Previous google CEO reassigned

   
Google CEO Eric Schmidt and company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are being reassigned in an attempt to recapture the free-wheeling spirit of the company's youth. Schmidt, 55, will stay on as executive chairman. The new role turns him into Page's consigliere as well as a liaison for Google's business partners and government officials. Brin, also 37, will be freed up to work on pet projects aimed at expanding Google's empire.

   
Google' ceo reassignment (news.yahoo)

    

  Solar trade war

   
Now there's a different foreign presence in Finow. When the first solar modules arrived for installation they came not from a local manufacturer -- German solar company Conergy runs a factory just 45 minutes away in Frankfurt an der Oder, for instance -- but from China's Suntech Power Holdings, now the world's largest maker of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules. "We were quite surprised when the trucks brought Chinese modules, and not German ones," Kobbe says. "But they were probably cheaper."

   
Solar trade war (reuters)
   

  Biotech Accountability

    
Despite fierce opposition from businesses, organizations and consumers supporting organic agriculture, the USDA has determined that they will approve the full deregulation or modified deregulation of genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa, announced on, or shortly after, January 24. the USDA released its environmental impact statement (EIS) of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa.

     
Organic agriculture (yankton)

   

  Attack of the drones

   
British forces are also using smaller drones, such as Lockheed Martin's hand-launched Desert Hawk. The lightweight surveillance aircraft is flown by Royal Artillery controllers to provide army patrols with "over the hill" vision for improved reconaissance. Last summer the Ministry of Defence ordered £3m worth of an enhanced version that will give troops in Afghanistan "greater situational awareness" and upgraded "target acquisition" capabilities.

   
The lightweight surveillance aircraft (guardian)
     

  Herbal remedies future regulation

    
Hundreds of traditional and imported remedies on the shelves of health food shops and herbalists are set to be banned under new licensing rules. The EU directive aims to protect users from any damaging side-effects that can arise from taking unsuitable medicines. Only high quality, long-established and scientifically safe herbal medicines will be sold over the counter.

   
Herbal remedies future regulation (bbc)
     

  Canada-EU Economic Integration

   
National chair of the Council of Canadians, points out the dangers Canada faces with the current CETA trade model. She warns that, “CETA will open up the rules, standards and public spending priorities of provinces and municipalities to direct competition and challenge from European corporations.” Barlow goes on to say, “Europe is seeking a comprehensive and aggressive global approach to acquiring the raw materials needed by its corporations.

  
CETA trade model (theintelhub)

    

  DOD in genome implication

     

Rapid advances in DNA sequencing and other technologies are ushering in an era of personal genomics. Soon it will be possible for every individual to have access to the complete DNA sequence of his or her genome for a modest cost. This development, coupled with the improving ability to predict how genetic variation affects susceptibility to disease, response to medical treatment, and other important phenotypes, will have a transformative effect on health care.

    

Personal genomics & military links (fas)
      

  Rising to the Challenge

   
China is now investing in many of the building blocks of innovation-driven economic growth that the United States has all but abandoned over the past several decades. Pick your sector and you’ll find China spends more on a per capita basis, and sometimes in total amounts, on public investments in basic science and education, research and development, or R&D, infrastructure development, and workforce training.

    
China innovation-driven by economic growth (americanprogress)
    

  Keys to Nourishing the Hungry

    
Worldwatch Institute's latest report, "Innovations that Nourish the Planet," spotlights successful agricultural innovations and unearths major successes in preventing food waste, building resilience to climate change, and strengthening farming in cities. The report provides a roadmap for increased agricultural investment and more efficient ways to alleviate global hunger and poverty.

   
Innovations that Nourish the Planet (eponline)

   

  GE: in French wind Power Project

   
Located in one of France’s strongest wind power areas, the Fère-Champenoise wind project will feature GE’s (NYSE: GE) most advanced installed wind turbine technology. The project will help move the country closer to its goal to produce 23 percent of its domestic energy from wind by 2020. Total capacity of the three sites will be 45 megawatts, enough clean, wind-generated electricity to meet the requirements of approximately 45,000 people.

