Search Results for: Research

BY PHILIP FINE

THE EUROPEAN Commission is promoting new hi-tech vehicle accident reduction inventions in a new report Research on Integrated Safety Systems for Improving Road Safety in Europe. It details the activities of its joint group in high-tech accident prevention, including industry and public sector members, who are trying to fulfill the European Union’s goal of reducing road fatalities by 50 per cent by the year 2010.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW laboratory tasked with fostering innovative solutions for nuclear waste management has been inaugurated at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

Its Institute for Transuranium Elements, in Karlsruhe, Germany, has opened a Euro 10 million Minor Actinide Laboratory, which will manufacture and characterize the most suitable materials for the transmutation of long-lived toxic elements created by the nuclear industry.…

BY MARK ROWE
ENVIRONMENTAL organisations and an American local authority have issued a lawsuit against the US government for its contribution to global warming, a move that may have important repercussions for the insurance industry.

A lawsuit filed in the US District Court in San Francisco claims that two American export credit agencies illegally provided US$32billion in financing for oil fields, pipelines and coal-fired power plants over the past 10 years without assessing their contribution to global warming.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A NEW “smart card” for health and safety to be launched in the UK next year could have important implications for insurance companies in the occupational safety and health field. The so-called Prevencard is being marketed by the Spanish company Grupo Prevencard International using technology developed under the EU’s 5th Framework Programme for research.…

BY MATTHEW WELLS
A NEW survey of business leaders in the United States carried out by the security professionals’ organisation ASIS International, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the US Chamber of Commerce has indicated that around US$59 billion dollars-worth of intellectual property and information were stolen in America over the year to last June.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
INDIAN researchers have developed a package of techniques that could allow confectionary companies to market organic cashew nut bars. Scientists at the Kerala Agriculture University’s Cashew Research Station have identified high density planting systems using natural oil insect repellants, secondary crops between trees which drive out weeds, and carnivorous insects to attack other pests.…

BY MATT WELLS, in New York
A NEW survey of business leaders in the United States carried out by the security professionals’ organisation ASIS International, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the US Chamber of Commerce has indicated that around US$59 billion dollars-worth of intellectual property and information were stolen in America over the year to last June.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has taken an important step towards giving EU water legislation more teeth, by moving against Belgium’s system of “tacit approvals” of pollution. Belgian law allows companies to assume that they have a right to pollute if they make an application to regulators and then receive no reply.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership has been launched by the European Commission. Commanding Euro 200 million of Brussels’ money, the initiative will develop new medicines and vaccines against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. It will involve the pharmaceutical industry and Norway as well as developing countries and will also see EU institutions participating in Member States’ national research and development programmes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW DNA test has been developed which can detect tuberculosis in two to three hours; Professor Mike Barer from Leicester University used the results from the decoding of the mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium genome to look for markers that could be used to detect the germ.…