UE Road safety survey

       

In order to be in the position to make more progress in road safety, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport requested a survey to ascertain the awareness of, and attitudes towards, road safety issues.
The European Commission is committed to making a contribution to the goal of safer roads in Europe.

      
UE Road Safety Survey   (ec.europa)

     

  Deutschland VW disconnection

    
Deutschland's rulers believe that techno-managerial innovation will continue to provide cures for current ideas of what is unsustainable. As has happened time and again in Europa's history of nations, from the mid-19th century onwards, the costs of such 'revolutions' will be externalised elsewhere (east and south), and the ecological sustainability that Germany's admirable network of communes have long been admired for will remain out of reach of the country's policy and practice.

    
New field for Deutschland expansion brand   (energybulletin)
      

  EU funding 200 Envir. projects

     
The European Commission has approved funding for 210 new projects under the third call for the LIFE+ programme (2007-2013), the European fund for the environment. The projects are from across the EU and cover actions in the fields of nature conservation, environmental policy, and information and communication. Overall, they represent a total investment of €515 million, of which the EU will provide €249.8 million.

    
200 UE Envir. projects   (europa)

    

  Listening to Bacteria

   
In deciphering the nuances of bacterial communication, biologists have learned that the lexicons come in two distinct styles: private and public. Every bacterial species has its own dialect, a molecular signature that can be understood only by others of its kind. Microbiologist have discovered that bacteria also traffic in the second, more universally recognized set of signals that seems to serve as bacterial Esperanto.

     
The lexicon of bacteria   (smithsonianmag)

    

  UK & new approach to innovation

  
It is now time for Europe to wake up to the potential that the more for less for more approach holds for pulling itself out of the lingering economic crisis. We believe that the UK is well positioned to show the way. First, the sense of urgency within the UK requires it to adopt such a radically new approach to innovation: reducing its massive fiscal deficit without compromising the quality of life of its citizens will require a complete rethink of how to innovate and grow.

     
New approach for innovation in UK  (blogs.hbr)
       

  Tokyo Sky Tree

      
From Utsunomiya to Mt. Tsukuba to Chiba Port Tower, Tokyo Sky Tree is becoming a part of the Kanto skyline. Two years after construction started on the terrestrial digital broadcasting tower in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, the "tree" now stands 398 meters high and has become a dominant part of the horizon in Tokyo--and beyond. About 700 pictures of the tower, taken from various spots, are carried on a Web site called "Tokyo Sky Tree Kokokara Mieruyo Map".

        
The Kanto skyline   (muza-chan)
       

  Sanofi could acquire Genzyme

    
Genzyme, whose shares rose more than 15 percent on the news, is beginning to emerge from a manufacturing crisis that caused shortages of two of its biggest-selling drugs. Sanofi, meanwhile, is facing patent expirations on some its top products. Late on Friday, the company lowered its view for 2010 earnings per share after U.S. regulators approved a generic form of the Lovenox blood thinner, its No. 2 product last year.

   
Sanofi could acquire Genzyme   (reuters)
       

  UK Earth observation hub

   
The Earth observation hub will focus on acquiring environmental data, such as information on deforestation and the impact of climate change. The hub will be based at the International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC) at Harwell in Oxfordshire, which will open in April 2011. The aim is to bring together UK expertise in Earth observation. The hub will also be used as a flight operations centre for controlling satellites.

      
UK Earth observation hub    (bbc.co)
      

  Remote exploration

  Anti-aircraft laser unveiled

    
US firm Raytheon said the solid state fibre laser produces a 50 kilowatt beam and can be used against UAV, mortar, rockets and small surface ships. The idea of using lasers as weapons has been around almost as long as the laser itself, invented in 1960. Initially, the systems were chemical lasers, which get their power from a chemical reaction. They are very large pieces of equipment and are very fuel hungry, requiring a significant quantity of chemicals to drive them.

    
A 50 kilowatt beam laser unveiled  (bbc.co)
      

  Operating In 3-D

    
Plastic surgeons are using specialized software to visualize a patient's surgical jaw alignment before they begin surgery . The software allows surgeons to be more precise in the procedure and obtain more predictable outcomes. Surgeons can practice complex measurements down to the millimeter, enhancing the final outcome in real surgery. Traditional methods could not account for the smaller details.

     
Software for surgery  (aip)
    

  India fuels: Developing diesel

     
India's car market is strikingly one-dimensional, with new sales dominated by small, fuel-efficient cars with small engines. Most of these are petrol-driven, but both domestic and global carmakers are now racing to increase the number of diesel models they sell in this market. The key issue, though, remains price and any changes to the cost of fuel – policy driven or otherwise - could quickly send sales back the other way.

    
Fuel-efficient cars   (viewswire.eiu)

(if it doesn't work, please, copy and past the link into your browser)    

     

  Some Harvard SmartCream

    
The Brits pioneered global warming (GW). Before GW there was Mad Cow, a huge public health fraud that was based on unsupported computer modeling in the United Kingdom -- which should sound familiar. If you assume that prion infections like Mad Cow spread on an accelerating curve, just like the infamous global warming hockey stick, you can show that everybody is going to die tomorrow, or next week at the latest, based on a perfectly good math model that just happens to be totally wrong.

     
Some Harvard SmartCream  (americanthinker)
    

  Turkey Information Technology Report

     
Turkish spending on IT products and services is expected to strengthen throughout 2010, buoyed by a recovery in industrial production and domestic lending growth. A faster-than-anticipated emergence from recession in H209 bodes well for an upswing in 2010 and confirmed our prediction that, over our fiveyear forecast period to 2014, the Turkish IT market will be a regional outperformer.

     
Turkey's investments in I.T.   (prlog)

     

  IED/Sustainable environmental protection

    
The European institutions are close to finalising the second reading of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED). Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council, supports the objectives of the Directive. Cefic suggests the Directive would be more effective in ensuring sustainable environmental protection if it took greater account of different local needs and circumstances. A justified flexibility is here definitely needed.

    
The Industrial Emissions Directive   (cefic)
       

  The Google Algorithm

   
Google handles nearly two-thirds of Internet search queries worldwide. Analysts reckon that most Web sites rely on the search engine for half of their traffic. When Google engineers tweak its supersecret algorithm — as they do hundreds of times a year — they can break the business of a Web site that is pushed down the rankings. In the past few months, Google has come under investigation by antitrust regulators in Europe.

    
Google under painstaking examination  (nytimes)
(if it doesn't work, please, copy and past the link into your browser)

      

  Jellyfish: Next King of the Sea

   
Nightmarish accounts of “Jellyfish Gone Wild,” as a 2008 National Science Foundation report called the phenomenon, stretch from the fjords of Norway to the resorts of Thailand. By clogging cooling equipment, jellies have shut down nuclear power plants in several countries; they partially disabled the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan four years ago.

    
Is the Jellyfish a threat ?   (smithsonianmag)

     

  Natural Gas Year-In-Review 2009

    
This report provides an overview of the natural gas industry and markets in the United States in 2009 with special focus on the first complete set of supply and disposition data for 2009 from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). All data for 2009 should be considered preliminary and, unless otherwise noted, are derived from weekly and monthly EIA products.

    
US Natural Gas focus  (eia)
     

  Deep space X-ray flash

    
X-rays from space are absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, so pose no danger on the ground. However, Swift orbits Earth at an altitude of 600 kilometres, where the blast was so intense that it overwhelmed the spacecraft's X-ray detector. It also confused the software that analyses the mission's data on the ground, says David Burrows of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, the mission's chief scientist.

     
Deep space X-ray flash  (newscientist)

     

  Most expensive defence project

   
Development of the next generation of warplane (Joint Strike Fighter) is already over budget and behind schedule. Hidden in a hangar at the US Navy's Patuxent River Air Base, in Maryland, away from prying eyes and shaded from the intense sun, US and British ground crew made the final preparations before the plane took to the clear blue skies. The JSF is also a spy in the sky. It can gather information from space, land and other aircraft - and then transmit that information to commanders on the ground.

    
The "Joint Strike Fighter" project   (bbc)
       

  U.S growth driven by Startups

   
When it comes to U.S. job growth, startup companies aren’t everything. They’re the only thing. It’s well understood that existing companies of all sizes constantly create – and destroy – jobs. Conventional wisdom, then, might suppose that annual net job gain is positive at these companies. However, shows that this rarely is the case. In fact, net job growth occurs in the U.S. economy only through startup firms.

    
Job Growth Driven by Start-ups  (kauffman)

     

  EU safeguards SWIFT

    
The new version of the SWIFT anti-terrorist agreement on bank data transfers to the US was approved by the European Parliament on Thursday. MEPs rejected the agreement in its previous form four months ago but since then have negotiated certain safeguards for Europe's citizens and won an undertaking that the EU will start work in the second half of this year on a European data processing system that precludes the need to transfer data in bulk to the US.

     
US-EU anti-terrorist agreement  (europarl.europa)

      

  Healthcare at the Speed of Light

   
Many rural U.S. hospitals lack access to the high-speed networks needed to easily share vital data like large image and video files. In 2007, however, the FCC set aside $416 million to cover rural hospital broadband rollout initiatives. Three years later, many of these projects are coming to fruition, bringing higher-speed networks to patients and doctors.

    
Healthcare at higher-speed networks  (technewsworld)

      

  India & Demographic Dividend

    

Countries with a large and expanding workforce and relatively few people of dependent age (under 15 or over 64) can reap what Harvard School of Public Health demographer David Bloom has called a “demographic dividend.” Young, unencumbered workers spur entrepreneurship and innovation, enabling significant gains in productivity, savings, and capital inflows.

    
Demographic Dividend from indian workforce   (strategy-business)

    

  Math-Model Predicts WCF Winner

   
We're not endorsing any big bets, of course, but a pair of London mathematicians say they're confident Spain will win the World Cup final Sunday. It's not just a prediction -- it's science. Queen Mary, University of London professors -- and soccer fans -- Javier López Peña and Hugo Touchette collected ball-passing data from each World Cup team and used graph theory to analyze each team's style of play.

    
Science prediction  (popsci)

     

  Europe gets tough on pay

    
As public outrage over Wall Street bonuses fades a bit in the United States, the European Parliament on Wednesday approved tough new rules that limit bankers' bonuses and align compensation with long-term financial performance. The new rules are more rigid than any steps the U.S. has taken to regulate pay practices within the financial industry and highlights a growing divide between U.S. and E.U. policy on this key issue.

     
EU tough new rules  (cnn)
      

  Outsourcing Vs Shared Services

    
Two diametrically opposed perspectives continue to coexist in IT and other business service functions. One camp argues in favor of shared services, wherein the IT organization becomes the internal service provider to the rest of the company. The other camp promotes outsourcing: the delivery of IT services all done under one roof but with that roof located somewhere other than at the company.

    
Outsourcing Vs Shared Services  (cacm.acm)

     

  Testosterone Trial in Older Men

    
Testosterone Trial in Older Men  (nih)
    

  Heat waves could be commonplace

     
In the next 30 years, we could see an increase in heat waves like the one now occurring in the eastern United States or the kind that swept across Europe in 2003 that caused tens of thousands of fatalities". Those kinds of severe heat events also put enormous stress on major crops like corn, soybean, cotton and wine grapes, causing a significant reduction in yields."

     
Severe heat events  (innovations-report)

     

  UK nuclear waste plan

  World's Best Gallium Nitride

     
Want to revolutionize the electronics industry, become a multimillionaire, and earn your place as an immortal in the tech pantheon? Your job is simple: Figure out a cost-effective way to make really good, reasonably large crystals of pure gallium nitride. With such crystals as the foundation for the growth of devices made of the same material, manufacturers would have a far richer yield of the violet lasers on which the opto­electronics industry increasingly depends.

     
Gallium Nitride & Electronics industry     (spectrum.ieee)

      

  Conflict Is Costly

     
For example, 25 percent of employees said that avoiding conflict led to sickness or absence from work. Equally alarming, nearly 10 percent reported that workplace conflict led to project failure and more than one-third said that conflict resulted in someone leaving the company, either through firing or quitting. Those negatives translate into real financial losses for small businesses.

    
When conflict led to sickness    (reuters)
      

  Insourcing Outsourced IT ?

     
Bringing IT back in house can be as complex as transitioning services to an outsourcing provider. And sometimes, insourcing is even costlier than outsourcing. Termination fees, facility build-outs, shared assets, application migration, personnel training and transitions, new hiring, and software license transfers can quickly add up. The decision to insource should not be made lightly. It requires a thorough assessment of current and future objectives and options.

     
Insourcing Outsourced IT ?   (cio)

     

  Sanofi looking at U.S. deals

   
French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA) is looking at several U.S. acquisitions, including one or two that could be worth at least $15 billion, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday. Analysts cited Allergan, Biogen and Genzyme as possible targets, with market values of $17 billion, $12.7 billion and $13.5 billion, respectively.

     
Sanofi looking at U.S. deals   (reuters)
     

  Single EU patent on the way

     
The European Commission has presented a proposal on translation arrangements for a future EU patent, the final step needed for the realisation of a single EU patent which could encourage greater research, development and innovation in the technology industry. Processing costs for an EU Patent covering 27 Member States would be less than €6,200, of which only 10 per cent would be due to translations, said the Commission.

     
The future of EU patent   (v3)
     

  EU world's No 1 tourist destination

    
The European Commission intends to encourage a coordinated approach for initiatives linked to tourism and define a new framework for action to increase its competitiveness and its capacity for sustainable growth. It therefore proposes a number of European or multinational initiatives aimed at achieving these objectives, drawing in full on the Union's competence in the field of tourism as introduced by the Lisbon Treaty.

    

EU world's No 1 tourist destination   (ec.europa)

      

  Thing America Must Learn

      
During this summer travel season, the United States could learn a lesson from Europe: how to make flying cheaper. In the European Union, any EU-based airline from any member country can pick up and drop off passengers anywhere within the Union, regardless of whether the airline’s home base is in Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Britain, or some other EU-member nation.

     
How to make flying cheaper ?   (american)

       

  A New Bloom for Algae

     
This week the U.S. Department of Energy released a new roadmap for the development of algal biofuels. DOE researchers had dismissed this type of biofuel as too costly to be commercially successful in the mid-1990s following a nearly two-decade-long research project. The new roadmap was accompanied by the announcement of $24 million in new DOE funding for algal biofuels research.

     
Algal biofuels   (technologyreview)
     

  Canada: Generic drogue access

       
Prescription drugs account for an increasing proportion of Canada’s growing health care system with rising costs that governments in this country are seeking ways to restrain. The greater use of generic drugs, for which Canadians pay some of the highest prices in the world, accounts for a significant portion of these rising costs.

