Search Results for: Research

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is investing Euro 14 million to create a ‘CASCADE’ network of excellence investigating the presence and effect of harmful chemicals in common foodstuffs. It will include more than 20 universities, research institutes and businesses.…

BY PHILIP FINE, in Montreal

A CANADIAN research team has made progress in trying to make eggs less susceptible to cracks. University of Ottawa Professor Max Hincke claims that his work on the basics of eggshell formation could not only help make this natural packaging more robust, but also reduce diseases, such as salmonella, which can contaminate eggs via cracks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced its first Euro 166 million tranche of funding for food and food safety projects, via the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme on research. While not releasing individual budgets for successful projects, it highlighted funding a “key network of excellence” on prion diseases, including BSE.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TECHNOLOGY is being developed by a European Commission funded research project to allow curators to effectively monitor environmental pollution that can damage ancient treasures in museums and galleries. The MIMIC (microclimate indoor monitoring in cultural heritage preservation) project has adapted airborne particle detectors called dosimeters to assess the effects of combinations of pollutants, densities at which they could cause damage and microclimatic anomalies.…

BY PHILIP FINE

BUPROPION, better known as Zyban, may help with smoking cessation, says a pharmaceutical industry-funded study from the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research on 893 subjects found the anti-depressant tripled quit rates among women and smokers with a history of depression, as compared to those taking placebos.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE ALREADY-SOARING premiums for insurance policies compensating US workers who have suffered on-the-job injuries will continue to rise, according to a research institute that looks into the challenges facing the sector. Richard Victor, Executive Director of the Workers (note to ed: no apostrophe) Compensation Research Institute says the biggest driver to the current high premiums has been the rise in medical costs and he does not see those going down.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been authorised to negotiate a cooperation agreement with China on developing peaceful uses of nuclear energy. With the decision following Beijing’s move to become involved in the international fusion energy project ITER, one of the areas of joint-effort between the European Union (EU) and China will be “controlled thermonuclear fusion.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WATER utilities need to guard against the leaching of marine pollution through porous aquifers into freshwater groundwater sources, a European Union funded research project has warned. The Euro 2.4 million SALTRANS study has dismissed earlier assumptions that toxic organic pollutants are not sufficiently soluble to flow into groundwater reserves.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been authorised to negotiate a cooperation agreement with China on developing peaceful uses of nuclear energy. With the decision following Beijing’s move to become involved in the international fusion energy project ITER, one of the areas of joint-effort between the European Union (EU) and China will be “controlled thermonuclear fusion.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NEW alternative methods of drug testing that are supposed to save up to 200,000 rabbits a year have been unveiled by the European Commission. The six tests detect potential fever-causing agents (pyrogens) in drugs, by using human blood cells instead of rabbits; they have been developed by a EU-supported research team, involving national control laboratories, test developers, and pharmaceutical companies.…