Search Results for: Research

BY MARK ROWE

NANOTECHNOLOGY is set to dramatically enhance the packaging process across a range of industries in the next few years. Major areas of development include enhancing the performance of packaging materials, prolonging shelf life, antimicrobial packaging and interactive packaging.…

STORIES BY KEITH NUTHALL

A DETAILED European Commission report on a key European Union (EU) water research programme has concluded that its scientists lacked the necessary communications strategies to inform the public and industry about their discoveries. Scientists participating in EU-INCO water research schemes "had limited resources to communicate effectively outside their well-established modes of workshops, training seminars, conferences, technical reports, websites and referred articles", said the report, which added: "An equivalent infrastructure to facilitate communication beyond the science community does not exist".…

BY MARK ROWE

SCIENTISTS and engineers are using nanotechnology to install sensors that will create "self-thinking" carpets offering huge resource savings and safety benefits to companies and householders.

Nanotechnology will implement sensors into carpets so that the carpets recognise where people are, according to Wolfgang Porod, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Nanofabrication Facility in the United States.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

AMERICAN researchers are attacking a topical disease that kills thousands of people each year with an unusual and potentially alarming weapon – transgenic mosquitoes. Scientists from the University of California, Irvine, have managed to genetically engineer mosquitoes that are resistant to Type 2 dengue fever, the most common strain.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE BRITISH museum sector is working with its European counterparts to produce a series of internationally recognised standards to govern the way they work, exhibit and look after their collections.

This move towards harmonisation follows the recent increase in the number of European Union member states and the significant rise in cultural exchanges between museums following this expansion.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-research project is developing small-scale hydrogen generators, which could be operated by homes and businesses to refuel hydrogen-autos. The aim of the Hyvolution scheme is to create practical technology that could form part of a sustainable and widespread refuelling network, something that is essential for hydrogen fuel-cell transport to take off.…

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 MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

IN the rapidly expanding world of nanotechnology (a nano is one billionth of a metre), more and more applications for the adhesives industry are being developed. Many of these inventions are sophisticated, even futuristic in scope, although bizarrely some advances are linked to natural phenomena, with the sector owing a lot of the latest groundbreaking research to the humble gecko.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded CROSSENZ research project has cross-linked enzymes to boost food texture and quality, improving the "gel strength, thermal stability, viscosity, volume, and water-holding capacity" of foodstuffs, including making low fat yoghurt creamy. *http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/crossenz/

ENDS…

BY ALAN OSBORN

FACT BOX

Population: approx. 35,000

Number of students at the university: about 840

Percentage of its students who are Liechtensteiners: about 85%

Percentage of Liechtensteiners who attend university: about 30%

INTERVIEW

IT says something about the University of Liechtenstein that most of its masters programmes are taught in English even though the inhabitants of this tiny Alpine principality speak German and the country itself is sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria.…