Search Results for: Australia

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

FOR devotees of Captain Kirk, Dr Spock and the original Star Trek crew, the thrilling world of nanotechnology could sound vaguely familiar. It offers the 21st century a swathe of new products and services, from dirt-repelling cars to ‘thinking’ materials that can change colour automatically.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

IT might sound like science fiction but many of the most exciting and useful advances emerging from the super-science of nanotechnology are real. Nanotechnology is a relatively new approach that deals with understanding and applying the properties of matter at the nano-scale, where a small molecule measures one nano-metre (one billionth of metre) in length, or about 1/80,000 of the diameter of a human hair.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

THE MEDIA rush to pick up on the revival of nuclear energy as a serious UK option, made plain in the Department of Trade and Industry’s recent Energy Review consultation document, has diverted attention from which tail will, in practice, be wagging the UK energy dog over the coming months.…

BY TAMARA VANTROYEN, in Hong Kong

CHINA looks to be a likely candidate for the first country in the world to approve genetically modified rice, despite the fact that the State Agricultural GM Crop Biosafety Committee, a technical body which evaluates GM rice for research, did not approve the idea at its three-day meeting in Beijing, December 10-12, 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union and Norway have divided up common stocks within the North Sea for 2006, overcoming difficult conservation problems, especially regarding cod. Brussels and Oslo have agreed on a long-term management plan for cod, to come into effect when the stock has returned to safe biological levels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union and Norway have divided up common stocks within the North Sea for 2006, overcoming difficult conservation problems, especially regarding cod. Brussels and Oslo have agreed on a long-term management plan for cod, to come into effect when the stock has returned to safe biological levels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has updated a list of gold coins that can be imported into the European Union (EU) as investment gold, and hence be exempt from VAT for 2006. Only named coins with a gold purity of less than 900 thousandths will attract VAT, furthermore, if a gold importer can prove an unlisted coin has sufficient gold purity and will be used for investment, not jewellery or manufacturing, that too can escape VAT.…

BY MARK ROWE
EACH day eight million disposable nappies are used in the UK, adding up to 2.5 billion every year. A single disposable nappy in landfill takes 500 years to decompose and, as a result, the industry in recycling disposable nappies is taking off.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AUSTRALIA and East Timor have agreed on dividing lucrative Timor Sea oil and gas resources, with an official signing ceremony expected by mid-January. Full details will be formally withheld until then, but the agreement is expected to split 50:50 royalties from the large Greater Sunrise field and defer agreeing a permanent maritime boundary.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A REPORT written for the European Commission before Hurricane Katrina could be something of a harbinger of doom for reinsurance, warning that a major disaster could put unbearable pressure on operators.

Written by consultants IMCC for the Commission’s competition directorate general, it said the reinsurance sector withstood the September 11 attacks “partly due to a lack of other disasters in the years previously”.…