or even exercise …
THE BOOM over houses not only set windows rattling but made insomniacs out of deep snorers. That was a couple of decades ago, at least abroad. So the airlines tried to go in for whispering engines. After all this hullaballoo and court cases against erring airports, a definition of acceptable …
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin is dead. Just for the record, Hodgkin was Britain's only surviving woman Nobel laureate till arthritis claimed her on July 31 at the age of 84. One of brightest crystallographers of her time, Hodgkin earned renown for unravelling the molecular structure of penicillin, insulin and vitamin B12. …
NEC Corp, the Tokyo-based electronics concern, plans to dazzle consumers with a 256-megabyte flash memory chip. This "next generation" device, which will be 16 times as powerful as those now in the market, has the potential to beat the conventional dynamic random access memory chips hands down, says nec vice-president …
A NEW drug to treat thalassaemia -- a genetically transmitted children's blood disorder that causes the rapid destruction of red blood cells leading to anaemia -- is set to hit the Indian market. Developed by George J Kontoghiorghes at the haematology department of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine …
WHAT could the consequences be of the rapid extinction of plant and animal species, as witnessed this century? A team of researchers at the Centre for Population Biology, of the UK's Imperial College at Silwood Park says that it has demonstrated experimentally, for the first time, that the loss of …
A LITTLE learning is a dangerous thing. That wisdom is increasingly dawning on scientists who are unravelling the truth about genes and diseases. Thanks to breakthroughs in molecular biology, scientists can ascertain from blood or tissue samples the presence or absence of genes that are responsible for about 10 to …
AS THE link between cigarette smoking and cancer and heart disease is more firmly established, scientists are increasingly looking at the impact a parent's smoking has on both the unborn and the growing offspring. Two recent studies reveal that not only does a mother's active smoking expose her young children …
DOING business with Britain is not Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad's cup of tea any longer. Following allegations in the British press that Mohamad had accepted a bribe from a British contractor, the prime minister has imposed tough trade sanctions against that country. In a move geared to send Britain's …
GREEN pigments, scientists believed, were found only in plants. In most animals whose plumage or body parts appear green, the colour is seen not because of pigments but because of the refraction of light through the not-so-opaque scales or feathers. Now, scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Oxford University …
