Search Results for: Germany

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ALZHEIMER’S Disease is being targeted by a European Union (EU) research project wanting to stimulate immune systems into attacking the condition’s 42 amino acid-peptides that kill brain cells. The Mimovax project differs from previous Alzheimer’s vaccine prototypes by prompting immune systems to attack only these specific peptides, rather than risking attacks on healthy beta amyloid proteins whose degeneration actually creates the disease’s dangerous peptides.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London
THE EUROPEAN auto industry is keeping a close eye on the European Commission at the moment, where a heavyweight political struggle is being staged over whether mandatory CO2 caps should be imposed on auto manufacturers. At the heart of this dispute is an argument over whether companies should shoulder the burden of reducing CO2 emissions from new vehicles or whether the job should also involve people like fuel suppliers, tire and other components suppliers and even consumers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SCANDALOUS discovery last year of 110 tons of rotting meat in Germany warehouses has prompted German researchers to develop a laser-based scanner system, which can check the freshness of meat and meat products from the slaughterhouse, to processing plants and retailers.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
FOLLOWING a year or more of advance razzmatazz, the European Union’s multi-pronged energy strategy was unveiled on January 10 and while history may not see it as the “new industrial revolution” that Brussels proclaimed, there’s enough in it to engage the minds of everybody in the energy industry for perhaps years to come.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has signalled that it is prepared once again to push into the politically sensitive territory of nuclear safety, a policy often jealously protected by member states such as Britain and Germany.

In a detailed policy paper on nuclear energy, the Commission stressed the right of European Union (EU) member states to choose their own energy production mix, however, for those wanting nuclear energy, there should be some clear EU ground rules.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH and German scientists have made a breakthrough in developing Europe’s most common food and animal based pathogen – salmonella – which is increasingly resistant to standard antibiotics.

Britain’s Institute of Food Research and the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, of Germany, have discovered how salmonella bacteria defends itself in hostile environments (such as stomachs and intestines) by continually inserting outer membrane proteins (OMPs) into its cell walls.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN UNUSUALLY tough political row between European commissioners has stalled plans to control the emission of carbon dioxide from cars, with intense disagreements erupting over whether limits should be voluntary or compulsory.

On one side is environmental Commissioner Stavros Dimas, of Greece, who wants to set compulsory CO2 emissions for European Union carmakers, because they are likely to break 2004 promises to reduce CO2 emissions to an industry average of 140 grammes per km, or 25% of 1995 levels by 2008.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is pushing signatories to its new Protocol on Water and Health to its Convention on Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes to agree detailed targets on improving European water quality.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BALTIC States are the European Union’s (EU) boom-region for research spending increases, according to the latest R&D figures from EU statistical agency Eurostat, which show Britain’s performance as relatively static. Annual average growth rates in real terms research spending from 2001 to 2005 ranged from +18% in Latvia, +17% in Estonia, and +11% in Lithuania, (+15% in Cyprus).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AN odd fact about Serbia today is that hardly anybody in the country seems curious about the way its official government financial figures don’t remotely add up. The authors of a US-sponsored report for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) published last October – ‘Money Laundering and Predicate Crime in Serbia 2000-2005’ – acknowledge the conventional shortages of staff and computers but say they “hit on a more fundamental void: lack of curiosity.”…