Search Results for: Research

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC) has called for technological advances in road transport systems to better manage a growth in traffic that will be sustained until and beyond 2020. In a detailed paper, it cites forecasts predicting an increase by 2010 from 1998 of 26% in vehicle kilometres for the old 15-member European Union (EU) and 24% for passenger kilometres.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A STRATEGIC research programme promoting nano-electronics, funded from public and private sources, is to be established by the European Commission and specialist European Union (EU) companies. A European Nano-electronics Initiative Advisory Council (ENIAC) will be formed to draw up the plan, being chaired by STMicroelectronics CEO Pasquale Pistorio.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is spending Euro 15 million on uniting EU experts on food safety, animal and human health. The new EU Network of Excellence MED-VET-NET will fight zoonoses in a virtual institute combining “European veterinary, medical and food science”.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICAN scientists have warned that claims the USA is facing an obesity epidemic and that overweight people face serious health risks are exaggerated and misleading.

Paul Campos a University of Colorado professor and author of a book, The Obesity Myth, says that some government research is based on “junk science” that has caused an unnecessary fear across America.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SCIENTISTS are studying European Space Agency (ESA) satellite data proving that huge waves of 25 metres height or more are an ever-present hazard to shipping on the high seas. Researchers in the international MaxWave project are examining images culled over three weeks of more than 10 such monster waves.…

BY MARK ROWE
During the time of the Soviet Union, museums in the satellite states of Eastern Europe routinely kept short working hours, closed without notice and were all too frequently dowdy, musty and inaccessible.

With the accession of 10 new states (including eight in eastern Europe), into the European Union, the future for museums from Lithuania to Malta, and from Slovenia to Slovakia is much brighter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRISTOL university researchers have created a genetically modified plant producing healthy fatty acids normally associated with eggs and fish – polyunsaturated fatty acids omega-3 and omaga-6 that regulate blood pressure and improve cell signalling.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has started detailed work on proposals for a Seventh Framework Programme of research grants, which could command twice as much money as the existing (sixth) programme to Euro 40 billion and would include space and technology budgets for the first time.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
The European Commission has launched a 6-year action plan to reduce diseases caused by pollution. Plan calls for initiatives “to better understand the environment-health link and establish how environmental exposure leads to epidemiological effects.” Focus of policy will be on research activities like asthma/allergy, neuro-developmental disorders, cancers and endocrine disrupting effects.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CHILDREN who consume food additives such as colourings and preservatives are more likely to have behavioural problems according to British research. The study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood was conducted on 277 three-year-olds over four weeks.…