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 µg/100ml respectively.

   
Dangerous lead  (hazards)

      

    
Metabolites, are often not completely removed during the sewage-treatment process, at least in Europe, said Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, Italy.That means the drug-tainted wastewater can enter groundwater and surface water, which are collectively the major sources of drinking water for most people.

     
Water pollution   (news.nationalgeographic)

    

     
Privately-owned Royal Jordanian offshoots have become leading third-party service providers.These include maintenance, repair and overhaul house Jordan Aircraft Maintenance (Joramco), engine MRO specialist Jordan Airmotive and Jordan Airline Training and Simulation (JATS).Jordan has also become a major centre for ab-initio flight training, with operators such as Ayla Aviation Academy.

     
Jordan's aviation industry   (flightglobal)

      

     
The unconventional structure was originally envisaged as a centre piece of the city's Olympic village. Tomas Saraceno installation, Hayward Gallery The building draws inspiration from the work of Tomas Saraceno Its designers plan to raise the funds to build it by asking for micro-donations from millions of people."It's really about people coming together to raise the Cloud," Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News.

     
London Digital cloud   (news.bbc.co)
       

    
Personal (cellular) telecommunications is a rapidly evolving technology that uses radiofrequency energy or radiation for mobile communication. Currently, wireless communication devices are used by more than 270 million Americans, or greater than 85 percent of the U.S. population. Given this large number of users, if adverse health effects are shown to be associated with cell phone use, this could potentially be a widespread public health concern.

     
Cell Phone radiation   (niehs)
    

     
ABB, the Zurich-based power and automation technology group, is to supply electrical and automation solutions worth US$25million for an expansion of the plant.A second powerhouse built underground - at 1800 metres above sea level - will add 100MW to the plant's present 90MW capacity.

     
Peruvian hydropower plant  (engineerlive)

    

   
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has published an updated edition of its FDA Food Code as part of US administration food safety initiative to regulate the food industry. It contains several new guidelines, including recommendations on handling and storing leafy greens and serving hamburgers in children's lunches.

    
FDA updated Food Code  (fda)

    

   
Radio-frequency identification technology was a niche technology until 2003, when Wal-Mart ordered its suppliers to put electronic product codes on pallets and cases of goods going to its warehouses and stores. Wal-Mart hoped to use EPC tags, which store details about products and transmit them to inventory systems using RFID chips.

    
RFID Progress  (informationweek)

    

      

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published this month.

    

Oil shortage warning    (guardian.co)

    

There has been a growth in the mobility of science and technology professionals inside the EU, while European researchers are increasingly cooperating in the co-authorship of scientific articles and in applications for technological patents. Most of the scientific cooperation in the world takes place between researchers from Europe and the US while the highest growth in cooperation over the last six years has been with researchers from Asia.

     
Technology and Competitiveness   (ec.europa.)

      

      
The global community is supposed to be negotiating an agreement to contain greenhouse gas emissions to manageable levels. But with less than two months to the Copenhagen climate change conference, the big players are stuck in an elaborate game of chicken.The negotiating process so far as akin to "an aquarium full of hamsters connected to rudimentary motors.

Climate talks disaster  (greenleft.org)

      

     

Frost & Sullivan’s Excellence in Research Award is bestowed upon a company that has carried out new ‘disruptive’ research; and has, in general, a strong commitment to research and development. This award recognizes a company’s research and development program that has or is expected to bring significant contributions to the industry in terms of adoption, change, and competitive posture.

Advanced suspension technologies awarded  (fludicon)

      

The percentage of preterm births in the United States has risen 36% since 1984 (1). In this report we compare infant mortality rates between the United States and Europe. We also compare two factors that determine the infant mortality rate—gestational age-specific infant mortality rates and the percentage of preterm births. U.S. data are from the Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set, and European data for 2004 are from the recently published European Perinatal Health Report.

