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BY KEITH NUTHALL

SCIENTISTS from a Euro EUR14.6 million research project are to unveil progress at a June 1-3 nanotechnology conference in Budapest on their goal of using nano-medicine to fight Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers in the NAD Project have tried to make a virtue out of the environmental concern that nano-particles can breach the blood-brain-barrier.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

WITH waste regulations becoming increasingly tight worldwide, and consumers’ environmental consciousness growing, the global personal care product industry has taken note of the lean towards ‘green’, and is starting to reduce packaging complexity.

This is despite leading organic products marketing research firm Organic Monitor recently releasing a not-so-optimistic report on sustainable packaging in the beauty sector – saying that although packaging has the highest environmental footprint within the realm of cosmetics products, it appears to be largely ignored when beauty companies look at sustainability.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE POWER sectors of eastern Europe need billions of dollars investment to maintain or replace ageing capacity, a World Bank report has warned. Looking at investment requirements for 2009-15, the bank said Serbia’s electricity sector, for example, needs between USD3.3 billion and USD6.7 billion additional investment for environmental upgrades, new capacity, transmission interconnectors and distribution rehabilitation.…

BY MARK GODFREY

THE HEADLINES said it all. Chinese newspapers have recently been heavy with editorials and op-ed pieces largely favourable to nuclear power: among them ‘This Is Not the End of Nuke Power’ a half-page op-ed in the China Daily, the preferred conduit of China’s official thinking to foreign diplomats and executives.…

BY JULIAN RYALL

IN the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in living memory, with the impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami on Japan’s economy being assessed closely, its government is conducting a rapid rethink of its energy priorities – and that could be good news for the biofuels sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FRENCH government nuclear scientists have warned that radioactive material, usually totally absent from food, has been discovered in milk in France. They are blaming radioactive clouds belching from the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. The French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) says radioactive iodine-131 has been found in densities of Becquerels(bq)/litres(l) of 0.09bq/l near Paris and 0.15bq/l in the Loire valley, western France.…

BY LEE ADENDORFF

THE ITALIAN government has put the country’s rebooted nuclear programme into a holding pattern, introducing an amendment yesterday that will extend indefinitely a moratorium on the construction of new reactors. The Cabinet has been charged meanwhile with the formulation of a new energy strategy that takes into account "the position of the European Union (EU) and of competent international authorities", which as regards nuclear energy, is of course currently in flux.…

BY VILLEN ANGANAN

THE FINISHING and dyeing plants of the Indian Ocean island state of Mauritius are feeling the pinch of high cotton yarn prices, putting profit margins under pressure.

"The order book of our dye house is relatively full as we have seen over recent months customers coming back to as they are looking for alternatives to Chinese producers.…

BY WANG FANGQING, MINI PANT ZACHARIAH, KARRYN MILLER and KEITH NUTHALL

EMERGING market coatings exporters sometimes claim tough environmental rules in rich jurisdictions are nothing but a form of protection. And while such arguments can always be contested, it is certainly true that the European Union’s (EU) ongoing and longstanding biocide review will throw up obstacles to Asia-Pacific coatings manufacturers wanting to secure sales in Europe.…

BY MARK ROWE

SINGAPORE weathered the global economic crisis better than most, and its GDP grew by a staggering 10% in 2010, driven in part by the development of two casino-based resorts. The future also looks bright for the paint industry, with a seemingly endless list of ambitious developments planned for coming years, proposed by the city state’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, a government department that makes decisions, down to the last square centimetre, on how Singapore makes use of the limited land available to it.…