Search Results for: Research

Keith Nuthall
A EUROPEAN Union research project is about to be launched, which will create a new sophisticated model for reducing tyre noise. This ‘microscopic road traffic noise-modelling project,’ (ROTRANOMO), will consider the type of vehicle, tyre-road interaction, traffic management, driver behaviour, environmental planning and vehicle structure changes to develop a more effective noise calculation model.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
A CARMAKERS’ voluntary agreement on introducing technical changes in designs boosting cyclist and pedestrian safety has been approved by the European Parliament and will now be legally underpinned by a so-called Framework Directive enforcing a range of legal commitments.…

Keith Nuthall
THE FINDINGS of an EU funded research project for tanneries could help EU textile manufacturers dramatically reduce their water usage. The TANNET programme should enable Europe’s tanneries conserve 90 per cent of their current water use, especially through internal recycling, said the European Commission.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney
THE SAFETY of divers working in all sectors of the fish farming industry is being increased because of new dive tables designed in Australia. Trials of the new tables in Tasmania have shown a 50-fold reduction in the number of cases of decompression illness, or “the bends.”…

BY MARK ROWE
MUSEUMS and research institutions are being warned that they risk losing vast amounts of digital information unless new techniques are developed to conserve the material.

Until recently all that was needed to archive information recorded in traditional forms such as the printed page, analogue tape or film was the physical storage place to house the material.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
ELECTRONIC noses being developed in Australia are to be tested to monitor smell levels from factories; industry is being pressured to clean up its act with smell being a key issue.

The odour sentinels, created by the Centre for ChemoSensory Research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, stand like small sentry boxes sniffing out bad smells and alerting engineers automatically.It…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
REPRESENTATIVES from the governments of Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Turkey have attended training courses staged by the EU’s Joint Research Centre, designed to improve their performance in combating the illicit trafficking of nuclear material.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RESEARCH project developing ways of feeding spaceship food plants with the recycled faeces of Mars-bound astronauts could have important spin-off applications for the disposal of municipal waste water.

The European Space Agency funded MELISSA (micro-ecological life support alternative) project is examining how to re-use the maximum amount of waste generated by spacemen on future long trips to the red planet.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced that it is spending Euro 20 million on research projects designed to unveil the real effects of endocrine disrupters on human health and the environment. Grants will be paid to 22 research teams from 10 European countries which will explore the effect of exposure from low doses and mixtures of disrupters on human beings, aquatic wildlife and laboratory animals, among other topics.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
THOUSANDS of tonnes of mildly radioactive steel could come onto the European market because of pressure on countries waiting to join the European Union to dismantle their decrepit Russian-built nuclear power stations. Aware of the need to assuage public distrust of even the lowest levels of radioactivity, the European Union’s Joint Research Centre is investigating the levels of radiation likely to be involved in this steel, taken from buildings that do not house the reactor itself.…