    
GE most advanced wind turbine technology (energycentral)

    

  Top Risks 2011

    
We're entering an entirely new world order with new ways for states to relate to one another, both politically and economically. That problem could provoke new areas of conflict, and it will highlight an emerging vacuum of power in international leadership -- and the uncertainty that comes with it. We're calling this new order the G-Zero, because no country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage today to drive an international agenda.

   
New world order & Risks (eurasiagroup)
     

  Copying biotech medicine

   
A regulatory system for producing lower-cost generic versions of traditional pills and capsules -- after patents expire -- has been in place for decades, but agreement on a similar pathway for newer biotech drugs has been more difficult. Lobbying is still underway regarding specific rules for the U.S. biosimilar process, but the U.S. healthcare overhaul law passed last year laid out a framework that includes 12 years of exclusivity for branded biotech drugs.

   
Copying biotech medicine (reuters)
    

  Dead Heat for Top Spot

    
During a two-year period, Ford has climbed by 35 percentage points as Toyota has plummeted by 46 points, with total scores of 144 and 147, respectively. A year ago, Toyota retained a substantial lead over Ford and Honda, the No. 2 and No. 3 makes, respectively, in terms of the strongest or most favorable car brand. In 2010, however, Toyota finished only slightly ahead of Ford, which widened its advantage over Honda. Honda has continued to lose ground, sliding 28 points since 2008.

    
Ford & Toyota competition (qualitydigest)

    

  Global Software Leaders

     
This report not only provides a look at the world’s leading software companies, but also offers a snapshot of the present state of the industry. More importantly, it highlights the thoughts and insights of leading executives on where they see the industry going and how best to meet the challenges ahead. We thank those who took the time to share their ideas with us. We believe open dialog benefits the industry as a whole.

   
The world’s leading software companies (afdel)
   

  Power without cables

   
Product-specific wireless charging systems consist of a charger as well as a so-called 'skin' or receiver sold for specific devices. These product-specific devices contrast with aftermarket solutions, which comprise universal chargers and various skins that can be utilised with multiple consumer electronics. Although wireless charging is poised for growth in 2010 and the years to come, it will take several years for manufacturers to fully implement wireless charging in their devices, iSuppli believes.

    
Wireless charging systems (engineerlive)

     

  Proteins that sustain life

    
The team of researchers created genetic sequences never before seen in nature, and the scientists showed that they can produce substances that sustain life in cells almost as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit. The work, represents a significant advance in synthetic biology, an emerging area of research in which scientists work to design and fabricate biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world.

   
Advances in synthetic biology (innovations-report)

    

  Networks need buffers

   
Networks need buffers to function well. Think of a network as a road system where everyone drives at the maximum speed. When the road gets full, there are only two choices: crash into other cars, or get off the road and wait until things get better. The former isn't as disastrous on a network as it would be in real life: losing packets in the middle of a communication session isn't a big deal.

   
Why networks need buffers? (arstechnica)

    

  The Right to Win

  
The phrase right to win may strike some observers as arrogant. After all, no company has this kind of assurance handed to it. But that’s precisely the point. The right to win cannot be taken for granted. It must be earned. You earn it by making a series of pragmatic choices that align your most distinctive and important capabilities with the way you approach your chosen customers, and with the discipline to offer only the products and services that fit.

    
Capabilities-driven strategy (strategy-business)
    

  The Pluses & Oddities of 3D-TV

   
As with most technological advances, the hype seems to have taken over the conversation when it comes to 3-D TV technologies. Thus far, consumers aren’t waiting for new and better 3-D sets to come along and instead are going for deals found online and at big retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. But when 3-D TVs do become available in the next few months, should you invest in one? Let’s look at some of the common questions most consumers have when it comes to viewing in three dimensions.

   
Advanced Technology (nytimes)

    

  Is PayPal the real threat ?

   
If PayPal moves up the pyramid away from the online sphere and into the supply chain realm of business-to-business, this model will need to change. In reality the marketing, support and fiduciary perception of this whole operation is going to need to change but let's stay transactionally focused here. Funds transfer needs some functional requirements to be successful at all layers of the economy.

