Search Results for: Research

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE GREATER the number of fast food restaurants present in a community, the higher the rate of heart disease and death, according research published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health (ICES).

However, the study notes that illness is not necessarily the result of eating junk food alone but the lifestyle associated with it.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNUSUAL auditing, appraisal and consulting services offered by four Italian universities will draw upon a Euro 100 million low interest loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB). These are being supplied by some of Italy’s best-known universities: the Politecnico di Milano, Politecnico di Torino, Università degli Studi di Trento, and the Fondazione Politecnico di Milano.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESEARCHERS from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the US are to map the sheep genome to secure improvements in meat and wool production. Britain’s Genesis Faraday group will work with American project leader Utah State University; New Zealand’s AgResearch; and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation; Livestock Australia; and Australian Wool Innovation.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
THE INCREASING global demand for mineral resources – especially from Asia – has breathed new life into a remote yet highly and diversely mineralised part of Australia. The island of Tasmania, off the south east coast of the continent, is revelling in a mining boom, the like of which it has not seen for more than a century.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ANDRIS Piebalgs, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for energy, has announced that clean coal technologies and CO2 capture will be his top priorities for energy research during his five-year term. Speaking as the European Commission attempts to persuade EU ministers to support expanding Brussels’ budget for research for 2007-13, Piebalgs said: “Such technologies are not just important in order to enable Europe to meet its Kyoto obligations and the challenges of the (EU’s) Lisbon agenda” on economic competitiveness.…

BY MARK ROWE
IN the days of the Soviet Union, Russians would make jokes about the shades of “concrete” grey available for any internal redecorating you planned to do. No longer. Disposable incomes are higher, so Russians are discovering DIY, while a vast face-lift has been given to many of the country’s cities and towns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a Euro 1.01 million research project aimed at developing guidelines for boosting the nutrition of elderly people, improving their general health and well-being. Researchers in the NUTRI-SENEX scheme will consider ways of dealing with the loss of smell and taste in older people, which can spark a loss of appetite, leading to weight loss and other health problems.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has told the European Ombudsman that a German chemist who protested about the “illegal transport and export of radioactive materials” from the Institute for Transuranium, a nuclear research institute in Karlsruhe, had left her protest too late for it to be acted on.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SMOKING may help some people cope with depression according to new University of Western Michigan, USA, research. It was spurred a failure by scientists to determine why from 1990 to 2003, only 3% of Americans quit smoking, after a surge in the 80s.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SCIENTISTS at the US government Agricultural Research Service have developed a way to eliminate costly conventional and costly oil extraction procedures in making biodiesel. The new method involves oil being created through a chemical reaction caused by incubating dried oilseed with methanol and sodium hydroxide, which are currently used to process extracted oil.…