      
Canada’s growing health care   (healthcouncilcanada)

    

  UK government websites efficiency

     
The Central Office of Information (COI) has delivered the standards and guidance recommended and invited government departments to report on their progress. The policy for fewer audience-focused digital channels has led to the closure of many websites.

   
COI standards and guidance  (coi.gov)
      

  MIT Study on Natural Gas

     
A study of natural gas is more complex because gas is a major fuel for multiple end uses — electricity, industry, heating — and is increasingly discussed as a potential pathway to reduced oil dependence for transportation. In addition, the realization over the last few years that the producible unconventional gas resource in the U.S. is very large has intensified the discussion about natural gas as a “bridge” to a low-carbon future.

     
Potential pathway on energy  (web.mit)
        

  ISO:14001/9001/27001 NGD Certification

   
NGD Europe, one of the word's largest data centres, located near Newport, South Wales, United Kingdom (UK), was recently opened following completion of a GBP 200 million project to convert and upgrade the 750 000 sq ft former Hynix semiconductor plant into a state-of-the-art, ISO 14001, ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 27001-certified, Tier 3 mega data centre.

    
NGD Certification   (iso)

    

  Red Hat unveils cloud products

   
Red Hat has introduced Cloud Foundations, a family of packaged tools for businesses that want to accelerate moving their applications to public and private clouds. Each Cloud Foundations package will bring together products, implementation guides, reference architectures and consulting services, the Linux specialist said in its launch announcement at on Wednesday at the Red Hat Summit in Boston.

    
Red Hat on virtualization  (zdnet)

    

  Can AIDS Be Cured ?

   
Drugs can control HIV, but they exact a steep cost. Now, researchers are pursuing radical new ways to eliminate the infection entirely. This is a feat that medications have not accomplished in a single human, although daily doses of powerful anti-HIV drugs known as antiretrovirals can now control the virus and stave off AIDS for decades.

      

AIDS treatment pathway  (technologyreview)
     

  Deutsche Bahn liberalization

     

Deutsche Bahn has expressed interest in running direct rail connections between London and the continent following the liberalization of the European cross-border rail passenger market at the start of the year. bThis comes on the back of the company's takeover of British transport group Arriva to create Europe's No.1 passenger carrier.

  
Deutsche Bahn liberalization  (dw-world)
       

  China & Intelligent transp. system

   
China has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of vehicles plying the nation's highways over the last few years, which inevitably bring with them traffic jams and accidents. Now, many companies have found a way to cash in on these very problems, including both international firms and homegrown startups.

   
ITS homegrown startups  (english.people)
    

  MetroMonitor : Tracking US's Economy

     
A quarterly, interactive barometer of the health of America’s 100 largest metropolitan economies. It examines trends in metropolitan-level employment, output, and housing conditions to look “beneath the hood” of national economic statistics to portray the diverse metropolitan trajectories of recession and recovery across the country.

   
US Metropolitan economies   (brookings)
      

  EU foreign policy & Strategy

    
The EU’s ability to influence the international order will in future depend not only on its ability to bring together the whole of the EU – i.e. the institutions and, crucially, the Member States, who remain decisive in foreign and security affairs – but just as importantly on drawing up a strategy for EU international policy to guide external action as a whole.

    
Report on EU foreign policy  (iss.europa)
     

  TanDEM-X Stellite: 3D view of Earth

    
The German radar spacecraft will fly in formation with an identical platform called TerraSAR-X launched in 2007. Together, the pair will measure the variation in height across the globe to an accuracy of better than two metres. Their digital elevation model will have myriad uses, from helping military jets fly ultra low to showing relief workers where an earthquake's damage is worst.

    

3D view of Earth   (news.bbc)

     

  OECD Report on Shifting Wealth

     
Perspectives on Global Development: Shifting Wealth aims to avoid a costly lag in recognising the new geography of growth – a structural realignment in the global economy at the opening of the 21st century. The seeds of this change were planted over the last 20 years. Billions of people have entered the global market economy – as workers, consumers and investors – and economic catch-up has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

    
Report on Shifting Wealth   (oecd)
       

  Net & Web are not the same

     
the internet resembles the tracks and infrastructure of a railway, while the web is just one part of the traffic that runs on it.All of which might lead a detached observer to ask: if the internet is such a disaster, how come 27% of the world's population (or about 1.8 billion people) use it happily every day, while billions more are desperate to get access to it?

    
Infrastructure & content   (guardian)

      

  UE on organ donation

     
In 2008 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Directive on standards of quality and safety of human organs intended for transplantation1. At the same time, the Commission launched an Action Plan2 designed to the promote the availability of deceased and living donors across the European Union, increase the supply of organs, enhance transplantation systems and ensure the quality and safety of procedures.

     
Quality Assurance & organ donation   (ec.europa)

      

  News evolution & Internet

      
This study provides an in-depth treatment of the global newspaper publishing market and its evolution, with a particular view on the development of online news and related challenges. It assesses online news consumption patterns and new online news value networks, compared with the traditional newspaper value chain. It shows that the economics of news production and distribution has been radically altered, in particular in the context of the economic crisis which has accelerated structural changes.

    
Newspaper publishing evolution (fr.wrs.yahoo)

     

  Nanotech & medical diagnostics

    
Much of the hype around nanotechnology has concentrated on its more outlandish medical applications, with the prospect of tiny cell-sized nanobots, telepathy chips and the ability to manipulate materials at the molecular level arousing wonder and concern in equal measure. But while many have raised concerns about the safety and consequences of the technology, others believe the field is misunderstood.

     
Nanotech & medical diagnostics   (theengineer)

      

  EEA Annual Environmental statement

    
The top level of the EEA balanced scorecard attempts to give an easy overview of how we are performing as an organisation and direct attention to areas where performance are below the desired level. Indicators at this level are displayed as achievements according to set targets — easily conveying how close we are to the target. The metrics chosen are a blend between performance and process indicators trying to capture the complexity that is required when describing progress in strategy.

     
Metrics & Indicator   (eea.europa)

      

  Biology 2.0

    
post-genomic biology—biology 2.0, if you like—has finally killed the idea of vitalism, the persistent belief that to explain how living things work, something more is needed than just an understanding of their physics and chemistry. True, no biologist has really believed in vitalism for more than a century. Nevertheless, the promise of genomics, that the parts list of a cell and, by extension, of a living organism, is finite and cataloguable, leaves no room for ghosts in the machine.

     
Post-genomic biology   (economist)
        

  Indian Immigrants in the US

     
The United States is home to about 1.6 million Indian immigrants, making them the third-largest immigrant group in the United States after Mexican and Filipino immigrants. Indian immigration to the United States, a fairly recent phenomenon, grew rapidly during the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, people with Indian ancestry have also immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean, East Africa, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

     
Indian immigration in US   (migrationinformation)
      

  Weapons from Tomorrow

     
Life has been imitating art with a vengeance lately in the field of weaponry. A number of weapons and weapons systems now on active duty or in the prototype stage seem to have been ripped straight out of the overwrought imagination of a sci-fi writer. Here's a trip back to the future to look at some of the latest military and law enforcement hardware.

     
The field of weaponry   (news.yahoo)

    

  African higher education

     
In response, universities from America and Europe, government aid agencies, and charitable foundations have started major efforts to help rebuild higher education in Africa. While those projects have dedicated substantial funds and human resources to the cause, they so far have produced mixed results. The problem is that representatives of universities from developed countries and other well-intentioned people come to Africa with basic assumptions that undermine their work.

     
Rebuilding higher education in Africa   (chronicle)

    

  Environment in France

    
Given the data sources available, most of the information presented in the report predates the start of implementation of commitments made at the Grenelle Environment Forum. Data for the years 2008 and 2009 are still lacking in many areas. Environment in France is thus a statistical report on France's environment on the eve of the Grenelle Environment Forum; the report does not constitute an environmental assessment.

     
Environment in France   (stats.environnement.developpement-durable)

      

  Social engineering techniques

    
It doesn't matter how many locks you put on the door that is your security plan, because criminals who use social engineering techniques will still sail right in. Why bother breaking down the door if you can simply ask the person inside to let you in? That is the question posed by Lenny Zeltser, head of the security consulting team at Savvis and a SANS Institute faculty member.

Security techniques  (csoonline)

     

  Challenging Your Industry Dogma

     
What does it mean to be a revolutionary? To challenge an existing dogma, instead of complying with it: to reject its tenets, highlight its flaws and improve each of its shortcomings. Here are six ways to challenge the dogma that's invisible and omnipresent in your industry — to be a breath of fresh air.

     
Challenging an existing dogma  (blogs.hbr)
      

  The saga of Europe's A400M

    
The first shot to be fired at Europe's 21st century army plane came not from the barrel of a gun but a safety inspector's clipboard. In 2008, weeks after the first A400M troop transporter rolled off a gleaming new assembly plant in Seville, a group of inspectors traveled to southern Germany to scrutinize an important component for the plane's huge turbo-prop engines.

    
The A400M troop transporter   (reuters)
        

  Vision Renewed

      
Imagine a day when blindness is obsolete. That day may be closer than we think. Very recently, scientists at the University of California, Irvine created an eight-layer, early stage retina from human embryonic stem cells—the first three-dimensional tissue structure to be made from stem cells, according to Science Daily.

    
Embryonic stem cells   (scienceprogress)
      

  Electronic Recycling

    
While consumers across the world increasingly recycle their old batteries, coffee makers and MP3 players, most electric and electronic waste from offices and factories still ends up in landfills. But in Norway, an industry-run program now collects 98% of such waste. Industrial machines, high voltage equipment, escalators, pumps, generators and other machinery often pack more environmentally harmful materials than consumer goods.

      
Electronics Reuse & Recycling   (emagazine)
       

  IT Career Burnout

   
In his post that sparked the discussion about burnout on the LinkedIn CIO Forum, the IT director noted that he used to love working in IT. He didn't mind the 14-hour days because, as he put it, "New technology, new ideas, innovation made it seem as though anything were possible." But after 12 years in IT, the IT director's time is now spent on "paperwork, politics and squeezing the last penny out of every dollar," he said.

    
IT Career Burnout  (cio)

      

  Jacques Cousteau Centennial

     
With his iconic red beanie and famed ship Calypso, the French marine explorer, inventor, filmmaker, and conservationist sailed the world for much of the late 20th century, educating millions about the Earth's oceans and its inhabitants—and inspiring their protection.Jacques Cousteau's pioneering underwater documentaries—including the Oscar-winning films The Silent World, The Golden Fish, and World Without Sun...

      
The French marine explorer  (nationalgeographic)

    

  Bank:Solving Moral Hazard

     
Today, the urgent question that remains unanswered is whether the proposals that are moving ahead will address moral hazard adequately and thus prevent another systemic crisis.An endemic problem is the policy preference for across-the-board rules, applied at a minimum to “systemically important institutions” irrespective of institutional risk profiles.

    
Solving Moral Hazard   (strategy-business)
      

  Managing Your Online Profile

    
Reputation management has now become a defining feature of online life for many internet users, especially the young. While some internet users are careful to project themselves online in a way that suits specific audiences, other internet users embrace an open approach to sharing information about themselves and do not take steps to restrict what they share.

     
Online Profile & Reputation  (pewresearch)

    

  Bhopal: The scales of injustice

    
According to Eveready Industries, the successor to Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), there was never any danger of a judgement against the company, consequently no need to provide financially for that eventuality. Whence comes this overweening confidence? Justice in Bhopal will be done only if the individuals and corporations are punished in an exemplary manner.

    
Bhopal: Will justice be done ?   (bhopal)
     

  Today's Environmental Consultant

    
A large block of Pollution Engineering readers consider themselves to be environmental consultants. A consultant is someone who provides expert or professional advice, for our purposes, to companies with environmental issues. They are commonly called upon to solve unique and challenging environmental issues, and are the top specifiers of environmental technology.

    
Environmental consultants Today ?  (pollutionengineering)

    

  F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Production

    
Northrop Grumman Corp. has successfully deployed the Volumetric Error Compensation (VEC) service from Automated Precision Inc. (API) to achieve higher accuracies on its large volume machine tools. Seeking greater machine-tool accuracy for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter production, the military aircraft and defense systems integrator and manufacturer selected VEC to achieve the high-tolerance machined parts.

     
Greater machine-tool accuracy   (qualitydigest)   

       

  Reproductive success

   
It looks as though two male strategies may be in equilibrium: the hunk and the troubadour, perhaps. What is clear from both studies, though, is that no matter how hard males compete, they will always be outwitted by the wiliest, most subversive competitors of all: females.

   
The hunk and the troubadour   (economist)

       

  Japan: tests space age parts

    
The Rockot launcher, a modified Russian ballistic missile, lifted off Wednesday with a Japanese satellite running on off-the-shelf components designed to prove the utility of everyday parts in space. The launch was conducted under the commercial management of Eurockot, a German company that sells Rockot flights on the international market.

     
Japanese space exploration   (spaceflightnow)
       

  How to Cope with Frustration?

    
Frustration has typically been extremely difficult to study because even systems with relatively few components have interactions so complex that they cannot be modeled effectively on the best conventional electronic computers. Now, however, a team of researchers has simulated frustration in the smallest possible quantum system in a precisely controllable experimental arrangement, one which can be extended to much larger systems.

   
Modelling of the frustration    (innovations-report)

     

  Nuclear option on Oil Spill?

    
This week, with the failure of the “top kill” attempt, the buzz had grown loud enough that federal officials felt compelled to respond.A spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said that neither Energy Secretary Steven Chu nor anyone else was thinking about a nuclear blast under the gulf. The nuclear option was not — and never had been — on the table, federal officials said.

      
Nuclear option on Oil Spill?   (nytimes)
      

  Report 2010 on ETI

     
This Report presents the rankings of the updated Enabling Trade Index (ETI), a comprehensive index intended to capture the full range of issues that contribute to impeding trade, ranking nations according to factors that facilitate the free flow of goods across national borders and to destination. The results mirror the resilience against the threat of protectionism during the economic crisis.

    
ETI report    (weforum)
       

  US: world's top universities?

    
A finding of a 2007 survey by the American Institutes of Research is particularly chilling: "[M]ore than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.

US: world's top universities?   (news.yahoo)

    

  China superpower : to be become supercomputer

    
For the first time, a second Chinese supercomputer appears in the list of the top ten fastest machines. However, the US still dominates the list with more than half the Top 500, including the world's fastest, known as Jaguar. The Cray computer, which is owned by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, has a top speed of 1.75 petaflops.

       
China to be become supercomputer  (news.bbc) 
    

  Acupuncture: natural-painkiller

    
Writing in the Lancet  journal , Nedergaard's team describe how acupuncture reduced pain by two thirds in normal mice, but had no effect on the discomfort of mice that lacked the adenosine receptor gene. Without adenosine receptors, the chemical will have no effect on the mice when it is released in their bodies. The acupunture had no effect at all in either group if the needles were not rotated.