   
Paypal's new business transcation (finextra)
   

  America Competes Act

   
Technical standards are not the stuff of everyday conversation, but they are crucial to smart development and economic growth. Whether the goal is reducing health care costs, building a clean energy economy, or defending our Nation, standards are essential to ensuring efficiency, economy, and interoperability. And historically, no one has done it better than the United States.

   
NIST revamping its standards (whitehouse)
   

  CES 2011 & Arm's Tech.

   
Few people outside the industry will have heard of Arm Holdings, but the microchip designer – which today employs more than 1,700 people – has seen its share price rocket by more than 170% on the London stockmarket over the last year. Its products are used in more than 95% of mobile phones and its chips are also increasingly found in everyday consumer devices ranging from washing machines to toys.

    
Arm's growing business (guardian)
    

  Next Five in Five

    
IBM have unveiled the fifth annual "Next Five in Five" - a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years. The Next Five in Five is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s Labs around the world that can make these innovations possible.

   
Market and societal trends (itpreport)
   

  Facts: European chemical industry

    
Released each year, the Cefic European Facts and Figures document provides the most up-to-date information based on currently available data about the sector, which produce 24 per cent of the world’s chemicals. Facts & Figures provides a clear analysis that gives readers a better economic picture of the European chemical industry. The analysis excludes the pharmaceuticals sector unless specified.

   
The Cefic European Facts (cefic)
   

  Making the Smart Grid Smarter

  
New semiconductor-based devices for managing power on the grid could make the "smart grid" even smarter. They would allow electric vehicles to be charged fast and let utilities incorporate large amounts of solar and wind power without blackouts or power surges. These devices are being developed by a number of groups, including those that recently received funding from the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) and the National Science Foundation.

  
Smart Grid power management (technologyreview)
     

  NASA's LOLA maps the moon

  
During the one-year mapping period, the measurement laser was fired from the LRO more than 600,000 times, taking more than 3 billion measurements of the moon's surface. The short pulses from a single laser burst produced a five-beam pattern that achieved the accurate measurements. With each of the five beams, LOLA measures the time of flight, pulse spreading (which measures the surface roughness), and the transmit versus return of energy (denoting the reflective qualities of the location).

   
NASA's LOLA maps the moon (cnet)
    

  2011: 11 Outsourcing Resolutions

     

The end of the year is a time for assessment, and that goes for outsourcing, too. While it's easy to point fingers at IT service providers for problems that have arisen over the past twelve months, customers play a significant role in the success or failure of any outsourcing deal. As the dawn of 2011 approaches, we offer eleven resolutions for the striving outsourcing customer.

   
The outsourcing deal (cio)

     

  ISO for non-formal education

    
A new ISO standard aims to improve the quality of offerings on the global market that has grown up around non-formal education and training, such as vocational training, life-long learning and in-company training. ISO 29990:2010, Learning services for non-formal education and training – Basic requirements for service providers, will also enhance transparency and allow comparison.

    
Non-formal education & Training regulation (iso)
    

  Indian tea tastes different

    
Tea growers in northeastern India say climate change has hurt the country's tea crop, leading not just to a drop in production but also subtly altering the flavor of their brew. Scientists at the Tea Research Association are analyzing temperature statistics to determine links between temperature rise, consequent fluctuations in rainfall and their effect on tea yields.

   
Climate change & Tea crop (news.yahoo)

    

  Efficiency & Environmental impact

   
If the lifetime of a repaired part can be increased over that of a new part, plant performance and availability can also be improved, leading to significant energy savings and carbon generation. The installation of new plant capacity can take years so there is an enormous pressure on power plants to improve operational output, efficiency and availability.

    
Plant performance and availability (engineerlive)

    

  US rare earth metals

   
At the bottom of the vast site, beneath 6 metres (20ft) of bright emerald-green water, runs a rich seam of ores that are hardly household names but are rapidly emerging as the building blocks of the hi-tech future. The mine is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements outside China. Eight years ago, it was shut down in a tacit admission that the US was ceding the market to China.

   
Rare earth elements in US (guardian)
   

  2011 Fertilizer Outlook

  
The Short-Term Fertilizer Outlook draws on the final versions of two IFA reports presented at the 36th IFA Enlarged Council Meeting held in New Delhi in December 2010: Short-Term Prospects for World Agriculture and Fertilizer Demand 2009/10-2011/12 (A/10/169) and Global Fertilizer Supply and Trade 2010-2011 (A/10/149b).

