Search Results for: Research

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of exemptions from the European Union’s (EU) new energy taxation directive have been proposed by the European Commission for the eastern and southern European countries joining the EU in May (barring Cyprus).

They would be added to the already long list of exemptions negotiated by existing Member States that prompted EU internal market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein to liken the legislation to “Gruyere cheese”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
NEW technology has been introduced in the USA that will alert meat packers to the fat content in a carcass without having to cut into it. According to the country’s Agriculture Research Service (ARS), the dual x-ray absorptiometrey (or DXA), uses x-rays of differing energy levels to scan for soft tissue of varying densities.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE LARGEST museum in the world and – arguably – the grandest of them all, the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is returning to its roots. In the middle of a long and painstaking modernisation process, the Russian museum is striving, in addition to the urgent physical restoration required to bring the museum into the 21st century, to recapture the ambience of its Imperial origins, when its vast palaces were the residence of the Tsars.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded project has developed a technical system to search and retrieve the increasing amount of information held in digital moving image video, still photograph or audio archives. Its coordinators say that the project will be very useful for museums and research institutes who store such material.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL accord providing for joint-research projects on transport air pollution has been struck by the European Union (EU), the United States, Japan and China. Aimed at creating a global system to measure such emissions, the deal will provide for joint vehicle testing and should lead to the next generation of European emission standards for passenger cars and light vans.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSTITUTE for Energy, (part of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre), has signed a deal with the EuropeAid Cooperation Office to help implement large scale on-site modernisation projects at Russian and Ukrainian nuclear power plants, that include making improvements to design safety.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union project promoting research into medical crises, including possible bio-terrorist attacks and new diseases such as SARS, has gained the support of the European Commission. The HESCULAEP project (a particularly tortuous acronym for “health emergency national regional programmes for an improved co-ordination in pre-hospital setting”) is being funded by the EU’s research Sixth Framework Programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A CALL has been made to nuclear energy researchers to submit informal proposals for grants from the European Union (EU) Sixth Framework Programme on research. The European Commission wants ‘expressions of interest’ regarding future formal applications for EU funding.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TECHNOLOGY being developed by a European Commission funded research project should allow curators to effectively monitor environmental pollution that can damage ancient treasures in museums and galleries. The MIMIC (microclimate indoor monitoring in cultural heritage preservation) project is using a range of sophisticated devices to deduce the effect of changes in humidity, temperature, light and pollutant levels (nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrous acid and ozone).…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICAN research has suggested that having a strong sweet tooth may indicate an increased risk of developing alcoholism. A study performed by doctors from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, found college students’ whose fathers were alcoholics, showed an unusually strong preference for sugary tastes, compared with students with no family history of substance abuse.…