Search Results for: Global Warming

By Keith Nuthall

WE all know about Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. These social utility websites allow us all to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, exchange messages, post pictures and play silly games – such as throwing a digital sheep at someone or giving them a pixellated hellraiser cocktail.…

By Alan Osborn

Budapest has been chosen as the site of the new European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), beating four other contenders (Wroclaw in Poland, Sant Cugat del Vallès near Barcelona in Spain, Jena in Germany, and Bratislava/Vienna) for the prize.…

By Keith Nuthall

Research funding for a global project that seeks to harness the thermodynamics of the stars to create a sustainable and safe nuclear fusion reactor is starting to be released. A consortium of 14 research teams from across Europe has been formed to create a computer simulation of the international ITER fusion reactor, to model the technology required to operate it safely.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TEST methods used by the International Fragrance Association to assess the sensitivity of skin to fragrance products are to be investigated by the European Union’s (EU) scientific committee on consumer products (SCCP). It will check the effectiveness of this new exposure-based methodological approach called a ‘dermal sensitisation quantitative risk assessment’ (QRA).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A GROUP of influential countries are debating forging an international anti-counterfeiting of goods agreement, which would see them cooperate against the production and trade in fake tobacco products. Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States have been discussing the idea in Geneva.…

BY PAUL RIGG, in Madrid

THE DOMINANT event in the Spanish Tobacco Market in 2008 has been Imperial Tobacco’s takeover of the Franco-Spanish company Altadis. Following a series of rebuffed bids in 2007, the widely predicted buyout was finalised on January 30, 2008.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Commission report has highlighted how China is expected to become an increasingly huge export market for food producers, already (in 2006) having a US$6.1 billion agricultural trade deficit. Annual economic growth has rarely dipped below 9% in 30 years, it stressed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies is drafting advice on the morality of modern food production techniques and policies, for publication by December. The European Commission body is considering the ethics of food security policies, agricultural sustainability, the global food trade, biofuels, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, GMOs and intellectual property rights.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, in Caracas

IN Latin America, the combination of economic growth, weak law enforcement, and a culture that turns a blind eye to corruption, creates an increasingly fertile setting for a variety of commercial crimes, Pacifica Goddard reports from Caracas.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, in New Delhi

INDIA has had its share of bad luck as regards refinery fires. Within a span of four months in 2006-07, the western coast district of Jamnagar, Gujurat state, saw two major fires in refineries operated by private companies.…