   
IFA report (fertilizer)

    

  Blackawton bees

   
People think that humans are the smartest of animals,and most people do not think about other animals as being smart, or at least think that they are not as smart as humans. Knowing that other animals are as smart as us means we can appreciate them more, which could also help us to help them. Scientists do experiments on monkeys, because they are similar to man, but bees could actually be close to man too.

    
Humans might have some link with bees (royalsocietypublishing)

    

  2011 R&D Funding Forecast

   
This year’s Forecast includes not only a country-by-country view of investment in R&D and our specific discussion of U.S. R&D funding and performance, but also a breakout of spending by six key, broadly defined industry segments – Life Sciences, Information Technology, Electronics, Aerospace/Defense/Security, Energy, and Advanced Materials.

   
View of investment in R&D (rdmag)

    

  New solar fuel machine

    
The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria. Ceria has a natural propensity to exhale oxygen as it heats up and inhale it as it cools down. If as in the prototype, hydrogen and/or water are pumped into the vessel, the ceria will rapidly strip the oxygen from them as it cools, creating hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide.

   
New solar fuel machine (bbc)
      

  The American dream overseas

   
Over the past two decades, thousands of immigrants have been burned by misrepresentations that EB-5 promoters make about the program, both inside and outside the United States. Many have lost not only their money but their chance at winning U.S. citizenship. The number of U.S. businesses seeking immigrant investors through EB-5 has exploded over the past three years.

   
The misrepresentation of EB-5 visa (reuters)
    

  EPA: Chemical Data Access

   
On December 22, 2010, EPA made available the new Chemical Data Access Tool to find health and safety data that has been submitted to the Agency, under authorities in sections 4, 5, and 8 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). On May 17, 2010, EPA added more than 6,300 chemicals and 3,800 chemical facilities regulated under TSCA to EPA's public Envirofacts database.

  
New Chemical Data Access Tool (epa)
    

  Pentagon Wants Terminator Vision

    
Imagine a suite of cameras that digitally capture a kilometer-wide, 360-degree sphere, representing the image in 3-D (!) onto a wearable eyepiece. The imaging wouldn’t just be limited to what any individual soldier sees. SCENICC envisions a “networked optical sensing capability” that fuses images taken from nodes worn by “collections of soldiers and/or unmanned vehicles.”

     
Battlefield in 3-D image (wired)

     

  Quake Studies Uncover Surprises

   
New technologies developed by NASA and other agencies are revealing surprising insights into a major earthquake that rocked parts of the American Southwest and Mexico in April, including increased potential for more large earthquakes in Southern California. The earthquake is among the most complex ever documented along the Pacific/North American tectonic plate boundary.

     
Quake Studies Uncover Surprises (jpl.nasa)

    

  The next-generation of Airbus A320

    
U.S. engine maker Pratt and Whitney, which developed the engine has signed a deal that should see the engine enter service in 2016 on the next-generation Airbus A320. The design promises to lower noise pollution and nitrous oxide emissions significantly and reduce fuel consumption by up to 15 percent. The fuel saving should mean that each aircraft will emit 3,600 fewer tons of carbon dioxide annually, says Tom Enders, CEO and president of Airbus.

    
Airbus' new engine design (technologyreview)
     

  Google & Java tool solutions

   
Google is donating the source code for two new open source projects at the Eclipse Foundation. The WindowBuilder Java GUI designer and the CodePro Profiler technologies were both acquired by Google from developer tools vendor Instantiations in August of this year. The new projects will join the annual Eclipse release train in 2011, which is a coordinated release of over 30 Eclipse projects.

    
Google hands over OS project (developer)

    

  Nuclear industry & skills crisis

    
Walking through the expansive complex, still missing a domed cover on the reactor building, it takes a while to make out a peculiar but important detail: Many of the engineers and building experts working here are in their late 50s and early 60s; some are in their 30s, but few are in between. There's a hole in the nuclear workforce, not just in Finland but across the Western world.

