Search Results for: Research

BY KEITH NUTHALL

CHEFS know that to get the best out of a steak – it needs to be whacked with a hammer to tenderise it, making it more likely to soak up marinades and more delicate to the palate. Detectives know that softening up suspects with a good-cop, bad-cop routine will make them more pliant to questioning The same applies to treating cancer tumours: if you knock them around a bit first, they are less able to resist drugs designed – ultimately – to wipe them out.…

STORIES BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE SEVEN parties to the ITER nuclear fusion research project have accepted the European Union’s nominee as principal deputy director-general of the planned organisation managing its work. He is Dr Norbert Holtkamp, currently director of the accelerator systems division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is trying to encourage smart power networks that allow small stand-alone electricity generators to contribute supplies to national grids. It has established an expert group – ‘European Technology Platform: SmartGrids’ – discussing achieving this goal.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, in New Delhi

India – US$692 billion economy, 10th largest in the world and growing at 8% annually – has finally put an official anti-money laundering public organisation in place. Its Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), as required by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act-2002 (PMLA), which came into force in July 2005, has become fully operational.…

STORIES BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has drawn up plans to lend Serbia’s Torlak Institute for Virology and Immunology Euro 18 million to upgrade and expand its Belgrade production and research facilities. This will focus on selected vaccine production lines, bringing them up to international manufacturing standards, including building a new influenza vaccine production facility.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is being forced to phase in the European Research Council (ERC) budget, so it starts life next year with annual funding of just Euro 300 million. Although in draft Brussels figures this budget should rise to Euro 1.8 billion a year by 2013, the parsimonious launch will inevitably disappoint some researchers.…

BY MARK ROWE

IF proof were needed that nanotechnology is more than an esoteric scientific discipline then it surely comes with the news that nanotech is about to come to a fast-food restaurant near you. Last month (March), OilFresh, a California-based company, commercially launched a nanotechnology-based frying oil in the United States.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) political leaders have agreed medium-term (2007-13) budgets for crucial spending projects for the energy sector: Trans European Networks (TENs) and the EU seventh framework programme (FP7) for research. On TENs, the European Parliament, Commission, and EU Council of Ministers have agreed a Euro 7.2 billion budget, Euro 500 million above previous drafts, although this will have to be split with TENs transport projects.…

BY MARK ROWE

RECENT developments in nanotechnology are set to influence many areas of confectionary production, from processing to packaging and monitoring of food quality.

The Institute of Nanotechnology at Stirling University and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have been among those organisations producing and collating research in the field of nano-packaging and nano-barcodes – the molecular versions of traditional bar codes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A LATE night political deal in Strasbourg has at last revealed the likely budget of the European Union’s (EU) seventh framework programme: it should be Euro 48 billion. European Parliament, EU Council of Ministers and European Commission representatives struck the deal in an overall agreement on Brussels’ medium term 2007-13 budget, known as the ‘financial perspectives’.…