    
Infant Mortality    (cdc)

      

      

Indorama Polymers, is now the world's second-biggest pet producer by capacity, behind Italy's M&G. Lohia and his family have a 75% stake in the company that was recently worth $375 million and is held mostly through their private firm, Indorama Ventures, which also makes polyester fibers and worsted wool.Lohia, who is managing director of Indorama Polymers and chief executive of Indorama Ventures, has much grander ambitions.

    
Building a polyester giant   (forbes)

      

     

The Thrust teams have held the World Land Speed Record for 25 years, and were first through the Sound Barrier on land. There are no mature challengers on the horizon, so why on earth start another LSR project when the whole country is facing a recession?’

Bloodhound diary   (news.bbc.co)

      

      

US Report found farmer compliance above 90% from 2003 to 2005. Starting in 2006, however, compliance rates declined demonstrably so that by 2008 (the last year for reported data), approximately 25% of Bt corn farmers did not comply with their IRM obligations. IRM is used to describe practices that reduce the potential for insect pests to become resistant to a pesticide.

Complacency on the Farm  (cspinet)

      

    
Tests indicate that the coating has a much greater efficacy on Pseudomonas aeruginosa (a pathogen know to be implicated in urinary tract infections, dermatitis, and other health problems) than previous silver coatings, as measured by the minimum inhibitor concentration (MIC).

Organo-silver as antimicrobial activity   (rsc)

      

   

The results of the NEWSKY project have been presented to a large audience October 6, 2009 at the DLR premises in Munich/Oberpfeffenhofen. Presentations, demonstrations, posters, a panel discussion and discussions during the breaks have given the participants the opportunity to get an insight about the project outcomes and the nexts steps towards the implementation of an integrated IP network for air-ground communications.

        
EU Newsky Project  (newsky-fp6)

        

      
This Flash Eurobarometer survey (Flash Eurobarometer 281 on the “Survey on the attitudes of Europeans towards tourism, Autumn 2009” was conducted at the request of Directorate General Enterprise and Industry to collect EU citizens’ views on travel, details of their (planned) holidays and travel in 2009 and their expectations regarding holidays in 2010.

     
EU towards tourism   (ec.europa)
       

     

The pro-neutrality faction has won a major rhetorical battle; even its toughest opponents sing the praises of a "free and open Internet." The rules apply to every Internet connection, wired and wireless, though what is "reasonable" may vary by connection type and even by network speed. The FCC move seems to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

     
Network neutrality rules  (arstechnica)

     

     

For decades, scientists have dreamed about turning thorium — an element that is less radioactive and produces less nuclear waste than uranium — into an alternative fuel for nuclear energy. Recent technological developments may be bringing the dream closer to reality. As a naturally occurring metal that is substantially more abundant than uranium, its most common isotopic form, thorium-232.

Copy/paste this link to your browser  (Nytimes)

     

     

A couple of years ago, I was featured on CNN pouring out the contents of my backpack. The story was about how I ran my business, virtually, from wherever I was with the trusty items carried on my back. As you might imagine, there were all the usual suspects: my laptop, iPhone, digital camera, and chargers. And, then, there were also some creature comforts: my MP3 player, a book, a sweater, healthy snacks, water, and noise canceling headphones.

     
What’s in Your Backpack ?  (qualitydigest)

      

       
Previous plans to grow GM crops commercially in the UK had to be scrapped following a concerted campaign by environmental protesters and a backlash by consumers who refuse to eat so-called 'Frankenstein foods'. The Government will use the 100-page study, due to be published this week, to force the introduction of GM technology back on to the political agenda.

    
Britain: without GM crops   (genewatch)

     

Keynote speakers include Richard Marcello, President, Systems & Technology, Unisys, Shelton Shugar SVP Cloud Computing, Yahoo!, and Richard Sarwal VP of Development for Oracle Enterprise Manager. It is rare that you would find a collection of all of the Cloud Computing industry giants in one place, and you definitely would not be able to gather as much information on Cloud Computing from any other single event.