     
Nuk Skills shortage (pittsburghlive)
   

  Turkish-Japanese trade

    
Turkish-Japanese relations started to liven up with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Japan appointed Ambassador Yûkichi Obata to Turkey in 1925. Obata, thinking that economic relations would accelerate political relations, decided to hold an exhibition to promote Japanese goods in Turkey. Today the same idea prevails; policy falls behind economy in the global power struggle.

    
Turkish-Japanese ties (todayszaman)

   

  More value to domestic products

   
Good example of independent innovation is the rapid development of China's high-speed railway, which set a new operating speed record of 486.1 km per hour on a test run on the Beijing-Shanghai railway only two weeks ago. From introducing technologies from foreign companies to designing its own software and registering more than 900 patents, China has gradually become an independent researcher and developer in this field.

   
China innovation (news.xinhuanet)
    

  Tools to monitor lightning

    
"Lightning is a very good proxy for severe weather. In fact, it is a lead indicator - you often get lightning just before you get heavy rain, hail and even big gusts of wind," explained Dr Jochen Grandell from the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat). The addition of systems that sit and stare at the Earth from 36,000km should deliver a wealth of new data to improve warnings about imminent storms.

    
How to monitor lightning? (bbc)
    

  Metal dental fillings

    
U.S. health regulators are seeking a second opinion on whether mercury-containing dental fillings pose a risk to dental patients, especially children and pregnant women. The FDA in July 2009 declared the fillings, known as dental amalgam, posed no risk. A year earlier, it had cautioned against their use in certain more vulnerable people such as pregnant women and children, noting mercury's risks.

Risk to dental patients (reuters)

     

  Russia-EU relations

    
By mutual needs, relations between Russia and the EU have been visibly improved this year after hitting their lowest point in 2008 when the two argued over the conflict between Russia and Georgia. However, inveterate mistrust and divergence left over by history still shadow the road of Russia-EU cooperation and linger in their bilateral ties. As two big powers on the world stage, their relations are hardly serious setbacks nor quick boosts.

    
Russia & EU ties (english.people)
    

  Swiss economy & competitive advantage

    
Swiss exporters still face problems associated with the strengthening franc and a weakening of their most important market – the European Union. But a steady diversification of exports away from the EU towards emerging economies is one of the key reasons Switzerland is enjoying comparatively strong economic growth and low unemployment rates.

    
Swiss economy & Emerging markets (swissinfo)

    

  When internet came to power

     
The assault on the royal car carrying Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall last week showed that the old politics is alive and kicking – and daubing paint and smashing windows – as ever. But, threatening though it was, there was something faintly anachronistic about the preposterous cries of "off with their heads". The assault on corporate websites – in retaliation for the global establishment's attempts to shut down WikiLeaks – was, by contrast, singularly modern.

   
When internet came to power (independent.co)

    

  Who Tweets?

    
Eight percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. It is an online activity that is particularly popular with young adults, minorities, and those who live in cities. This is the first-ever survey reading from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project that exclusively examines Twitter users. In previous surveys, the Pew Internet Project had asked internet users whether they "used Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?"

    
The internet Twitter users (pewresearch)

     

  We Need a Research Data Census

    
The Census is particularly valuable as a planning tool in the building of physical infrastructure, as the distribution and characteristics of the population drive the development of hospitals, public works projects, and other essential facilities and services. Given the role and importance of the Census in the physical world, it is useful to ask what provides an analogous evidence-based and publicly available snapshot of the "inhabitants" of the Digital World—our digital data.

    
Building physical infrastructure (cacm.acm)

    

  ISO-12100: Standard on risk assessment

    
Accidents involving machinery incur high costs, both in human terms and also economic and societal ones. Although calculating an exact figure is unrealistic, recent studies have shown that for a single accident the total cost to the individual and to society can be as high as USD 1 million.

    
ISO-12100 & Operators' Protection (iso)

        

  The Colossus of Wall Street

    
As Bear Stearns fell apart in March 2008, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon had a BlackRock team of 50 analysts work through the weekend to evaluate Bear Stearns' most illiquid assets. At the end of the weekend, Geithner called Fink to ask him to manage $30 billion in bad mortgage debt that had been carved out from Bear Stearns' books before its healthier parts were sold to JPMorgan.

