Search Results for: Climate change

BY MARK ROWE
IT is difficult to separate the present-day Czech paint industry from the industrial heritage of the country. While the rest of the world made jokes about Skoda cars during the Communist era, the Czechs fumed as they saw a once great engineering industry reduced to a laughing stock.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EARTHQUAKE insurance is an odd business in that the human scale of a disaster is sometimes wildly in excess of the economic losses and the latter in turn often far exceed the level of cover and therefore claims.…

BY MARK ROWE
INTRODUCTION

WEATHER forecasting has evolved somewhat beyond the reliance of medieval truisms such as rain on St Swithin’s Day meant 40 more days of showers. But better weather forecasts are only any use if we are able to respond to such information accordingly and effectively.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations (UN) is warning African countries to gear up for a possible increase in demand for male circumcisions, after the publication of a study suggesting it could significantly cut male HIV infections. The French study of 3,273 South African men showed that circumcised men were 63% less likely than uncircumcised men to be infected through sex with HIV-positive women.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE OPEN Runway system, produced by the UK’s Met Office, (Met for Meteorological), has proved popular in helping British airports to mitigate the potential delays associated with extreme weather events. Essentially, Open Runway gives airports an advance warning of the need for runway clearance and gritting in the event of snow and ice.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MALARIA parasites make humans infected with the disease when in its transmissible phase more attractive to mosquitoes, encouraging them to bite, become infected themselves, and then spread it to other hosts, researchers claim. The fact that mosquitoes carrying a fully developed malaria parasite are manipulated by this organism to bite more frequently was already known.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE USA launch of a new “safer” cigarette called Fact, whose filter supposedly cuts out harmful chemicals without impacting on taste, has been delayed because of fears its marketing could mislead consumers into thinking it was “safe”. The cigarette – a PREP (potentially reduced-exposure product) – was to be manufactured by an independent tobacco company in North Carolina, US: the Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corporation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) internal market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has indicated a willingness to compromise with opponents of a proposed EU directive that would force listed companies to appoint in-house audit committee. Speaking to a conference on European corporate governance, in Luxembourg City, McCreevy recognised the critics, whom he said had “woken up somewhat late in the day”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DETAILED studies from a series of collaborative projects on improving the groundwater aquifers of ‘Karst’ limestone coastal areas have been released by a group of scientists coordinated by Europe’s COST initiative (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical research).…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
CARMAKERS have experienced tremendous growth in the Asia Pacific region recently, as China and India in particular generate new sales and manufacturing opportunities. General Motors recently announced that its 2005 first quarter production figures for the region were up by around 14% compared with 2004, with Ford and other leading manufacturers predicting similar growth.…