     
Cloud Computing Expo  (cloudcomputingexpo)

     

      
Unlike companies from the recession-struck West, there are "Chinese companies that are still growing and looking into investing further into Africa," Whitlock said. The Chinese are "quite inclined to look after their investment and build their investment. They are serious about investing in Africa."

    
China-Guinea deal   (cbsnews)

      

      

Coral bleaching is the whitening of living coral due to a disruption of the symbiosis (two organisms whose living together benefits both) with its zooxanthellae, tiny photosynthesizing algae. These unicellular creatures reside within the coral's tissues and provide the host organism with up to 90 percent of its energy. It's the solar-derived chemical products of these algae that give the world's coral species a rainbow of vivid colors.

    
Understanding Coral Bleaching  (nist)

     

          

Based on a review of published research up to mid-2009 as well as the input of independent experts world-wide, this report by the UNEP International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management recognizes that the research that has accrued over recent years presents a complex and uncertain picture of the risks and benefits of biofuels.

    
UNEP: Assessing biofuels   (unep)

        

    
The Nefertiti sculpture has been in Germany since 1913. But it is only now that Egypt is demanding that this fragile and haunting object, perched alone in a domed room that overlooks the length of the museum, be returned. The Egyptian antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, told the German media over the past few days that Nefertiti belonged to his country.

     

Nefertiti Statue   (nytimes)

      

      
London's Olympic Park construction site is to be turned into a "virtual fortress" protected with state-of-the-art biometric security measures that will allow only workers who have been scanned to get into the compound. The hand scanners are capable of checking up to 5,000 workers an hour and will be used alongside photographic smart cards. The iris-scanning system will be available as an alternative when required.

     
UK Olympic site & Biometry  (guardian.co)

       

      
A lack of orders had almost sunk the shipbuilding subsidiaries of German steelmaking giant ThyssenKrupp. Now, an investor from Abu Dhabi is buying a large chunk of the operation. German commentators praise the move, but note how the financial crisis has forced Germany to be less picky about foreign investors.

     

ThyssenKrupp to Sell Shipyards   (spiegel)

        

      
NASA has not ignored its security, but just $15 million — slightly less than 1 percent the agency’s $1.6 billion IT budget — was spent on security in fiscal 2009. In 2007 and 2008, NASA reported 839 cases of malicious code, 209 cases of unauthorized access and 72 denial-of-service attacks to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

     

NASA info security  (gcn)

       

      

PROMES is one of the key French actors in the field of low- and high-temperature solar thermal conversion and an emerging actor in the field of innovative elaboration processes for PV materials. PROMES has initiated and managed the working group on concentrating solar thermal technologies, “SOLTEC”, which has addressed public research and industry interactions in the field.

    
PROMES works on solar energy   (promes.cnrs)

         

     
The report looks briefly at the definition of intermediaries and reasons for their use before examining several modus operandi of foreign bribery through intermediaries.Next, the report surveys the principal measures used by the private sector to prevent foreign bribery through intermediaries. The final Chapter contains case summaries supporting the identified trends and modus operandi of the crime.

    

Risks of intermediaries transactions   (oecd)

      

      
EU Scientific Panel was asked to evaluate two flavouring substances in the Flavouring Group Evaluation 42 (FGE.42), using the Procedure as referred to in the Commission Regulation (EC) No 1565/2000. These two flavouring substances belong to chemical group 30, Annex I of the Commission Regulation (EC) No 1565/2000.

     

Iron with organic substances   (efsa)

       

      

Even if the economy picks up, some retail veterans think it could be 10 to 15 years before pre-bubble abundance returns. So smart retailers are starting to rethink their approach. Instead of just slashing stock levels, slowing expansion, and discounting deeply, they're getting creative about managing inventory, adjusting product lines, and dumping their addiction to promotional pricing.

     
The Hard Sell   (businessweek)

       

     
There’s an important distinction, though, between deriving more information and deriving the right information. And to effectively meet the challenges that the next few decades will bring, plants need more of the latter. That’s because technology truly carries as much potential to create bottlenecks for today’s operators as it does to provide valuable and actionable data.