    
The machinery of Wall street (businessweek)

    

  The Chinese consumer awakens

     
Spending might be sturdy in China, but investment has been off the charts. As a result, consumption was just 35.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2009, from 46.1 percent a decade earlier - and that was helped by a massive government stimulus to counter the global financial crisis. The task for China's policymakers is to lift that proportion by boosting wages, speeding up urbanization and building a social safety net.

    
Chinese consumption forcasts (reuters)
       

  Top papers to charge online

    
The New York Times has spent the past year studying its proposed new metered model, finding ideas from telecom and cable companies, and even WeightWatchers, which charges users for in-depth diet tips. The U.S. and UK newspaper industries suffered an unprecedented decline in advertising spending that pushed papers into bankruptcy and resulted in thousands of job losses.

  
Papers Test Revenue Models (reuters)
    

  For safer use of chemicals

   
REACH seeks to close the knowledge gap that previously existed concerning the risks associated with particular chemicals and to encourage the progressive replacement of dangerous chemicals with safer ones by means of its authorisation system. REACH places greater responsibility on industry to manage the risk of chemicals and provide appropriate safety information to professional users and to consumers.

   
REACH: Frequently asked questions (europa)

    

  The crisis in the euro area

   
The euro may have abolished market-based nominal exchange rates but it has led to marked divergences in real exchange rates. Consumer prices in peripheral countries have risen at a faster rate than in Germany since the start of the euro in 1999. So have wages, making it hard for firms in those countries to compete with Germany in foreign markets and with low-cost imports from Asia in their home markets.

    
The costly legal battles (economist)
   

  Offshore Outsourcing

  
For nearly a decade, China has been touted as the biggest threat India's supremacy in offshore outsourcing, and its central government has been funneling money into developing the country's growing IT outsourcing (ITO) industry. But beyond the obvious similarities (they're both big—really, really big—and cheap in comparison to their Western counterparts), there remain major differences in the two mega-markets for offshore IT services, from language and management skills to industry focus to supplier and customer bases.

    
24 Ways to Compare India vs. China (cio)

    

  Build machines that learn

   
Researchers have suspected for decades that real artificial intelligence can't be done on traditional hardware, with its rigid adherence to Boolean logic and vast separation between memory and processing. But that knowledge was of little use until about two years ago, when HP built a new class of electronic device called a memristor. Before the memristor, it would have been impossible to create something with the form factor of a brain, the low power requirements, and the instantaneous internal communications.

    
Real artificial intelligence   (spectrum.ieee)

    

  Ten questions science must answer

    
Over the last 350 years our lives have been changed beyond recognition by the application of science. In 1660, vast areas were terra incognita; today, rapid communication and travel makes the world seem connected, even constricted. Some of the changes have been less benign: this is the first century when one species – ours – risks irreversibly degrading the entire planet's environment.

    
The responses of science (guardian)

   

  Bacterium: Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus

  
Life is mostly composed of the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and phosphorus. Although these six elements make up nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids and thus the bulk of living matter, it is theoretically possible that some other elements in the periodic table could serve the same functions. Exchange of one of the major bioelements may have profound evolutionary and geochemical significance.

    
new avenue of bacterial metabolism (sciencemag)

    

  The World Is Growing Older

   
More than pension schemes and care, Media reports on the world's aging population tend to focus on pensions and care for the elderly. But other changes could be just as important. What will happen to family life, for example? And what will the relationship between the generations be like when so many of us live longer and have fewer children?

    
The world's aging population (medicalnewstoday)
    

  Processors with 1,000 cores

    
Intel remains adamant that the future progress of microprocessors will depend on packing ever more cores onto a chip. As more cores are added, however, Intel designers must confront the problem of scalability. Initial multicore chip architectures depended on a set of protocols that assures that each core has the same view of the system's memory, a technique called cache coherency.

    
Future progress of microprocessors (itworldcanada)

    

  ‘Smart Regulation’ is en vogue

    

How the smart regulation initiative would be better implemented if it was to bring concrete results. Cefic's legal department has drafted a Manifesto on smarter regulation, as a response to the amount of legislation in the environmental and more specifically the chemicals sector. 

