Search Results for: Australia

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

NON-metallic minerals, long considered the poor relations in the extended family of industrial minerals, are suddenly popular again.

They have found favour once more because of their molecular structures and their usefulness in the rapidly advancing world of nanotechnology.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

IN the rapidly expanding world of nanotechnology, the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors are of the utmost importance. Millions of dollars and Euro are being pumped into nanotechnology research, with Euro 90 million being earmarked for nano-medicine under the European Union’s (EU) outgoing sixth framework programme research alone: more money is expected to be spent under the seventh framework programme, which should start in January 2007.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WEST African countries that have spearheaded the call for reductions in cotton subsidies at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round have released a proposed formula guaranteeing these cuts are significant. If proposals tabled by the so-called Cotton-Four states Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali are accepted, cotton reductions would be deeper than cuts to agricultural subsidies in general.…

BY MARK ROWE

FOR something so small, nanotechnology is set to play a big role in the work of the environmental health officer. As it stretches across the entire field of science, from medicine and physics to engineering and chemistry, the areas that potentially encroach upon the work of the EH officer are considerable – not least because nanotechnology’s emerging uses are increasingly raising concern that it may harm workers, consumers or the environment and,

According to Dr Sally Tinkle of the US-based National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the key areas at issue – industrial, consumer and medical applications – each have their own concerns.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

ONGOING recruitment of South African nurses to the UK is pushing South Africa’s already hard pressed public health system close to the brink of collapse and putting patient care at risk, the country’s lead nursing union and health experts have warned.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EASHW) has released a database of good practice information on dealing with risks posed by asbestos. The information has been culled from all European Union (EU) member states, the International Labour Organisation and non-EU countries, including the USA and Australia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is this week (FEB 7-8) proposing a compulsory standard making disposable cigarette lighters child resistant, transforming dangerous products widely available in small shops. It is tabling to the European Union’s (EU) general product safety directive committee detailed technical rules already compulsory in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE COUNTRIES of eastern and southern Africa pose two particularly serious challenges for the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the world’s leading anti money laundering agency, according to Alain Damais, the organisation’s executive secretary. In an interview with the Money Laundering Bulletin, he also discussed developments in money laundering typologies, the progress made by China towards becoming an FATF member and EU legislation designed to thwart laundering.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

A NEW coating may make cleaning bathrooms a chore of the past say researchers from Sydney, Australia. The Australia Research Council Centre for Functional Nanomaterials is studying tiny particles of titanium dioxide currently used on outdoor surfaces such as self-cleaning windows, to be used in indoor surfaces in homes and hospitals.…