     

Where Is Process Automation Headed  ?   (chemicalprocessing)

     

     
The work of the French workgroup anticipated the consultation of the European Commission on organising CO2 allowance auctions within the European Union from 2013 onwards. The report first provides a feedback on foreign experiences of CO2 allowance auctions as well as a brief update on the way the EU ETS operated in the recent period.

    

Sales & Auction of CO2 allowances (minefe.gouv)

       

    
ISO 28500 provides a file format known as WARC (Web ARChive), which offers a convention for concatenating multiple data objects into one long file. The format can be used to build applications for harvesting, managing, accessing and exchanging content.For a long time, keeping track of the staggering number of Web sites and pages posed a difficult challenge for digital curators and archivists.

New ISO file format  (iso)

      

The project’s central products are the Horizon Reports, an annual series of publications that describe promising emerging technologies and highlight their relevance to education. This edition,the Horizon Report: 2009 Australia-New Zealand Edition, is the second in the ANZ series and focuses on emerging technologies as they appear in and affect education in Australia and New Zealand particularly.

     
2009 Australia New-Zealand Edition  (nmc)

       

      

Asia and the United States emerge from the global economic crisis, Europe appears likely to be the world’s laggard, threatening a return to the dark days of “Eurosclerosis.” Leaders who once spoke optimistically of fundamental changes aimed at enhancing productivity have turned to the more prosaic tasks of protecting jobs and avoiding painful political choices.

      
Crisis Leaves UE in Slow Lane  (nytimes)

     

Super-efficient catalysts for conversion of waste carbon dioxide from power stations into useful cyclic carbonate molecules could help reduce emissions and the petrochemical industry's dependence on fossil fuels, say UK chemists. solid-supported catalyst that works at 60°C and atmospheric pressure could be integrated into power stations to remove CO2 from the flue gases.

      
Converting CO2 to useful molecules   (rsc)

       

        

The cars, dubbed “Simple” and “Clever” — acronyms that we’ll explain in a moment — are über-small, über-light three-wheelers that are supposed to show just how far down the efficiency road BMW can go. The Bavarians say Simple is “light in weight, low on energy” and Clever gives you “cooperative driving pleasure.”

     
BMW Concepts Are Simple and Clever   (wired)

     

     
The mission was executed for "a scientific purpose, not to put on a fireworks display for the public," said space consultant Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator for science.Scientists said the public expected too much. The public groused as if NASA delivered too little.The divide was as big as a crater.

     
Moon crash: Public yawns   (news.yahoo)

       

       

The Environmental Protection Agencydetailed its plans on Tuesday for research into the possible health and environmental risks of nanomaterials, tiny substances that are finding growing use in products like sunscreens and industrial adhesives.The document, issued in draft form in June, calls for work to identify sources of nanomaterials, which can measure as little as perhaps one-10,000th the width of a human hair.

Nano under study (nytimes)     Nanomaterial strategy  (epa)   

       

Public opinion (nanotechproject)

         

Europe's top research universities account for the lion's share of higher education participations to the FP6 and act as leading coordinators and key partners. Top research universities participate more in thematic priorities that are close to the knowledge frontier. NoE was the main instrument used by top research universities, in accordance with policy expectations.

    
EU Top research universities   (ftp.jrc)

      

         

Such a marriage of nanomechanics and nanophotonics would bring us a giant step closer to optical chips. That's important, because light has a vastly wider bandwidth than electricity, which would enable it to get around the critical bottleneck in computing: the connections between processors. If light could act directly on circuit elements without first being converted to electricity, entire systems would run faster.

      
Photonics Breakthrough  (spectrum.ieee)

      

Some people see lemons and make lemonade. William Kamkwamba saw wind and made a windmill.Though he ultimately had big designs for his creation, all he really wanted to do initially was power a small bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset.But one windmill has turned into three, which now generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use.

    
Teen’s DIY Energy Hacking   (wired)

     

Page 1, 2, 3