      
The science of acupuncture   (guardian)

      

  Gulf farmland search

    
Gulf nations seeking farmland for food security have shifted their focus to East Europe and Australia after a buying spree in the developing world as they look for land that comes with less political and financial risk. The Gulf is one of the world's biggest food importing regions.
     

Gulf farmland search    (arabianbusiness)

     

  Google’s Economic Impact

    
Google's not just a search engine. They also helped hundreds of businesses in every U.S. state to grow. Across the U.S., Google generated $54 billion of economic activity for American businesses, website publishers and non–profits in 2009. For every $1 a business spends on AdWords, compagnies receive an average of $8 in profit through Google Search and AdWords.

     
Google Home Income  (google)
     

  Monitoring the WSIS targets

    
World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2010 was launched today at the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC-10), which is currently meeting in Hyderabad. The report provides a mid-term review of the progress made in creating a global information society by 2015, a commitment that governments agreed upon at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which took place in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis in 2005.

   
The world telecommunication development   (itu)
    

  Safety Rules & Biotech Industry

    
Whether handling deadly pathogens for biowarfare research, harnessing viruses to do humankind’s bidding or genetically transforming cells to give them powers not found in nature, the estimated 232,000 employees in the nation’s most sophisticated biotechnology labs work amid imponderable hazards. And some critics say the modern biolab often has fewer federal safety regulations than a typical blue-collar factory.

    
Safety Rules & Biotech Industry   (nytimes)
    

  Egypt's Avenger of the Pharaohs

   
Egypt, plagued by tomb raiders and art dealers, has lost large portions of its pharaonic heritage to Europe and the United States. The head of the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities is waging a bitter moral campaign against the West, and he is now demanding the return of six of the most beautiful masterpieces.

    
Theft of pharaoh's Heritage   (spiegel)
   

  Managing Scientific Data

   
Data-oriented scientific processes depend on fast, accurate analysis of experimental data generated through empirical observation and simulation. However, scientists are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of data produced by their own experiments. With improving instrument precision and the complexity of the simulated models, data overload promises to only get worse.

    
Managing Scientific Data  (cacm.acm)
       

  Strong Sectors Despite Economy?

    
Predicting the business future of most industries has been nearly impossible for the past few years, and the recession has made any hazy image in the crystal ball downright scary. For those in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical equipment industries, the long debate over health care reform has complicated business conjecture. Companies are continuing their groundbreaking research that likely will lead to new therapies.

     
Biotech et Med. Industries   (areadevelopment)

      

  Biofuels learn to eat less

    
THE feast is coming to an end for biofuel producers. Their supposedly clean, green fuel has been gobbling up some of the choicest food crops, including corn, rape and soya, leading to controversy and protests around the world. Now the industry increasingly finds itself forced to dine on more meagre fare: the inedible scraps left by other industries. But it is now finding ways to turn these scraps into a hearty dinner - and it could even provide for others, too.

     
Biofuels learn to eat less   (newscientist)

      

  EU crisis threatens liberal benefits

    
Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. “The Europe that protects” is a slogan of the European Union. But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead.

   
The Future of Europe   (nytimes)
    

  Cloud Computing & Developing Nations

     
It's a trend with enormous implications. "Cloud computing provides access to large-scale remote resources in a very efficient and quick manner," explains Karsten Schwan, director of the Center for Experimental Research in Computing Systems at Georgia Tech University. "It has the potential to dramatically change business models and the way people interact with one another."

     
Cloud Comp. as new business model  (cacm.acm)
       

  Is Nuc. technology really safe ?

    
About 24 years ago Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union then, was jolted by an explosion at the fourth generator of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The incident that occurred on 26 April 1986 sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere covering an extensive geographical area, including the nearby town of Pripyat.

    
Nuc. Technology & security (bernama)   
   

  Ocean acidification report

    
Ten years ago, ocean acidification was a phenomenon only known to small group of ocean scientists. It's now recognised as the hidden partner of climate change, prompting calls for an urgent, substantial reduction in carbon emissions to reduce future impacts. The ‘Impacts of Ocean Acidification’ report presented by the European Science Foundation on 20 May for European Maritime Day 2010 gives a comprehensive view of current research.

      

Climate change  (if it doesn't work, please, copy and past the link into your browser) (pr.euractiv)
       

  UK's Regional airport uprising

    
In March 2010, campaigners against plans for a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport won a High Court battle that has forced the then UK Government to review its policy support for the expansion. Besides throwing what was the Labour Party's flagship transport policy into disarray, the decision has aviation experts warning that the nation could suffer a shortfall in its long-term passenger capacity.

    
UK's Regional Airport Uprising   (airport-technology)
    

  GBO3: Global biodiversity outlook

      

The world has collectively failed in its bid to halt the rapid loss of the planet's species, a milestone UN report found this week. Since the presentation of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 at the United Nations "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro, 168 countries have signed the document.

    
Global Biodiversity Outlook   (gbo3.cbd)

     

  SAP: shaking up management practices

    
SAP (SAP), based in Walldorf, Germany, will use the purchase to add business applications for customers that want employees to use tablets and smartphones at work, and database software widely used in finance and telecommunications. It helps SAP compete with Oracle (ORCL), whose chief executive officer, Larry Ellison, has spent more than $42 billion on 65 companies since 2005.

    
SAP compete with Oracle   (businessweek)

      

  BMW & App. Virtualization

    
1,000 apps to be more precise. Managing and deploying these applications for employees in 250 global locations had become an expensive, time-consuming grind.When you're auto giant BMW, with 24 production sites in 13 countries, you're going to have your share of important business applications.

    
BMW & App Virtualization   (cio)
     

  BP ignoring oil spill ideas

     
Oil-eating bacteria, bombs and a device that resembles a giant shower curtain are among the 10,000 fixes people have proposed to counter the growing environmental threat. BP is taking a closer look at 700 of the ideas, but the oil company has yet to use any of them nearly a month after the deadly explosion that caused the leak.

       
BP's lack of solutions   (news.yahoo)

     

  Carbon credit & buy-back deal

     
London-based Total Global Steel was named by a source on Friday as a seller of recycled carbon credits, as the Hungarian government said it was still unsure as to the remaining used credits' whereabouts. It was not immediately clear whether TGS knew that the credits were unusable under the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

    
buy-back deal  (alertnet)
         

  How to Prevent Cell Death ?

   
What if people could stop their cells from dying? Wouldn't that be the same as eternal life? Well that is not possible, so the best people can do is delay the cellular inevitable. To do so merely entails exercise, an activity that people should be doing anyway. An Italian team of scientists at the University of Rome put their collective skills together to prove this hypothesis.

    
Cell Death process  (enn)
     

  Euro Zone's Governance

    
In the course of the crisis, the governing council of the European Central Bank decided, for the first time, to buy the government bonds of troubled EU countries -- thus breaking a taboo. The president of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, Axel Weber, his Dutch counterpart and the ECB's chief economist, Jürgen Stark, voted against this move.

       
Euro Zone's Governance   (spiegel)
      

  Modern Automobile Security Analysis

    
The paper “Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile” is an example of our experimental research theme. Our research was aimed at comprehensively assessing — and learning from — how much resilience a conventional automobile has against a digital attack mounted against its internal components by an attacker with access to the car’s internal network.

    
Automobile: Experimental Security Analysis  (autosec)
      

  Walgreen's Genetic Test Kits

    
The FDA posted online a letter to Pathways, indicating the San Diego-based company never submitted its product for federal review, a requirement for medical devices.company decided not to stock the tests until it has “further clarity” on the issue. Pathway’s test would have been the first low-cost, mass-marketed version of kits that screen for genes associated with diseases.

    
Genetic Test Kits at stake  (asq)
     

  Diversity: As strategic Advantage

     
Leaders often intuitively understand the advantage of a diverse workforce, especially in today's global economy, yet many organizations grapple with how to develop and apply diversity principles in a way that will affect revenue and market position, as well as reputation. For companies to capitalize successfully on diversity, they must develop a robust and comprehensive strategic framework that not only considers how to attract and retain diverse employees.

   
Today's global economy  (businessweek)

     

  Energy-generating smart window

   
Smart' windows, or smart glass, refers to glass technology that includes electrochromic devices, suspended particle devices, micro-blinds and liquid crystal devices. Their major feature is that they can control the amount of light passing through the glass and increase energy efficiency of the room by reducing costs for heating or air-conditioning.

       
Energy-generating smart window (nanowerk)
        

  The cost of biodiversity losses

     
This report focuses on ways we can use land and ecosystem accounting techniques to describe and monitor the consequences of biodiversity loss in the coastal wetlands of the Mediterranean. These ecosystems are characterised by the close coupling of economic, social and ecological processes, and any accounting system has to represent how these key elements are linked and change over time.

     
Report on biodiversity losses costs   (eea.europa)

      

  Prospects of Mobile Search

    
This report aims to assess the potential of future Mobile Search. Two broad groups of search-based applications can be identified. The first group adapts and emulates web search processes and services to the mobile environment. The second is made up of services which exploit the unique features of mobile devices and mobile environments.

       
The future Mobile Search   (ipts.jrc.ec.europa)
       

  Polymers: WEEE Directive

     
Manufacturers of all sorts of products are now responsible for their ultimate collection and recycling. Almost 20 years ago, the German "Green Dot" system forced producers of plastic packaging to collect and dispose of their products; the more recent End of Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive makes similar demands on the automotive industry.

   
WEE regulation   (icis)

     

  EU's common policies

    
Strengthening economic governance is primary among the report's recommendations. This hardly comes as a surprise, given that González had given his full support to the current Spanish EU Presidency's major objective of reinforcing "European economic government" and improving coordination of the EU's common policies in economic affairs and employment.

     
How to improve EU common policies ?   (euractiv)

     

  Fundamental principle of life

     
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund have now discovered how cells ensure the correct distribution of proteins throughout their interior. Many of the proteins which need to be transported to the cell membrane are furnished with a kind of anchor consisting of a fatty acid, which serves to embed the proteins in the cell membrane.

   
Fundamental principle of life   (biochemist)
    

  Danemark eyes wind Energy market

    
“With a population of 72 million, Turkey is a very significant consumer market for our export-oriented economy,” said Steen Hommel, department head at The Trade Council attached to the Danish Foreign Affairs Ministry. “As our economy is heavily related to exporting Danish goods to generate income back at home and sustaining the social security system, we need to find new emerging markets.

   
Danemark & Emerging markets   (todayszaman)

    

  EU on tech. standards & regulation

The Commission has revised the way in which the rules apply to the setting of technical standards. This is a process which involves competing companies agreeing to build hardware or software in an agreed way so that technologies will easily work together. It is seen as being good for competition and consumers despite the fact that it necessitates competitor collusion.

   
EU regulation    (theregister)

    

  English as the global tongue

    
Globalisation is a word that first slipped into its current usage during the 1960s; and the globalisation of English, and English literature, law, money and values, is the cultural revolution of my generation. Combined with the biggest IT innovations since Gutenberg, it continues to inspire the most comprehensive transformation of our society in 500, even 1,000, years.

    
The globalisation of English  (guardian)

     

  China/US Empire building strategies

     
While the US was expanding its global military presence in Asia and Latin America, China replaced the US as Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile’s major trading partner[23]. While the US financed a vast mercenary army in Iraq, China became Saudi’s main petroleum export market. The US global military expansion did not lead to a parallel or commensurate increase or recovery of global economic power.

    
China/US Empire building strategies  (meattradenewsdaily)

      

  DNA Of Cyber-Attacks

   
The challenge of tracking down cyber-attackers underpins a new project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which cites the “rapid proliferation of cyber-attacks, malicious software and spam e-mail.” The $43-million program, appropriately called Cyber Genome, aims to find ways of identifying cyber-attackers.

    
Tracking down cyber-attackers  (aviationweek)

     

  Surprising New Diet Tip

    
Successful weight loss in obese individuals is defined as a reduction of 10 percent or more of initial body weight maintained for at least a year. The jury is still out, however, as to whether fast or slow initial weight loss is the best approach for weight control over the long-term.

    
New Diet Tip  (livescience)

      

  EU: IT industry against Web filter

     
A European proposal to introduce mandatory blocking of child abuse websites poses a threat to the openness of the Internet, according to Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA). Black is so far the only person from the IT industry willing to speak out on the issue. Companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and the Spanish telecommunications Telefónica...

       
Compulsory internet filtering?   (computerworld)

     

  Implantable Electronics

    
Implanted under the skin, an array of light-emitting diodes could signal the concentration in the blood of biomarkers such as insulin. Over time, the array will dissolve away, eliminating the need for surgery to remove the implant. Flexible silicon electronics (inset) are held in place with a silk film.

    
Electronics inset   (technologyreview)
       

  Coaching for Sales Effectiveness

    
The past decade has wrought dramatic changes for the pharmaceutical industry. The days of robust product pipelines and easy market access have been replaced by fierce brand competition, increased generic presence, and more restrictive regulatory hurdles. In the face of such challenges, pharmaceutical companies have been forced to reconsider all aspects of their business models.

      
Sales Effectiveness  (social.eyeforpharma)
      

  Who killed U.S. fusion ?

      
In the 1970s, on the door to his fusion office, Ed Kintner displayed this biblical quote: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” There could be no time when this is more true, than today. Legend has it that there are more problems in attaining controlled nuclear fusion than scientists anticipated, and that little progress has been made.

    
Controlled nuclear fusion pathway   (21stcenturysciencetech)

    

  Planned Economy, Privacy Problems

    
If someone asked you what's wrong with a planned economy, your first answer might not be "privacy." But it should be. For proof, look no further than the financial regulation bill the Senate is debating. Its 1,400 pages contain strong prescriptions for a government-micromanaged economy—and the undoing of your financial privacy.

    
Planned Economy, Privacy Problems   (online.wsj)

      

  Embraer & Phenom 300

    
The first quarter was marked by the consolidation of the production of the Phenom jets, with the Phenom 300 entering operation. In a little over a year, Embraer manufactured and delivered 100 Phenom 100 airplanes.The two Embraer Executive Jet Service Centers in the U.S.earned the 2010 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Diamond award.

   
The Phenom jets   (newswiretoday)
      

  Leading Outside the Lines

    
In every company, there are really two organizations at work: the formal and the informal. The formal organization is the default governing structure of most large companies founded in the past century. The informal organization, by contrast, is an agglomeration of all the human aspects of the company: the values, emotions, behaviors, myths, cultural norms, and uncharted networks.

    
Formal metrics & Informal communication   (strategy-business)
     

  How to boost research and innov.?

    
The European Commission has unveiled a plan to simplify the procedures for taking part in EU-funded research projects. The overall aim is to make participation transparent and attractive to the best researchers and innovative companies in Europe and beyond. Ensuring European research realises its full potential is crucial to the EU's Europe 2020 Strategy.