      
Cefic's Manifesto Draft (cefic)

     

  Randomness fuels innovation

    
Cities are incredible engines of innovation. It's easier to stumble across people who have very different experiences, professions or subcultures that are outside the mainstream, and it's in the interaction between those different frameworks that people end up having interesting ideas.

   
The collision of hunches (guardian)
      

  Will FDA recognize ISO 13485 ?

   
FDA recently opened the door to recognizing, or at least taking into account, ISO 13485 registration in a draft guidance document the agency issued for comments. While you shouldn’t rule out visits from FDA inspectors any time soon, the proposed program of voluntary audit report submissions could lower your inspection frequency.

    
Recognizing ISO 13485 (lne-america)

     

  Russia linked to French Riviera

     
Every Sunday evening, amid an array of local trains to Cannes and Monte Carlo, a remarkably different destination pops up on the departures board of Nice-Ville railway station. Train 17 to Moscow chugs out of the station shortly after nightfall and deposits passengers in the Russian capital, after an epic journey across Europe, just before midnight on Tuesday.

    
Journey across Europe (independent)

     

  Marine Energy Technology Roadmap

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is a public private partnership between six of the largest global industrial organisations – BP, Caterpillar, EDF Energy, E.ON, Rolls-Royce and Shell – and the UK Government. As well as marine, the ETI currently has projects in offshore wind, transport, carbon capture and storage, energy storage and distribution, distributed energy, buildings and bio-energy.

   
ETI in Energy Technology Roadmap (ukerc.rl.ac)
     

  Can Airports Be Green ?

   
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) presents some encouraging statistics. According to the organisation, airlines have improved fuel efficiency and CO2 performance by 14% over the last ten years. IATA director general has set ambitious environmental aims for the industry, including carbon neutral growth, an 80% reduction in nitrogen oxide levels around airports by 2020.

    
Ambitious environmental aims (airport-technology)
     

  Space - the EU frontier ?

   

INTERCEPTING ASTEROIDS, charting the evolution of stars, circling Mars to map organic molecules and even landing on the red planet to collect and analyse materials. These are all on the European Space Agency (ESA)’s to-do list over coming years. At a time when the economy on planet Earth isn’t quite as flush as it used to be, is now really the time to be spending on space ventures that push back the frontiers?

     
ESA Space ventures (irishtimes)

    

  Leaking Siberian ice

   
Gas locked inside Siberia's frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.

    
Icy ground thawing rapidly  (news.yahoo)

     

  IBM to run quake simulations

   
The rush to build more powerful supercomputers is part of a larger race to solve some of mankind's biggest problems and threats, and one person on the front line of that effort is Thomas Jordan, the director of the Southern California Earthquake Center. Until this week Jaguar had been the world's fastest supercomputer, at 1.75 petaflops.

    
A planned 10-petaflop system (IBM)

     

  How to reverse Japan's decline

     
Back in the 1980s, Japan was an economic powerhouse and the envy of the world. But there appears to be no end in sight to its current decline, as jobs are lost, pensions cut and companies move overseas. The country's much-vaunted social cohesion is also disintegrating as people find themselves forced to rely on their own resources.

    
Can Japan Reverse Its Long Decline? (spiegel)
      

  Screening: X-Ray imaging scanners

   
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been taking a beating lately over its new, full-body X-Ray imaging scanners that show people naked. People are concerned about both the humiliation of the procedure and the extra doses of X-rays they get from these scanners, but travelers who refuse to be scanned must submit to a TSA "enhanced pat-down," which now involves a newer, more aggressive policy.

    
Questionable TSA Activities (prwatch)
    

  Outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis

    
A group that protects the welfare of animals has released an undercover video it claims shows animal abuse at a Texas farm operated by the largest egg producer in the United States. The Humane Society of the United States says one of its investigators worked at the Cal-Maine farm in Waelder, TX, for almost a month this fall and documented multiple abuses and food-safety violations.

    
Salmonella enteritidis infection (asq)
    

  Organs Made from Scratch

    
Growing living tissue and organs in the lab would be a life-saving trick. But replicating the complexity of an organ, by growing different types of cells in precisely the right arrangement—muscle held together with connective tissue and threaded with blood vessels, for example—is currently impossible. Researchers at MIT have taken a step toward this goal by coming up with a way to make "building blocks" containing different kinds of tissue that can be put together.