    
Managing EU grants for R&D   (ec.europa)

     

  Gas flares: deadly on Earth

      
Geology dictates that some of the richest deposits of oil sit together with deposits of natural gas. Gas flaring is the practice of burning off that natural gas when it is brought to the surface in places where there is no infrastructure to make use of it. In the 1960s and 70s, "worthless" gas was continuously flared at oil wells from Texas to Saudi Arabia.

     
Gas flares: deadly on Earth  (independent)

     

  Survey: Antimicrobial Resistance

    
53% of Europeans still believe that antibiotics kill viruses and 47% believe that they are effective against colds and flu. To combat these misconceptions, since 2008 the European Union has organised an annual antibiotic awareness campaign in the 27 European Union countries, providing an opportunity to reconsider some preconceived ideas concerning antibiotics.

   
Antimicrobial Resistance  (ec.europa)
      

  Technology : Asia & EU gain steam

    
The United States remains a competitive leader in innovation, it has made the least progress of all developing nations in competiveness and innovation capacity over the last decade, according to a 2009 report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation titled “The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU & U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness.”

     
Benchmarking in Innovation    (theepochtimes)

     

  ISO 31000 risk management standard

     

The eruption of the ash and its subsequent blanketing of much of Europe is a classic example of a low probability, severe consequence event that tends to be overlooked by management when examining potential risk to corporate objectives. The ash cloud is just another example of the ever-changing risks that must be managed in an increasingly global economy with greater reliance on "just in time" delivery.

   
Ash cloud & Risk management   (iso)

     

  Ten Tips for Better Facilitation

     
Coming from the Latin facilitar, meaning, “to make easy,” the role of the facilitator is not to do for others, but to bring out the ability of a group to accomplish a goal. There are many books and manuals on facilitation, yet like many proven business tools, the role of the meeting facilitator is not explored enough.

   
How to make easy ? (qualitydigest)

     

  Atom Servers Can Succeed

    
Researchers at Harvard and Microsoft have authored a paper that seeks to prove that a small, power-efficient core like the Intel Atom chip can be better suited for search, a conclusion that might help explain Google's recent acquisition of the Agnilux chip house.

    
Small & power-efficient tech.  (extremetech)
     

  By 2050: Renewable Energy Tech.

    
RE-thinking 2050 presents a pathway towards a 100% renewable energy system for the EU in 2050, examining the effects on Europe’s energy supply system and on CO2 emissions, while at the same time portraying the economic, environmental and social benefi ts of such a system. Moreover, it provides policy recommendations for what is needed to fully exploit the EU´s vast renewable energy potential.

     
Renewable Energy Tech. by 2050  (rethinking2050)

    

  Ash cloud structures analyses

What will be the impact of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano's ash cloud in the atmosphere over Europe? Scientists from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) are addressing this question: aboard DLR's 'Dassault Falcon 20E', a crew of six set out at 16:00 CEST on Monday, 19 April 2010 on a research flight lasting several hours.

   
Ashs Scrutiny by the Scientists   (dlr)
     

  Globaldiv Project

    
A global view of livestock biodiversity and conservation – is a three- year project funded by the European Commission in the framework of the AGRI GEN RES initiative. It is formed by a core group of partners who participated in past EU or continental scale projects on Farm Animal Genetic Resources characterization and conservation.

    
Globaldiv Project  (interscience)
    

  German biotech proves resilient

     
The German biotechnology sector has come through the global crisis virtually unscathed. That is the main message of a survey conducted in late 2009 by biotechnologie.de, an information portal established by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. According to the study, there were 531 companies whose principal business is biotechnology in Germany last year, a considerable increase on 2008’s figure of 501.

    
German biotechnologie  (thepharmaletter)

    

  Consultation workshop on aspartame

    
This report has described the outcome of an initiative facilitated by EFSA at the request of its AF, to identify new publications on aspartame to identify possible areas of discrepancies, or knowledge gaps, in the body of evidence on aspartame safety since the SCF evaluation of 2002, and to consider options to address these discrepancies and/or gaps, if any.

    
Aspartame Side-effects ?  (efsa.europa)
     

  The Energy Revolution

    
Energy is at once the greatest motive force in the world economy and the principal environmental challenge for policymakers. The engineers who work on getting energy, storing it, moving it about, consuming it, and conserving it are the focus of this report.

    
Renewable-energy-industry   (spectrum.ieee)
      

  Waste-treatment facilities

   
wildlife and human health may be threatened by pharmaceutical residues that escape into waterways and elsewhere, a growing band of concerned ecotoxicologists and environmental chemists are calling for yet another standard for new medications: that they be designed to be safe for the environment.

    
Waste residues treatment   (e360.yale)
    

  FBI’s DNA Database & scientists

    
Two dozen scientists (along with several other scholars and practitioners) recently published an open letter in the prestigious journal Science that called out the Federal Bureau of Investigation for stonewalling research access to the federal DNA database. This database houses almost eight million DNA profiles used to identify unknown offenders who leave biological materials at crime scenes.

    
DNA profiles secrecy   (scienceprogress)
      

  The emerging world

Developing countries are becoming hotbeds of business innovation in much the same way as Japan did from the 1950s onwards. They are coming up with new products and services that are dramatically cheaper than their Western equivalents. They are reinventing systems of production and distribution, and they are experimenting with entirely new business models.

    
BRIC World Market Share   (economist)

     

  H2: The eco-car race

Hydrogen, one of Earth's most abundant elements, once was seen as green energy's answer to the petroleum-driven car: easy to produce, available everywhere and nonpolluting when burned. Hydrogen energy was defeated by a mountain of obstacles — the fear of explosion by the highly flammable gas, the difficulty of carrying the fuel in large, heavy tanks in the vehicle, and the lack of a refueling network.

     
H2 Energy sources of the future  (news.yahoo)

    

  Study on effects of Folic acid

   
Over 60 scientifi c experts from the European Union (EU), Switzerland, the United States and Canada attended the meeting to assess the latest scientific evidence on the possible relationship between dietary intakes (including fortified foods and food supplements) of folate and folic acid, and cancer risks, including cancer of the colon, breast and prostate.

   
Folic acid & Health effects  (efsa.europa)

   

  U.S. Benefits From Skilled Immigration

    
The survey of 1,600 adults, which examined the reasons for anti-immigration sentiment in the United States, was published in February in American Political Science Review, a peer-reviewed journal. The analysis suggests, moreover, that the immigrants played a central role in the cycle of the economic growth of cities over the last two decades.

     
U.S. Benefits From Immigration   (mit)
    

  Brain-i-Nets Project

    
Learning mechanisms implemented in the brain appear to be much more robust and flexible than those currently used in neurally inspired computing systems. To confer the superior adaptive and computational capabilities of biological neural systems to large-scale recurrent neural hardware systems and other novel massively parallel computing devices, new and more sophisticated learning rules are needed.

    
What's Brain-i-Net ?  (brain-i-nets.kip.uni-heidelberg)
     

  Who can help wage cyberwar ?

    
"It's about [developing] the next generation of cyberwarriors to protect the nation," says Alan Greenberg, technical director of cyber and information solutions at Boeing. Demand for cybersecurity professionals is growing quickly. Government and industry executives say they need more cybersecurity employees but struggle to find qualified applicants.

     
Cybersecurity professionals at stake  (businessweek)

     

NIST Report (PII): Protecting Identifiable Information  (nist)

        

  Volkswagen Group & Stanford University Partnership

     

Chancellor Merkel presided over the ceremonial ribbon cutting and the first official tour of VAIL, a $5.75 million commitment from the Volkswagen Group to research at the Stanford School of Engineering. Vibrant public-private partnerships such as the successful collaboration between the Volkswagen Group and Stanford are critical to a sustainable future.

    
VW-Stanford partnership  (consumerelectronicsnet)

     

  Targeted Ads investigation

    
The World Privacy Forum, the Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. PIRG (public interest research groups) argue that online marketers are secretly combining online data with offline data and using that to run real-time ad auctions.In just the last few years, a growing and barely regulated network of sellers and marketers has gained massive information advantages over consumers.

   
Internet & Privacy   (uspirg)

  

  TÜV SÜD & Mark Counterfeiters

   
The European market is being flooded with increasing numbers of counterfeit products. These fakes not only cause financial losses for manufacturers, but also generate major safety problems for consumers when statutory safety tests are sidestepped in their production. TÜV SÜD has joined forces with customs authorities to establish stricter procedures against counterfeiting.

     
Counterfeit products   (qualitydigest)

    

  Innovation, by Order

    
Russia’s rich scientific traditions and poor record of converting ideas into marketable products are both undisputed, cited as causes for the Soviet collapse and crippling dependence on mining and petroleum. Not surprisingly, then, its leaders look longingly at Silicon Valley.“The whole country needs some sort of breakthrough,” Viktor F. Vekselberg, the Russian business oligarch appointed co-director of the project, said in an interview.

    
Russian Silicon Valley   (nytimes)
   

  Augmenting humans capabilities

    
The AH international conference focuses on scientific contributions towards augmenting humans capabilities through technology for increased well-being and enjoyable human experience. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Wearable computing, Augmented Health, Exoskeleton....

    
AH international conference   (augmented-human)
    

  A Breakfast Solution

   
On the journey were staff and supporters of the Rural Education Action Project (REAP)—a joint initiative of Stanford and key Chinese research centers—who'd come to check in on REAP's latest nutritional and educational efforts to give rural kids a better shot at life and lift communities up in a generation. Millions of rural Chinese have only a third the income of urban dwellers.

   
Food for thought   (stanfordalumni)
    

  Nuclear Industry: Small Is Beautiful

   
The hot core of the device, developed by the Japanese company Toshiba, measures only 2 meters by 0.7 meters (6 feet 7 inches by 2 feet 4 inches). But despite its diminutive size, it is expected to deliver 10 megawatts of electricity. "Super-Safe, Small and Simple," or "4S," is a nuclear reactor, and Galena could become a test case for a new kind of electricity generation.

   
Next generation nuke Plant   (spiegel)
     

  In Syria, a Prologue for Cities

     
A prehistoric town that had remained untouched beneath the ground near Syria for 6,000 years is now revealing clues about the first cities in the Middle East prior to the invention of the wheel. The town, called Tell Zeidan, dates from between 6000 B.C. and 4000 B.C., and immediately preceded the world's first urban civilizations in the ancient Middle East.

       
Middle East first cities   (nytimes)
     

  Cars that drive better than you

    
The Volvo system is the latest in a line of developments made possible by sophisticated sensors based on cameras, radar and lasers. These sensors already provide drivers with adaptive cruise control, which alters a car's speed to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front, as well as technology such as semi-autonomous parking systems.

    

Robocar: Future autonomous cars   (newscientist)

    

  Chicago most closely watched US city

    
In less than a decade and with little opposition, the city has linked thousands of cameras — on street poles and skyscrapers, aboard buses and in train tunnels — in a network covering most of the city. Officials can watch video live at a sprawling emergency command center, police stations and even some squad cars.

    
Most closely watched city  (news.yahoo)

   

  Template for Geminoid Female

     
Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro unveiled today his latest creation: a female android called Geminoid F. The new robot, a copy of a woman in her 20s with long dark hair, can laugh, smile, and exhibit other facial expressions more naturally than Ishiguro's previous androids.

    
Geminoid Female    (spectrum.ieee)

    

  Gates mourns "Computing's father"

Roberts was widely considered the humble and not terribly famous father of the modern personal computer – and thus also of an entire industry that has come to brighten, simplify (some would say complicate) the lives of almost all of us in one way or another.

      
MS Father of computing  (independent)

      

  New DVD writer

      
The new drive has some fascinating features: Not only has the maximum write speed been pushed to an incredible 26x (unfortunately read speed is 20x only), the drive is also supposed to support various disc labeling technologies including Lightscribe and Labelflash.

       
New writer tech.   (myce)
       

  Stockholm: EU Green Capital

    
With 40 percent of the inner city composed of green spaces, the Baltic Sea archipelago city seems a natural place to begin the European Commission's Green Capital initiative. Stockholm has a highly developed environmental policy, and any foreigner who comes here is probably surprised that we can benefit from nature as much as we do in the very center of town.

       
Stockholm green city   (thelocal)
       

  Toward Lightweight Batteries

      
An MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering, says that many groups have been pursuing work on lithium-air batteries, a technology that has great potential for achieving great gains in energy density. But there has been a lack of understanding of what kinds of electrode materials could promote the electrochemical reactions that take place in these batteries.

     
Lightweight Batteries   (sciencedaily)
    

  Internet impact & institution

     
By an overwhelming margin, technology experts and stakeholders participating in a survey fielded by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center believe that innovative forms of online cooperation could result in more efficient and responsive for-profit firms, non-profit organizations, and government agencies by the year 2020.

    
Innovative forms of collaboration   (pewinternet)

      

  US Advanced Biofuel Lab

     

The Dept. of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has announced that the Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will build an advanced biofuels process development facility aimed at speeding the commercialization of advanced biofuels by allowing researchers and the private sector to test and integrate innovative technologies.

    
US Advanced Biofuel Lab   (laboratoryequipment)

    

  EU survey on biodiversity

      

The EU has been legislating on biodiversity since the 1970s and is committed to implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity. The 2006 Biodiversity Communication on Halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010 – and beyond: Sustaining ecosystem services for human wellbeing contained an Action Plan which aimed to pull together actors and resources at EU and national levels to implement the necessary actions.

     
EU towards the issue of biodiversity   (ec.europa)

    

  Browser Wars

     
The Google-Adobe move has produced mixed reactions, with some questioning Google's commitment to Web standards like HTML5, since Flash Player is a proprietary plug-in for rich Internet applications. But IDC analyst Al Hilwa sees broader implications and calls the partnership a win for Adobe.

    
Google-Adobe Partnership   (pcworld)

     

  UK Herbal Therapy regulation

      
The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC), will ensure practitioners are properly trained and operating a safe business.But some have said the proposals do not go far enough.From 2011 EU legislation will permit only statutorily registered professionals to prescribe manufactured herbal remedies.

               
Herbal Therapy regulation  (news.bbc)
       

  New boreal forest biomass maps

     
A new processing algorithm has been developed using stacks of images from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) on ESA's Envisat satellite that allows for the retrieval of boreal forest biomass well beyond the levels that have been previously reported. Having a large-scale boreal forest biomass inventory would allow scientists to understand better the carbon cycle and to predict more accurately Earth's future climate.

     
Boreal forest biomass   (environmentalresearchweb)
   

  Copyright infringement of digital media

     
This study uses more accurate and comprehensive definition of Europe’s creative industries, one that expands the EU definition of core creative industries and also encompasses the economic contributions of non-core creative industries. These non-core creative industries are suppliers to and customers of the core creative industries, and their economic strength is heavily dependent upon the core industries.

   
Copyright infringements  (zeropaid)

  

  Tobacco: the answer to biofuel

     
Scientists believe using tobacco would be beneficial because it would not affect a major U.S. food source, unlike other biofuels made from corn, soybeans and other crops. Tobacco is an attractive "energy plant" because it can generate a large amount of oil and sugar more efficiently than other crops.

    
Energy plant   (msnbc.msn)

      

  CEO Pay Drops, but..

    
A survey of 81 big companies shows that CEO pay dropped by 8.6% last year. Now for the worrisome twist: The cash portion of their compensation rose 8.3%. For an early peek at how CEOs prospered—or didn't— Bloomberg BusinessWeek  examined data from proxies filed by companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index by Mar. 12.

    
Portion of package revenue   (businessweek)
       

  OECD: Germany Economic Survey

      
In the latest economic survey for Germany, the report is positive about Germany's growth but says there needs to be further domestic investment. The OECD expects the country's gross domestic product (GDP) to increase by 1.3 percent and 1.9 percent in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

    
Economic Survey of Germany  (oecd)

     

  Career Around Gallium Nitride

       

Every now and then a new semiconductor material comes along that holds huge promise in a variety of applications. Using gallium nitride and its alloys, you can access the entire visible spectrum, ... so from the point of view of optoelectronics, being able to get any wavelength you like makes it a very exciting material system.

    
Gallium Nitride & applications   (sciencecareers.sciencemag)

     

  New Demand in shifting sands

     
The oil-rich Middle East is pouring billions into ambitious airport developments. These super hubs have been designed with extra emphasis on increasing non-aeronautical revenue and developing integrated logistics platforms that add value to airport operations. IATA figures indicate that air freight volumes in the Middle East increased by 21.4% towards the end of 2009 compared with the previous year.

     
Middle East Super hubs   (airport-technology)
    

  Human being: new species

    
Scientists in Germany had discovered – to their amazement – that the bone recovered from a cave in the mountains of southern Siberia almost certainly belonged to a new species of human, has sent ripples of excitement through academic circles. For the first time, the analysis of ancient DNA has rewritten the human story. Some 30,000 years ago, human life was far richer than we could have imagined.

    
Rewriting the human story    (guardian.co)
    

  China-India Conflict ?

     
China and India are building up their interests in conflict-prone and unstable states on their borders like Nepal and Burma — important sources of natural resources. If something goes wrong in these countries — if the politics implode — you could see the emergence of proxy wars in Asia.

    
The proxy wars  (time)

     

  UK space agency

   
The UK Space Agency, as it is officially named, took off with the help of British astronaut Major Timothy Peake. But the accent at today's launch in London was on the dry realities of economics rather than Dan Dare. Germany, France and Italy also run their own space agencies as well as having ESA membership.

    
UK new race & involvement   (independent.co)

     

  Unified comms message

    
Interoperability is in demand when it comes to the multi-faceted communications world. Mark Summerson, general manager of UC at integrator BT Global Services, who ties together different vendors' solutions, says it is a huge challenge to make them work together.There are far more interoperability issues on the voice side than the application side.

      
Unified comms message   (microscope.co)

       

  Iran’s natural gas riches

    
The scheduled start of drilling this month by China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) in Iran’s South Pars gas field could be both a harbinger and explanation of much wider geopolitical developments.First of all, the $5 billion project reveals the main arterial system for future world energy supply and demand.

        
Iran’s South Pars gas field  (dissidentvoice)

      

  Swiss firms more innovative

     
Switzerland climbed one place to top the European Innovation Scoreboard issued by the European Union this week. And research by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute reveals that innovation really does translate into cash.

Swiss rated high in innovation    (swissinfo)         Scoreboard 2010-2009  (ec.europa)

       

  Reach deadline at risk

        

The joint group is expected to put forward proposals in April to prevent chemical producers and importers missing a 30 November deadline for the registration of high volume and potentially toxic substances.If the chemicals are not registered with the required safety information in time they will be withdrawn from the market under the Reach rule.

     
Reach deadline at risk  (rsc)

    

  Web's video codec search

    
The search for the next-generation video codec for the open web has reached an impasse. Few of the options are truly open or free, and those that are free are not being pushed by the major forces.Apple's iPad, like the iPhone, will not support Flash video for technical and commercial reasons. Instead, Apple has pledged support for HTML 5 and the H.264 format.

        
Codec for the open web  (zdnet.co)

      

  ISO & UNIDO: Building trust

The fruitful partnership between ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) has just produced a new handbook. Conformity assessment provides the means for testing the compliance of such products and services with these expectations, in accordance with relevant standards, regulations and other specifications.

     
Conformity assessment & regulation   (iso)
         

  Social Networking: New Global Footprint

   
Consumer engagement within social networks has the potential to change the way consumers are targeted, not just through the digital medium, but through all forms of traditional media. Whilst a few billion dollars of ad revenue can’t be wrong, the prevailing wisdom is that the current level of advertising activity on social networks isn’t consummate with the size – and highly engaged levels – of the audience.

    
Social Networking   (blog.nielsen)

     

  UK Offshore Energy Sea

    
UK OESEA considered the environmental implications of a draft plan/programme to enable: further seaward rounds of oil and gas licensing, including gas storage in UK waters; and further rounds of offshore wind farm leasing in the UK Renewable Energy Zone1 and the territorial waters of England and Wales to a depth of 60m.

     
UK Renewable Energy  (offshore-sea)
    

  Germany: Booming Business

     
According to the 2009 annual report put together by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Germany's weapons exports have more than doubled in the last five years, to 11 percent of the global total. German submarines and tanks, the report makes clear, have gained a number of loyal customers.

    
Arms trade  (spiegel)
       

  Survey: Salmonella in EU chicken

     
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published the results of a survey on Campylobacter and Salmonella in chicken at slaughterhouses in the European Union. In most EU Member States, a high prevalence of Campylobacter was found in chickens, whereas Salmonella was less frequently detected.

      
Campylobacter and Salmonella in chicken   (efsa.europa)

     

  How Science Sparked Democracy ?

    
The way we live now is virtually indistinguishable from the way people lived prior to the scientific revolution—life was “nasty, brutish, and short,” as Moreno said, describing the philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s vision of the “state of nature” without government.

        
The science of liberty  (scienceprogress)
    

  Hygienic design of equipment

    
Misinterpretation of fundamental criteria for the hygienic design of equipment by designers is resulting in incorrect installation of parts such as valves and sensors at the initial design stage of new food processing equipment and leaves processors exposed to contaminant threats, claims the EHEDG.

    
How to comply with EU Directives ?  (foodproductiondaily)
    

  How Data Gets Out ?

   
Most attention goes to keeping hackers out. But once they're inside, how do they extract data from your organization? Research from Trustwave's SpiderLabs shows the answer is often surprisingly simple.

    
Data Exfiltration  (csoonline)
    

  BioSpectrum Asia Emerging Company

   
Moleac Pte Ltd has been granted the Emerging Company of the Year 2010 Award by BioSpectrum, the leading integrated media platform for the Life Science Industry in the Asia Pacific. This award recognizes Moleac's innovative business model.

     
BioSpectrum Awards Moleac   'biotech-finances)
    

  Technology for Violence Prevention

      
This programme incorporates the use of information technology in building and sharing information and knowledge about gender violence. This serves several purposes: to introduce the women to information technology and enable them develop skills that can empower them economically and socially.

    
Information technology as Prevention  (changemakers)

    

  A Superluminal Computer

    
Researchers point out that "Nonlocal phenomenon" can lead to materials in which the index of refraction is less than one, thereby allowing superluminal speeds. For example, light travelling through a vacuum can be made to spontaneously form into an electron-positron pair--an entangled pair--which then recombine to form a photon again.

     

Allowing superluminal speeds  (technologyreview)
       

  Minnesota's Lean Success

    
The Quality Fair is a university-wide event for employees to network, share best practices and learn about outstanding improvement projects that positively impact service and productivity, reduce costs, and enhance revenue, education and research. This year's Quality Fair included exhibits from other public sector organizations.

      
Lean Success   (state.mn)

      

  ISO C++ Standards Meeting

     
The ISO C++ committee met in Pittsburgh, PA, USA on March 8-13, 2010, hosted by the CERT Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. As usual, about 50 experts attended, and we had eight official national body delegations from Canada, Finland, France, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

     
ISO C++ Standards Meeting   (herbsutter.wordpress)

      

  Liquid crystals overcome friction

     
In a joint project with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Potsdam and the Mainz-based company Nematel, the IWM researchers are investigating which liquid crystals are most suitable for use as lubricants,and under what conditions.

    
New lubricant   (engineerlive)

    

     

By early 2011 all hard drives will use an "advanced format" that changes how they go about saving the data people store on them.The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable.

    

Hard drive advanced format  (news.bbc.co)

     

  EU Oral health survey

    
Only a minority of Europeans (41%) state that they still have all their natural teeth. A third still have 20 or more, but not all, their natural teeth. On the other hand, 13% of respondents declared that they had only 9 natural teeth at the most, or even none.

   
EU Oral health survey  (ec.europa)
    

  US nuclear waste

   
The project involved more than 2,500 scientists. It cost $ 10.5 billion between 1983 and 2009 and it included one of the most bizarre scientific tasks of all time: evaluate whether nuclear waste stored deep inside a Nevada desert mountain would be safe a million years into the future.

    
US nuclear waste  (blogs.reuters)

    

  What's Wrong with V.C.

     
The old mechanism for funding the commercialization of new technologies is in trouble. A decade ago, venture capitalists seemed like genuine alchemists, able to turn even startup dross into purest gold. In recent years, however, the industry has seemed less magical than mundane. Since 2004, its average five-year return has oscillated around zero.

    
Venture capital  (technologyreview)
      

  EU Homeopathy industry

   
With the European Commission soon to launch a review of EU pharmaceutical laws, the homeopathy industry feels the time is ripe to launch fresh lobbying push in Brussels to have the EU force all member states to provide access to the product from public health systems and loosen up the approval process for their remedies.

    
EU pharmaceutical laws   (euobserver)
      

  Britain: to revive manufacturing

    
Recession hit the sector hard. Twelve months ago, manufacturing output was falling at its fastest rate since records began in 1948, and although the sector is now back in growth there have been high-profile scalps, including the Teeside Cast Products steel plant in Redcar and vanmaker LDV. But – in the words of Mark Twain – reports of the death of manufacturing are premature.

    
How to revive manufacturing  (businessweek)

    

  Arctic Methane

    
A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.

    
Arctic Methane  (innovations-report)

    

  Accumulation of acid in atmosphere

    
Scientists have struggled for years to reconcile atmospheric concentrations of sulfuric acid with the results of laboratory experiments on particle formation rates. According to Mikko Sipilä at the University of Helsinki in Finland, this is down to the inadequacy of particle detectors in previous experiments.

     
Atmospheric acidification  (rsc)
     

  Protecting investors

    
Entitled "The Impact of Investor Protection Law on Corporate Policy: Evidence from the Blue Sky Laws," the paper described the professor's effort to determine whether new standards to protect investors helped or hurt corporate fortunes in an era when bogus mining scams, not deceptive credit-card contracts, were the rage.

       
Investor Protection Law  (post-gazette)
        

  New Space-Weather Science Tool

    
The iSWA is a robust, integrated system provides information about space weather conditions past, present, and future. "The iSWA space-weather data analysis system offers a unique level of customization and flexibility to maintain, modify, and add new tools and data products as they become available,"

    
New Weather Science Tool  (nasa)
    

  EU information and communication Technologies

     
The importance of ICT (information and communication Technologies) in care – in both institutional care and home care – is growing steadily in Germany. Conventional technical devices like telephones, mobiles and computers are used by official care providers to organise and handle every day care-related tasks for professional care workers.

   
EU Infor. & Communi. Tech.  (jrc)
       

  Life cycle assessment

    
Life cycle assessment methodology (LCA) was initially developed for environmental assessments of industrial systems. It was later adapted to agricultural systems, where its use has gradually spread. Traditionally, LCA studies take a general approach that is spatially and temporally independent of the environmental impacts derived from a product or production system (ISO-14040 2006; ISO-14044 2006).

     
Life cycle assessment  (visbdev)
    

  The International trade crisis

      
The crisis that, after several months of gestation in the US financial sphere, irrupted into the international scene in September 2008 has been dubbed the "Great Trade Collapse" for its impact on international commerce. The shock, emanating from the largest world financial centre, spread very quickly and almost simultaneously to most industrial and emerging countries.

       
Trade crisis  (meattradenewsdaily.co)

        

  Rhodia Research Collaboration

     
Three prominent research organizations from academia, government and industry will focus their combined worldwide expertise to develop new, sustainable technologies in the field of soft condensed matter, a science at the interface of chemistry, biology, physics and nanotechnology.

        
Rhodia Research Collaboration  (finance.yahoo)

        

  Less silicon for solar cells

      
A new photovoltaic material performs as well as the one found in today's best solar cells, but promises to be significantly cheaper. The material, created by researchers at Caltech, consists of a flexible array of light-absorbing silicon microwires and light-reflecting metal nanoparticles embedded in a polymer.

      

Less silicon for solar cells  (technologyreview)
     

  Google :another wave of innovation

       

More than 40 ex-Googlers have invested in about 200 fledgling companies since 2005, according to the research firm YouNoodle and reporting by Bloomberg BusinessWeek. At least a half dozen current Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are also financing young companies. Numerous angel-watchers
say the Google group has more in common than just pedigree.

       
Google pedigree  (businessweek)

     

  Mongolia: to clear up livestock

    
The United Nations has launched a $4m dollar carcass-clearing appeal for Mongolia as millions of camels, goats, yaks and horses perish across the steppe from a climate double whammy of summer drought and winter snow. The international body will pay nomads to collect and bury dead livestock to ease the risks of disease.

    
Mongolia: to clear up livestock   (guardian.co)

   

  30 years in science

     
This Discussion Paper examines the relationship between geopolitical factors and scientific activity based on publication data from a 30-year period (1980 to 2009). Growth in the Middle East has been rapid (nearly four times faster than at the world level), with Iran and Turkey leading the pack. In particular, Iran embarked on one of the fastest build-up of scientific capabilities the world witnessed during the last two decades.

     
Geopolitic and scientific activity   (science-metrix)
    

  Food safety & regulation

    
Not only are expiration dates misleading, but there's no uniformity in their inaccuracy. Some manufacturers prefer the elusive "Best if used by," others opt for the imperative "Use by," and then there are those who litter their goods with the most unhelpful "Sell by" stamps. Package dates are unregulated by the US federal government.

    
US Food safety regulation   (slate)
     

  The Firefox Web Developer Toolbar

     
The approach of repeatedly editing and reloading the page until everything is as desired is as universal as HTML itself. Part of the problem is perhaps related to the Web environment itself; getting started building Web sites is so simple that many developers fall into the trap of settling for a developmental approach which is simply "good enough," rather than exploring more sophisticated, streamlined strategies.

       
Firefox & Web environment  (developer)

    

  Understanding the acidity of wine

     
If it were not for proton pumps in plants, there would be no acid in wine. These pumps are important generally for plant vitality, as researchers from Würzburg and Heidelberg report in the renowned journal "Proceedings" of the Academy of Sciences in the USA.

       
Protons & wine acidity   (innovations-report)

      

  Progress in Quantum Algorithms

   
Given the encryption breaking powers promised by quantum computers, it was natural that, in the decade following Shor's discovery, research has focused largely on whether a quantum computer could be built. While there currently appear to be no fundamental obstacles toward building a large scale quantum computer (and even more importantly, a result known as the "threshold theorem".

     
The quantum computer progress   (cacm.acm)

     

  Traders under watchdog

    
Looking for connections and past associations among traders at hedge funds and Wall Street firms may not sound like an entirely novel way to conduct an investigation. But it is a marked departure from the way insider trading investigations tended to get going at the SEC.

    
Traders under watchdog   (reuters)
       

  New Hacking Attack Detected

     
The hacking operation, the latest of several major hacks that have raised alarms for companies and government officials, is still running and it isn't clear to what extent it has been contained, NetWitness said. Also unclear is the full amount of data stolen and how it was used. Two companies that were infiltrated, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.

    
Computers Attack Detected  (wsj)            Massive ZeuS Compromise  (netwitness)

    

  Clearing roads & snowphistication

     
Buried by snow this month, cities across the Mid-Atlantic states were forced to scramble to locate plows, hiring hundreds from private contractors and seeking help from neighboring states. No place seemed more unprepared for the weather than the Washington area.

      
Snowphistication management   (news.yahoo)

     

  Airborne laser weapon

      
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile,” the agency said. “The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense,” the statement added.

    
Airborne laser weapon    (impactlab) 
    

  How to boost Photosynthesis?

     
Quantum coherence describes how more than one molecule interacts with the same energy from one incoming photon at the same time. In essence, rather than the energy from a particular photon choosing one route to pass through the photosynthetic system, it travels through multiple channels simultaneously, allowing it to pick the quickest route.

     
Photosynthesis performance   (scientificamerican)
    

  BPM Project Success

   
Gartner has identified seven key factors that organisations need to observe when selecting a BPM project to pursue. “Compliance with these guidelines will translate into a very high probability of project success and a major boost for business interest in adopting BPM as a programme,” said Mr Rosser.

    
key factors for BPM Project   (itprepor)
    

  Silicon Valley: phase of uncertainty

     
Two Silicon Valley groups warned today that decisive action by business, government and education is needed if the region is to retain its standing as the world's innovation epicenter.The warning is contained in the Silicon Valley Index, a look back at last year's economic carnage prepared by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which issue annual reports on about 40 indicators of economic strength and the health of the community.

   
Silicon Valley future   (siliconvalley)
    

  Alliance: Siemens and NextGen

    
NextGen Healthcare's interoperable ambulatory IT solution, available to Siemens customers through the renewed alliance, fills this void by enabling providers to access health information more readily across the healthcare continuum. Ideal for the multi-practice enterprise or solo practitioner.

    
Siemens and NextGen alliance   (dotmed)

    

  New ISO RFID standard

   
For reasons of safety and reliability, the importance of being able to trace products throughout the supply chain has strongly increased in recent years. The new ISO 17367:2009 standard will help manufacturers and distributors to track products and to manage their traceability thanks to standardized RF tags.

    
ISO standardize the RFID    (iso)
     

  Clinton Foundation deploys SAS

    
92 of the top 100 companies on the 2009 FORTUNE Global 500® list did, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) selected SAS, the leader in business analytics, for technology to support good decisions and good investments as it battles the spread of HIV/AIDS and other severe health threats.

     
SAS deployed by Clinton Foundation   (sas)

      

  Assessing the future trends

    
The online travel industry still has quite a few intriguing puzzles to solve.Be it for the integration of social search into online travel to Google’s algorithms and Google Labs to the progression of technology and innovation in the travel industry, there is still plenty to learn about.

    
Assessing the future trends  (eyefortravel)

    

  The Greater China Desk

    
Beijing (12.-14.06.2010) will be first stage of the Business Mission where delegates will meet local representatives of the German industry in China, the German Chamber in Beijing and representatives of the Chinese government. On 13th. of June Tianjin will host a special meeting for the delegation to introduce Tianjin Binhai New Area as logistic hub for central European activities in China.

     
Beijing (12.-14.06.2010)    (xing)

     

  Ghana through Hemp Production

    
As of 2008, United States Federal statutes forbid the cultivation of any plant in the Cannabis genus for any purpose within the Borders of the United States or her possessions.As many as thirty different plant species have Cannabis-like characteristics as it relates to cellulose density per unit volume.

   
Hemp Production in Ghana   (ghanaweb)
     

  The IT Revolution Has Begun

    
"It's really important to understand what we're dealing with here: a generation that's incredibly knowledgeable and sophisticated about technology--and remember, they're only the first generation that's grown up never known anything but ubiquitous, instantaneous, wireless connectivity to everything. Wait til the next generation!"

    
IT Revolution  (informationweek)

     

  British Space R&D

      
In October 2009, two months before the UK government announced that it would set up an independent space agency, IEEE Spectrum’s Jean Kumagai spoke with British space expert Richard Holdaway. Holdaway is director for space science and technology at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, near Oxford, England.

    
British independent space agency   (spectrum.ieee)

      

    
To capture the precise 3-D dimensions of items involved in a case, GKS Global Services, a supplier of 3-D laser scanning services for more than 25 years, has been called in many times as a neutral third party. GKS scans the accident scenes for the purposes of documenting the as-is condition, so investigators have as much information as possible to reconstruct the incident and prove which cases have merit.

     
3-D scanning Technology    (qualitydigest)

    

  JEC innovation awards

    
JEC Composites is announcing the new winners of the JEC Innovation Awards Programme 2010. This year, 11 companies and their partners will receive awards at the JEC Composites Show (April 13-15, 2010). The programme was created in 1998 with the goal of promoting innovation.

      
JEC innovation awards  (jeccomposites)
    

  In Paris (France), the customer is not always right

     

The customer is allegedly always right in London but, in Paris, he or she is little more than an irritant. It may be the city of romance and a Mecca for tourists, but right now Paris feels and looks like it just cannot be bothered any more to turn on the charm.

   
Paris & customer relationship  (news.bbc.co)

      

  Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs

    
Not surprisingly, as academics, our view of commercial realities was not perfectly accurate. However, the problems we encountered were not the obvious ones. Discussions with tool researchers and system builders suggest we were not alone in our naïveté.

    
Static Analysis to Find Bugs   (cacm.acm)

    

  World's most precise clock

     

The new clock is the second version of NIST's "quantum logic clock," so called because it borrows the logical processing used for atoms storing data in experimental quantum computing, another major focus of the same NIST research group.

   
World's most precise clock  (innovations-report)

     

  Bar Codes Ride Again

   
Bar codes are getting hip. For decades, retailers and manufacturers have used these patterns of black dots, lines, and squares to encode pricing and other data onto products and supplies. Now, bar codes are gaining currency as an easy way for cell-phone users to view ads, coupons, and other information instantly.

    
Bar Codes  (businessweek)
       

  Uncle Sam's War-Mart

    
According to one estimate, between May 1999 and May 2009, employment in the US private sector only rose by 1.1%, by far the lowest 10-year increase in the post-Depression period. Take away the health sector and it was negative. Military production has more than doubled from the year 2000 and added tens of thousands of jobs.

     
Uncle Sam's War-Mart  (timesofindia.indiatimes)

    

  Reactions Faster than Actions

    
an international team of scientists has found a basis for this idea - people move faster when reacting than when initiating the same movement. But the ultimate outcome is not so simple."As a general strategy for survival, having this system in our brains that gives us quick-and-dirty responses to the environment seems pretty useful".

    
Why reactions are faster than actions ?  (news.yahoo)

      

  Microfin In Macro Mess?

    
23 million impoverished households have benefited from microfinance services, a concept that really kick-started in 2004 with total disbursements of $80 million. By last year’s end, MFIs had loaned a massive $2.5 billion.They have done what no bank has so far succeeded in doing —making the rural poor bankable.

       
Microfin In Macro Mess?  (tehelka)
      

  Ocean Protection Measures

       
Thousands of tons of trash are thrown into the sea each year, endangering humans and wildlife. A classified German government report obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE indicates that efforts by the United Nations and the European Union to clean up our oceans have failed entirely.

      
Ocean Protection Measures   (spiegel)

      

  EU Report on social exclusion

   
Solidarity is one of the guiding principles of the European Union, meaning that all citizens should be able to share in the benefits of prosperous times, while also sharing the burden in times of difficulty. Yet nearly 80 million Europeans live below the poverty line, and many face serious obstacles in accessing employment, education, housing.

      
EU Report on social exclusion    (ec.europa)
      

  Baltic Sea confrontation

    
Poland is the prototype for and the foundation upon which the Pentagon and NATO are constructing a formidable military - naval, air, ground and interceptor missile - network in the Baltic Sea region on Russia's northwest frontier. Persistent U.S. and NATO military moves are threatening to turn the Baltic Sea region into a powder keg.

    
Baltic Sea confrontation   (globalresearch)
     

      

Along with the first university, and even the toothbrush, it is among surprising Muslim inventions that have shaped the world we live in today. The origins of these fundamental ideas and objects -- the basis of everything from the bicycle to musical scales -- are the focus of "1001 Inventions," a book celebrating "the forgotten" history of 1,000 years of Muslim heritage.

    

1001 Inventions   (cnn)

    

  Licence : Siemens & MS-HealthVault

      

Microsoft Corp. and Siemens AG (through its Siemens IT Solutions and Services division) have announced the signing of a licensing agreement to introduce Microsoft HealthVault in Germany. HealthVault, a personal health application platform, enables individuals to store their health information including immunizations, disease history and prescriptions in an online account.

   
Siemens & MicroSoft collaboration  (microsoft)

   

  Trends 2010: S.& M. Business

    
Much attention has been given to 2010 trends such as the increasing adoption of SaaS, managed services, virtualization and mobile applications. Although AMI acknowledges most of these are well documented predictions, its team of go-to-market analysts have identified six (6) trends that the industry hasn’t fully explored.

   
Small & medium Busi. trends  (earthtimes)

    

  Animation is new Avatar

    
PricewaterhouseCoopers’s leader for media and entertainment, Timmy Kandhari recalls, “Indian companies joined the bandwagon after computer-aided animation came in and made best use of the software available.” In no time at all, the West was starting to consume content developed in India.

     
Media and entertainment  (economictimes.indiatimes)

    

  Climate Science Mess

   
With the latest climate scandal—this time, involving dubious claims made about the likely fate of the Himalayan glaciers—the case grows ever more urgent for serious rethinking of science communication practices.IPCC made an inexcusable error in the Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation, Vulnerability) volume of its Fourth Assessment Report.

   
Climate Science Mess  (scienceprogress)
       

  What can do benevolent hackers

   
The convenience of online banking and electronic money has led to a revolution in the way we save and spend our earnings. Banking websites and payment systems are relentlessly targeted by criminals, though, so continuous improvements in security are needed to prevent fraud.

    
Benevolent hackers  (newscientist)

    

  The Mexican Palace of Art

   
The 183,000 square-foot Soumaya Museum, with exhibition space on five levels, is going up in a former Mexico City industrial district where General Motors operated an automobile assembly plant until the 1990s. The building will include two 22-story conventional office towers, including the corporate headquarters for Slim's business conglomerate, Grupo Carso.

    
The Mexican Palace of Art    (businessweek)
      

      

Tests have revealed an astonishing variety of potential uses for the liquid glass, from protecting vineyards against fungal attacks to coating medical implants with non-stick, antibacterial surfaces. Scientists have even used it to spray fabric with an invisible, dirt-resistant film.

    

The liquid glass revolution   (independent.co)

      

  Biocompatibility Testing

    
Due to the lack of easily obtainable information, an engineer or regulatory affairs officer may decide to design tests that will meet FDA requirements and ISO matrices. That’s a costly and time-consuming misconception. ISO 10993 has documents beyond its’ Part One that specify how to perform required tests.

      
Biocompatibility Testing   (devicelink)
      

  China's bridge of size

     
Building work has just started on the 30-mile Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which will link China's southern economic hub of Guangdong province to Hong Kong and Macau.The scale is breathtaking. The bridge is one of the most technically complicated landmark projects in China's, and the world's, transport history.

      
China's bridge of size   (independent.co)
      

  EU employment situation

    
The outlook for the labour market for the year ahead remains unfavourable, and the full impact of the economic crisis on labour markets may not have fully materialized yet. However, employers are trying to hold on to the skills and experience that will be vital for their companies as soon as markets pick up again.

    
EU: Perspectives on Employment    (ec.europa)
     

  10 Marketing Trends for 2010

    
2010 is poised to be an exciting year for marketers; trends that have been taking shape over the course of the past decade are creating new opportunities for business owners. Thanks to the tools of the social web, such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, online video and so on, news and information travels instantaneously, and that means marketers have new and exciting opportunities to reach consumers.

    
2010 on marketing trends   (entrepreneur)

     

  New sensor to combat diabetes

    
A tiny new sensor could provide fresh, inexpensive diagnosis and treatment methods for people suffering from a variety of diseases. The latest issued report shows a sensor integrated in a wireless system that can detect glucose in exhaled breath, then relay the findings to health care workers. That makes the sensor one of several non-invasive devices in development to replace the finger prick kits widely used by diabetics.

   
New sensor for health care  (rdmag)
      

  Fashionista farm gals of Tokyo

     
Never before has Japanese society been so anxious about the future of farmers, and the government too is worried. So this growing show of passion for farming should be a good sign.But as the trend mounts, so too does scepticism about how much happy-go-lucky youth like Fujita are actually thinking about the country’s food problems ahead.

   
Fashionista farm gals   (ourworld.unu)
     

  Electronic Media consumption

     
The amount of time young people spend with media has grown to where it's even more than a full-time work week," said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "When children are spending this much time doing anything, we need to understand how it's affecting them – for good and bad."

    
Electronic Media consumption  (livescience)

     

  Painless plasma jets

    
Scientists at the Leibniz-Institute of Surface Modifications, Leipzig and dentists from the Saarland University, Homburg, Germany, tested the effectiveness of plasma against common oral pathogens including Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus casei. The Plasma jets capable of obliterating tooth decay-causing bacteria could be an effective and less painful alternative to the dentist's drill.

    
Painless plasma jets   (esciencenews)

    

  Quality of Questions

    
In part to ameliorate the errors and costs associated with human scoring, test publishers are investing heavily in automated-response systems that use artificial-intelligence software to “read” student answers.Such programs are already in use to minimize the number of scorers needed for major tests such as the Graduate Record Examination.

      
Quality of Questions   (registration required) (edweek)

     

  E-Yikes! Electric Bikes

      
Powerful battery-powered bicycles are crowding out their push-pedal brethren, delivering a jolt to the Bicycle Kingdom. By some estimates there are 120 million e-bikes on China's roads—up from just 50,000 a decade ago, making it the fastest growing form of transportation in China. Cities at first embraced them as a quieter and cleaner alternative to
gasoline-powered scooters.

   
E-Yikes! Electric Bikes  (wsj)
       

  Gadgets from outer space

    
Plenty of technologies from the space industry do make it into our everyday lives. This is the story of how they are brought in from the cold of space. Forget the apocryphal tales about NASA inventing Teflon for space shields, Velcro for anchoring items in zero gravity, and Tang fruit drink for improving the taste of reprocessed water.

    
Technologies from space industry   (newscientist)

      

  What to do about browser

  Chemicals coat apples

   
The EPA had already labeled Alar a probable carcinogen and its maker, Uniroyal Chemical Co., voluntarily withdrew it for use on U.S. food crops. EPA studies later showed Alar, while still a carcinogen, was only one-twentieth as potent as estimates in the report. The latest assessment in the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that all the residue was at levels within federal guidelines.

  
The Alar scare   (news.yahoo)

    

  The Building Technologies Program

   
The FAS Building Technologies Project was initiated in 2001 to focus the efforts of scientists and engineers who specialize in building materials on a range of issues such as structural engineering, indoor air quality, energy efficiency, and architectural design to create homes that are safe, affordable, and attractive to builders and owners in the US and abroad.

    

The Building Technologies Program   (fas)
     

  URL Rewriting for Beginners

     
URL rewriting can be one of the best and quickest ways to improve the usability and search friendliness of your site. It can also be the source of near-unending misery and suffering. Definitely worth playing carefully with it - lots of testing is recommended. With great power comes great responsibility, and all that.

   
URL Rewriting   (addedbytes)

        

  China's High-Speed-Rail

    
The U.S. could ultimately benefit from China's investment in high-speed rail, because it should bring down the cost of creating the type of dedicated high-speed rail lines that the U.S. still lacks. "The U.S. is going to be able to capture the advantage of a lot of the innovation taking place globally".

    
China's High-Speed-Rail   (technologyreview)
       

  Greenpeace: to build flagship

     

German and Polish shipyards will shortly start work on Greenpeace's £14m flagship, a mega-yacht that will become the third Rainbow Warrior next year. It will be one of the biggest yachts to have been commissioned in the last decade with, say the designers, a massive 1,300 sq metres of sail supported on two A-frame masts.

Greenpeace: to build flagship   (guardian.co)

   

  Update on Bisphenol

    
Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical that has been present in many hard plastic bottles and metal-based food and beverage cans since the 1960s. BPA is also found in epoxy resins, which act as a protective lining on the inside of metal-based food and beverage cans. These uses of BPA are subject to premarket approval by FDA as indirect food
additives or food contact substances.

   
Bisphenol-A effects    (fda)
     

  Geothermal Drilling Safeguards Imposed

    
New safeguards on geothermal energy projects that drill deep into the Earth's crust will be imposed by the United States Energy Department The new policy is being instituted after a project in California that used the new technology was shut down by technical problems and encountered community opposition, federal documents indicate.

     
Safeguards Imposed on drilling   (article.wn)

    

  Do Gene Patents Hurt Research ?

    
Human gene patents have stirred social controversy for decades. People have marched in the streets decrying the evils of “patenting life.” National and international agencies have issued reports calling for a range of reforms. Patient groups have instigated legal action aimed at overturning key patents.

   
Gene Patents & Research   (scienceprogress)
    

  Death of the Nile

The water level of the river Nile - crucial to the economy in many parts of Uganda, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia - is dropping. Film-maker Andrew Johnstone follows the course of the Nile to discover how climate change is already affecting the river's farming communities.

   

Death of the Nile   (guardian.co)
        

  Breaking an RSA of 768 bits

    
Since 1998, Serge Humpich case, we know that the RSA key (Rivest Shamir Adleman) can be broken. But as so often in computer security, the only convincing example is the fact. Today, little more than four years after their previous achievement, The french institut "INRIA" & Partners arrived to demonstrate the weakness of 768 bits RSA key.

Breaking RSA Keys   (eprint.iacr)

   

  Chemists slam Science paper

   
A paper published in the prestigious journal Science has caused a commotion in the chemistry community, with the synthetic processes discussed in the paper dismissed as nonsense and accusations of a failure in Science's peer review system. The paper, published in October 2009 describes a chemical strategy to quantitatively study the profiles of metabolic networks in cells.

  

Chemists slam Science paper  (rsc)
      

  Google Wave an experimental ride

  
Wave is one of Google's "concept car" creations -- a showcase for a slew of technologies that will eventually be repackaged in other forms. The most crucial being Wave's native protocol, which in theory can be implemented by anyone who wants to write a client or server for it. The collaboration system combines e-mail, instant messaging, message boards, Wikis, and document-sharing tools -- to create something completely new.

   

Google Wave an experimental ride  (informationweek)

   

  China Economy by the year 2040

   
the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000. China's per capita income will hit $85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union, and also much higher than that of India and Japan. In other words, the average Chinese megacity dweller will be living twice as well as the average Frenchman when China goes from a poor country in 2000 to a superrich country in 2040.

   

China Economy in 2040   (foreignpolicy)
   

  A hospital that slashes costs

   
High quality at a low price. Every other industry strives for that combination, but a hospital that does both is all too rare. Providence Regional Medical Center, in Everet (WA) and its cost-efficient brethren demonstrate that quality care can be delivered at an affordable price, provided hospitals can be persuaded to rethink decades-old practices.

   

Hospital & costs   (businessweek)
    

  Galileo operational early 2014

  
The European Commission announced today the award of three of the six contracts for the procurement of Galileo’s initial operational capability. The contract for the system support services is awarded to ThalesAleniaSpace of Italy , that for a first order of 14 satellites to OHB System AG of Germany and that for the launch services to Arianespace of France.

    

Galileo Project   (europa)

   

  Nanotechnologies and Food

   
The development of nanotechnologies in the food sector may well elicit some of these concerns. However,as many new technologies have in the past, they may offer consumers and society a number of benefits. UK launched this inquiry to ensure that consumers are aware of and protected against any potential risks.

   

Nano Risk assessments in Food    (publications.parliament)
    

  Study: Cell phone exposure

  
The millions of people who spend hours every day on a cell phone, may have a new excuse for yakking. A surprising new study in mice provides the first evidence that long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves associated with cell phone use may actually protect against, and even reverse, Alzheimer’s disease.

      

Cell phone exposure   (hscweb3.hsc.usf)

    

  Why Genes Aren't Destiny

   
Epigenetics brings both good news and bad. Bad news first: there's evidence that lifestyle choices like smoking and eating too much can change the epigenetic marks atop your DNA in ways that cause the genes for obesity to express themselves too strongly and the genes for longevity to express themselves too weakly. We all know that you can truncate your own life if you smoke or overeat.

   

Genes & Destiny  (time)
   

  How To Explore the timeline ?

    
Trailblazing, is an interactive timeline for everybody with an interest in science.It's a user-friendly, ‘explore-at-your-own-pace’, virtual journey through science. It showcases sixty fascinating and inspiring articles selected from an archive of more than 60,000 published by the Royal Society between 1665 and 2010.

   

Exploring the timeline    (trailblazing.royalsociety)
    

  Minimizing risk

   
A facility risk review (FRR) is a frequently used tool for risk assessment audits.If applied to a kitting and assembly area, a detailed risk assessment would be a time-consuming and expensive process. An FRR, however, is a much less expensive process that uses the framework of risk assessment to screen areas or processes and ranks them according to their relative risk.

     
Risk management  (asq)
     

  Chocolate Directive & Toolboxes

     

Assessing compliance of chocolate products with the labelling provisions cannot be done without appropriate methods of analysis. The chemical composition and physical properties of the CBEs resemble those of cocoa butter very closely, making them extremely difficult to quantify and in some cases even difficult to detect.

  
Toolboxes from Chocolate Directive  (irmm.jrc.ec.europa)

   

  Software Developers: Changes in education

    
For many, "programming" has become a strange combination of unprincipled hacking and invoking other people's libraries (with only the vaguest idea of what's going on). The notions of "maintenance" and "code quality" are typically forgotten or poorly understood. In industry, complaints about the difficulty of finding graduates who understand "systems" and "can architect software" are common and reflect reality.

   
Changes in computing education   (cacm.acm)

    

  Calif.-based BrightSource Energy

   
Oakland, Calif.-based BrightSource Energy has been pushing for more than two years for permission to erect 400,000 mirrors on the site to gather the sun's energy. It could become the first project of its kind on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, leaving a footprint for others to follow on vast stretches of public land across the West.

     
BrightSource of Energy in Calif.   (news.yahoo)
   

  Britain seeks more food

    
Britain must produce more food to avoid going hungry in the future.A soaring global population, climate change, diminishing energy sources and depleted fish stocks mean that society can no longer be complacent about its ability to feed itself, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will say.

      
More food for Britain   (telegraph.co)

     

  FDA: weak clinical studies

    
Advances in materials science and miniaturization have led to an explosion in the use of medical implants, which do everything from acting as a replacement for balky knees to restarting arrhythmic hearts. Two new evaluations of the clinical studies used during the implant approval process suggests that the approval process for implants isn't nearly as rigorous as it might be.

    
FDA: Review Proceedings   (arstechnica)

    

  Open source predictions

   
Is it really almost 2010? The first decade of 2k is nearly at an end, a decade that has been quite prosperous for the Linux operating system. A decade that saw the world’s economy plummet, giving rise to the need for more and more free, open source software. But what will the next decade bring for Linux and open source? And even more to the point, what will the next year bring for Linux and open source?

     
2010: Open source predictions    (ghacks)

    

  Cracking the Majorana code

 
Magueijo set about seeking clues in Majorana's home town, Catania, and among his surviving relatives. He even travelled to South America to look into reported sightings of Majorana scribbling formulae on restaurant tablecloths. Majorana, it seems, is the Elvis Presley of nuclear physics.

   
The Majorana code   (newscientist)

   

  EU renewable energy supergrid

   
The network, made up of thousands of kilometres of highly efficient undersea cables that could cost up to €30bn (£26.5bn), would solve one of the biggest criticisms faced by renewable power – that unpredictable weather means it is unreliable.With a renewables supergrid, electricity can be supplied across the continent from wherever the wind is blowing, the sun is shining or the waves are crashing.

    
EU renewable energy supergrid  (guardian.co)

     

  Europe the Trade Bully

   
Earlier this year, Canada and the European Union announced plans to negotiate a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), possibly the biggest Canadian trade negotiations since NAFTA. The first round of talks took place in Ottawa in October, yet the treaty has generated practically no public scrutiny.

   
Europe the Trade Bully  (thetyee)
     

  After Copenhagen: the Impact

  
We the think Media growing increasingly pessimistic [about the impact of the conference], probably because they’re not aware of the nature of all the discussions that are going on inside. Attendees are hopeful that we’ll get some form of political deal, but it’s quite clear that the process is going to take quite a few years yet to come to a legally binding deal and then to work out all the detail.

      
After Copenhagen  (strategy-business)
     

  Apple tablet: gadget of the future ?

   
Tablet computers are hardly a new concept. In fact, Apple already brought a tablet device to the market in 1993 in the form of the Newton MessagePad. Despite a ton of hype, Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) only sold a few hundred thousand Newtons in the five short years it was on the market.Other tablet-like devices have also fizzled.

     
Apple gadget of the future ?   (money.cnn)
    

  Imminent Netbook Explosion

    
Netbook sales have enjoyed healthy growth over recent years, but in order to maintain that momentum, they'll need to offer new features and capabilities. How will the category change? What operating system will dominate? Will the App Store model for selling software find a foothold in the small notebook field ?

    
Imminent Netbook Explosion  (technewsworld)
      

  2010: Year in Science

    
A deeper look at polar ice. An electric-car renaissance. The death and rebirth of major scientific experiments. Read on to discover what this year has in store . This annual sci-tech forecast looks at what 2010 has in store for medicine, space, aviation, the environment, technology and entertainment.

  
Sci-tech forecast  (popsci)
   

  Microbial Encyclopedia

   
The Earth is estimated to have about a nonillion (1030) microbes in, on, around, and under it, comprised of an unknown but very large number of distinct species. Despite the widespread availability of microbial genome data—close to 2,000 microbes have been and are being decoded to date—a vast unknown realm awaits scientists intent on exploring microorganisms that inhabit this “undiscovered country.”

      
Microbial Encyclopedia   (jgi.doe)
    

  Making more from less

  
Implementing resource efficiency projects has enabled health and beauty retailer, Boots UK Ltd, to realise cost and environmental benefits throughout the supply chain. The benefits include: transport and disposal cost savings of £393,000 in the first 18 months following the
introduction of a new design for a free-standing display unit. (Video Case Studies)

    
Making more from less    (envirowise.gov)
    

  What the World Can Learn

      
The first decade of the 21st century was marked by crises. Militant Islamists attacked New York, the financial system crashed, the climate is threatened by catastrophe and democracy lost some of its standing. All this put together has spelled a debacle for the West, although the Internet represents a ray of hope.

     
What the World Can Learn  (spiegel)
    

  SSL/TSL certificate for free

     

Encryption is a must, whether via a VPN or by securing services one by one. Anyone operating a server on any scale should want a digital certificate to encrypt data between clients and services, whether for personal, office, or public use. That's a broad statement, but it holds true no matter how you slice it.

    
Digital certificate  (arstechnica)

     

  How to meter internet traffic ?

    
Technical changes needed to charge everyone for internet traffic flowing through China could undermine the web's founding principle of openness as well as raising security and stability concerns for all net users. An ITU spokesman said: "The ITU has no plans to modify the BGP protocol, which is not an ITU-T standard.

   
The BGP protocol    (news.bbc.co)

     

  Fab support by simulation

   
The software tool Umberto has been used for modeling different solar cell fabrication and supply processes. This tool is designed to model, calculate, and visualize material and energy flow systems, and is used to analyze the process systems—either in a plant or a company, or along a product life cycle.

   
Fab software tool   (electroiq)

    

  Global ocean temperature reconstruction

    
The thermal structure of the mid-Piacenzian ocean is obtained by combining the Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping Project (PRISM3) multiproxy sea-surface temperature (SST) reconstruction with bottom water temperature estimates from 27 locations produced using Mg/Ca paleothermometry based upon the ostracod genus Krithe.

    

Ocean temperature reconstruction   (clim-past)

     

  The Stem Cell Era

   
The early concept about how to harness these cells was simplicity itself: Harvest the unformed cells from embryos and inject them into needy recipients. The stem cells would then start rebuilding damaged hearts, pushing cancer to remission, or healing injured spinal cords. Multiple sclerosis, lupus, arthritis, even psychiatric illnesses would all be swept away under the tidal wave of the stem cell cure.

   
Stem Cell Era   (discovermagazine)

    

  Amazon Losing "Flying Rivers"

    
Rising temperatures in the Amazon region, in large part due to climate change, are creating more arid savannas, which disrupt the water cycle vital to Brazil's farming and energy industries. Deforestation also plays a role. As more of Brazil's rain forests fall to logging and agriculture, there are fewer trees to release the water vapor that creates these flying rivers.

   

The Amazon modification  (news.nationalgeographic)

    

  Inside the Burj Dubai Tower

    
It smells of paint, varnish and new leather, and the steps of female visitors on parquet and marble produce an elegant-sounding echo that suddenly disappears when they step onto soft carpets. An artificial island in the shape of a palm tree is visible to the southwest, and farther to the north is a man-made archipelago that looks like a map of the world.

   
The Burj Dubai Tower  (businessweek)

    

  Top buggiest-software list

    
Firefox was the application that had the most reported vulnerabilities this year, while holes in Adobe software more than tripled from a year ago, according to statistics compiled by Qualys, a vulnerability management provider. Qualys tallied 102 vulnerabilities that were found in Firefox this year, up from 90 last year. The numbers are based on running totals in the National Vulnerability Database.

   
Top buggiest-software list   (news.cnet)

    

  The "Shinkansen" train

    
Diplomats, business leaders and journalists were crammed in to watch special speedometers record the feat last month, the first time operator Japan Central Railway Co. has allowed outsiders to join a test run. Rivals abroad said Japanese trains weren't up to spec, and JR Central wanted to set the record straight.

   
The "Shinkansen" Tech.   (news.yahoo)

    

  The 100 essential websites

      

Music has been a significant player in the growth of the web since Napster, and its influence continues to grow. Spotify has made the biggest impact this year, gaining mindshare lost by Last.fm and Pandora. Meanwhile, Pitchfork has expanded its role as the web's authoritative music magazine, and The Hype Machine came to prominence as a source of instant erudition by tracking the music blogs.

   
100 essential websites  (guardian.co)

     

  New Chinese tech. wall

     

Sources say a registry for foreign companies closed (9 December afternoon) asking companies to fulfil a set of criteria for access to the Chinese market. The law's provisions, according to sources, stipulate that at least some of a product's component parts or technology should be developed locally in order to be considered for government tenders.

    
China technology wall  (euractiv)

     

  Could Tech. Save the Planet ?

     

Public support for environmental issues in key countries has taken a beating. Only one-third of Americans now think that humans are responsible for climate change. The number of Australians who deem global warming a “serious and pressing problem” has dropped sharply. And fewer than one-fifth of Britons believe climate change will have an impact on their children.

   
Tech. could save the Planet ?  (imf)

    

  Biometrics and Standards

     

As modern society increasingly depends on systems to provide secure environments and ser-vices to people, it becomes paramount to ensure the security of a system through means to identify the validity of an individual requesting access to it. This is usually established by ex-tracting some form of information from the individual to check against information held by the system about valid users.

   
Biometrics and Standards  (itu)

     

  Emission Reduction Pledges

    

Accordingly, the purpose of WRI (Work Ressources Institut) Working Paper is to shed light upon two related questions: - Are the emission reduction pledges by Annex I Parties comparable? - Do these pledges put Annex I Parties on a path toward meaningful reductions by 2050, e.g. for stabilizing concentrations of CO2e at 450 ppm or lower?

     
Comparability_of_annex1 (wri)        Emission-reduction-pledges  (wri)

   

  World War 3.0 on Tech.

       

The superpowers of the technology world are at war, and like real wars, the battle is happening on several fronts. They're fighting on the desktop, they're fighting on mobile phones, they're fighting in the browser and they're fighting in your front room. Who will prevail, and who will end up in a bunker ?

   
WW3 on Technology   (techradar)

    

  Blueprints for Self-Assembly

       

Two mathematicians, using tools from information theory and computer science, have found a new and relatively simple way to orchestrate the assembly of nanostructures. And they have devised algorithms that can produce mathematical proofs that their structures are optimum.Although the methods have yet to be implemented in a lab, they may ultimately
find use in such diverse fields as electronics, communications, and medicine.

    

Blueprints for Self-Assembly  (cacm.acm)

     

  Woman: mission to inspire

      

The National Science Foundation said women represent 46% of the workforce but only hold 25% of the jobs in science, engineering and technology."We are failing in the way we educate. We don't teach in a way that engages students," said Judy Estrin who is chief executive officer of tech consultancy Jlabs and a former chief technology officer for Cisco.

   

Woman: mission to inspire  (news.bbc.co)

    

  US Transportation Security manual

     

Government workers preparing the release of a Transportation Security Administration manual that details airport screening procedures badly bungled their redaction of the .pdf file. Result: The full text of a document considered “sensitive security information” was inadvertently leaked.

      
TSA Manual leaked  (wired)

     

     
The main objective of the PESETA (Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on boTtom-up Analysis) project is to contribute to a better understanding of the possible physical and economic effects induced by climate change in Europe over the 21st century. PESETA studies the following impact categories: agriculture,river basin floods, coastal systems, tourism, and human health.

     
Impacts of climate change   (jrc)

           

       
During any kind of social interaction people unconsciously imitate each other, or else show the appropriate complementary action and reaction. When this happens, the parts of the brain that unconsciously respond to the actions of others create a form of resonance.when it occurs we feel "on the same wavelength" as the person with whom we are interacting.

     
Building social worlds   (newscientist)

       

     
Exploration companies have confirmed hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in the Albertine Graben region – some 23,000sq km along Uganda's border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Officials from Tullow Oil,recently revealed that their find alone – 800 million barrels – could yield more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day for anywhere between 15 to 30 years.

      
Uganda over oil discovery   (guardian.co)

       

US firm Westinghouse has so far failed to convince regulators that its AP1000 reactors can withstand such events. "At this stage Westinghouse has not presented an adequate safety case for external hazards," concluded the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) last week. This echoes comments from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in October, which said the firm must rethink the "fundamental engineering standards" of the reactor housing. The US plans to build 14 AP1000s; China four.

    
UK Assessment of new NUC.P stations  (hse.gov)

      

   
In spite of its remarkably ineffective communication strategies, is trying to figure out the right pricing strategies for licensing and support that will work for itself, its customers, and its shareholders. The problem is that the big German company's blunderbuss communication approach makes it next to impossible to know what SAP is in fact doing.

     
The right pricing   (informationweek)

      

     
The financial crisis has, however, changed who Americans think dominates the global economy. In 2008, 41 percent of the public named the United States as the world’s leading economic power, and 30 percent named China. Today the numbers are flipped, with 44 percent naming China and 27 percent naming the United States.

     
America’s place in the world   (people-press)      Poll

     

     
The new generation of GEANT, the super fast pan-European research internet, has been officially unveiled. 40 million researchers and students across Europe, who use GÉANT today, will be able to better tackle the new science challenges thanks to networking innovation and advanced user services. From 2012 researchers from all over the world will enjoy connection speeds of up to 100 Gigabits per second, ten times higher than today.

    
The Géant network   (news.zdnet.co)

     

    
The infamous trove of documents hacked from the University of East Anglia's Climactic Research Unit (CRU) has now prompted the head of the group to temporarily stand aside as university administrators arrange for an independent inquiry into the matter.

    
Leaked climate docs   (arstechnica.)

     

     
likes of Yahoo, Google, MySpace (NWS), and Facebook came to define the Web. Finally, earlier this year, Time Warner CEO Jeffrey L. Bewkes had had enough. And Bewkes, who had criticized the merger back when he was running Time Warner's HBO, set in motion the long-anticipated divorce. He hired Armstrong as CEO.

    
AOL:New CEO, new tricks   (businessweek)

     

      
By the end of 2008, McDonald's had grown to 31,967 locations in 118 countries. Of those, only about 14,000, or 45%, were in the U.S. With 58 million daily customers worldwide, McDonald's are now so ubiquitous around the globe that The Economist publishes a global ranking of currencies' purchasing power based on the prices charged at the local Mickey D's, dubbed the Big Mac Index.

      
McDonald's Abroad   (time)

       

     
During a revealing and often humorous panel discussion on the future of programming at last week's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft's own superstar developers espoused their loyalty to old-school methods of coding software.

  
Views on the state of programming   (computerworld)

    

    
As we heard, the Internet helps us stay connected near and far and transmit our views endlessly across time and space. So why then is there such a widespread perception that our computers cut us off? Maybe it’s because we're physically isolated when we use the Web, or maybe it’s because of a 2006 study that tried to gauge social isolation.

    
Online and Isolated ?    (onthemedia)

     

     
Consumers can currently use portable panels only for charging up small devices such as phones or music players. Powertraveller plans to launch a portable four-panel folding array that can run a laptop and charge the battery at the same time.Planned for spring 2010, it will be the first commercial device to offer AC or DC outputs.

    
Solar power technology   (bbc.co)

         

    
With syngo.via, Siemens' new imaging software for multimodality reading of clinical cases, the company is placing special focus on reading efficiency through automated case preparation and structured case navigation across multiple specialties, including cardiology, oncology, and neurology.

    
Image Reading Efficiency  (biotech-finances)

       

    
To help automakers and suppliers achieve greater weight reduction, Milliken Chemical is introducing Hyperform HPR-803 high performance reinforcing agent for polyolefins. The new agent reduces weight by up to 15 per cent when compared with traditional mineral-filled systems while delivering an outstanding balance of stiffness and impact strength.

     
Novel polymer legislation   (engineerlive)

    

    
Fusion power technology is mankind's biggest engineering challenge.Located at Culham, UK, JET (Joint European Torus) is an experimental fusion energy device in which, by creating temperatures greater than that of the sun (around 100 million°C) and applying magnetic confinement, fusion of atomic nuclei takes place.The next stage of fusion technology development has started with the building of ITER, which is eight times larger in volume than JET.

     
3D software   (engineerlive)

    

   
Innovations are being driven by globalization, as devices are growing smaller, smarter and more connected. Manufacturing has undergone startling changes over the last 20 years, including radical advances in materials, controls, communications, electronics and software. These developments have reduced the incidence of human error, allowed for the accumulation and study of performance data, created the possibility for instant contact with
customers, and established flexibility in operations.

    
Technologies to Watch   (industryweek)

    

     
For management control purposes, there are far more audits of a product, service or process than audits of systems. While system audits verify management system conformance or compliance, product and process audits focus on the verification of specific methods and product or service characteristics.

Auditing process, QA, QM...    (asq)

    

     
The Tech Museum and Applied Materials bring together Silicon Valley luminaries with entrepreneurs from around the world to focus on just that kind of basic technology and the difference it can make .The Tech Awards Laureates 2009 represent regions as diverse as Nigeria, Brazil, Great Britain, the United States and Bangladesh. And their work impacts people in many more countries worldwide.

     
Tech Laureates 2009   (techawards)

     

An International Standard to prevent the development and marketing of products which could present health and safety risks to consumers is the goal of a new ISO project committee which met for the first time in Toronto, Canada. The projected standard will offer practical guidance to suppliers of consumer goods, so that they can reduce risks associated with their products.

    
ISO safety standard   (iso)

     

     
With thousands of stinging cells that can emit deadly venom from tentacles that can reach ten feet in length, the 50 or so species of box jellyfish have long been of interest to scientists and to the public. Yet little has been known about the evolution of this early branch in the animal tree of life.

    
The Jellyfish expansion   (innovations-report)

      

    
Performance and Scalability are often discussed together because they're linked. As you add more users (scalability) you reduce performance. While the conversation here is titled performance because the focus is around maintaining the performance of individual requests, thus scalability techniques are often discussed to reduce the amount of load on a server (number of users) to a point where performance is acceptable.

      
Comput.:Performance & scalability   (developer)

     

    
Things went so well Friday evening that scientists achieved the operation seven hours earlier than expected, he said. Some scientists had gone home early Friday and had to be called back as the project jumped ahead.CERN decided Saturday to test all the protection equipment while there still is a very low intensity proton beam circulating in the collider. The tests will take 10 days.

    
LHC experiments   (cbsnews)

        

      

Red Hat Introduces Virtualization Platform for Heterogeneous Servers and Clouds. A primary reason virtualization has not been more deeply adopted is that enterprises are concerned about the performance, scalability and security of the existing virtualization solutions.The second reason is packaged ISV applications requires the complete alignment of the ecosystem as well.

     
Red Hat:Virtualization  (dbta)

     

      
Cardinal Health is a global company serving the health-care industry with products and services that help hospitals, physician offices and pharmacies reduce costs, improve safety, productivity and profitability, and deliver better care to patients. In addition to providing pharmaceuticals, this segment also provides comprehensive financial, inventory, contract management, and marketing services that help our customers reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase profitability.

    
Cardinal Health ROI   (nucleusresearch)

      

        

Commentary on the Intelligence Community often draws a distinction between “current” and “strategic” intelligence, usually in order to decry excessive attention to explaining the latest intelligence factoids obtained by collectors and inadequate attention to longer term, strategic analysis.“Prediction is hard,especially when it’s about the future.”

    
Intelligence to shape the future   (iis-db.stanford)

        

      

The data presented refer for the most part to reports of studies made in MS, and to micro-organisms from human beings and food production animals from such countries. Nevertheless the supply of food commodities is a global undertaking, with food being imported into the EU from numerous countries where antimicrobial usage controls are not as strict as in the EU.

    
EFSA report  

     

         

New regulations have pleased US manufacturers of nutritional supplements, but in Europe, the industry fears authorities are overreaching themselves.EU manufacturers are concerned that many of the 4,000 or so health claims being made for supplements may be rejected by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), because of its requirements for supporting scientific data.

     
Nutritional supplement regulations   (icis)

      

     

UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) figures published online in March 2009 show 8,069 workers were under medical surveillance for lead exposure in 2007/08 [1]. HSE sets a recommended action level of 50 micrograms of lead per 100ml of blood (µg/100ml – sometimes expressed as µg/decilitre (dl)) for men and 25 µg/100ml for women. Suspensions from work with lead are required if the levels hit 60 µg/100ml and 30 &