     
Turning cells into different tissue (technologyreview)
     

  Weather satellite work begins

      

Six satellites will be built to give forecasters up-to-the-minute data on developing weather systems. The R&D phase of the programme was approved by governments in 2008, but political wrangling delayed its start. Thales Alenia Space (France) and OHB System (Germany) have now been told they can proceed with the work.

     
An industrial consortium to begin (bbc)

       

  Radioisotope thermal rocket

    
Rocket-propelled vehicles capable of travelling a kilometre or more in a ballistic ‘hop’ with propellants acquired from the Martian atmosphere offer the potential for increased mobility and planetary science return compared with conventional rovers. In concept, a radioisotope heat source heats a core or ‘thermal capacitor’, which in turn heats propellant exhausted through a rocket nozzle to provide thrust.

    
Thermofluid design (royalsocietypublishing)
      

  EU consumers & food-related risks

    
Those who are concerned about possible food-related risks tend to worry more about chemical contamination of food rather than bacterial contamination or health and nutrition issues. The poll also showed most Europeans have confidence in national and European food safety agencies as information sources on possible risks associated with food.

    
European food safety & Quality (efsa)  

   

  Towards autonomous defence systems

     
High-profile armed systems such as Taranis (UAV from BAE Systems) have the true nature of their autonomy kept secret, but other projects hint at what might be in store. At the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, researchers are using Pentagon funding to develop a six-wheeled tank that can find its own way across a battlefield.

     
BAE Systems & UAV prototype (guardian)

     

  Side effects of Isotretinoin

   
Isotretinoin (13-cis-retinoic acid) has been used since the 1980s to treat severe recalcitrant nodular acne with good effect, but case reports and spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions have suggested an association between isotretinoin, depression, and suicidal behaviour. Some authors have observed that isotretinoin actually leads to an improvement in anxiety and depression because of the clearing of disfiguring acne.

    
Nodular acne & medication (bmj)
     

  BP Spill: EPA reports on Dioxin

    
Deepwater BP spill & Dioxin (epa)
     

  Custom Google Maps Markers

   

Location-based services have become an indispensable part of the Web in recent years. Google Maps is the overwhelming market leader not only in terms of providing search services through its namesake website, but also due to the powerful Google Maps API, which has been integrated into tens of thousands of third-party websites around the globe.

    
The powerful Google Maps API (developer)
    

  R&D: Europe & Asia are catching up

    

The US now struggles to keep pace with increased output from Europe and Asia according to a Thomson Reuters report . Yet research impact and the overall reputation of higher education institutions in the US remain strong. Why is the US lagging behind and what can be done about it? Is something in the US research base contributing to the inability to keep pace with other rising nations.

  
R&D expenditures around the world (newsdaily)

    

  Pottery in Neolithic Central Europe

    
A new study has revealed that migrants from the ancient Near East have been responsible for the introduction of farming to Europe. Scientists from the University of Adelaide in Australia analyzed 8,000-year-old bones of 22 people buried at a graveyard at the town of Derenburg in Saxony-Anhalt in central Germany.

    
Introduction of farming to Europe (plosbiology)

   

  Chasing Pirates: Inside Microsoft

    
The arrival of organized criminal syndicates to the software piracy scene has escalated worries at companies like Microsoft, Symantec and Adobe. Groups in China, South America and Eastern Europe appear to have supply chains and sales networks rivaling those of legitimate businesses, says David Finn, Microsoft’s anti-piracy chief.

    
Inside the software piracy (registration/nytimes)
    

  Nanoparticle measurement

   
Tougher environmental legislation is driving the emissions monitoring market, from acquisitions and distribution deals to new technologies. Rising fuel costs for thermal systems highlight more and more the need for efficiency monitoring using emission measurements. A practical, easy-to-use emission analyser for a variety of applications is therefore ideal.

    
Nanoparticle measurement (engineerlive)

    

  Relevant information on crop interception

   
The purpose of the assignment was to provide scientific information to be used for the revision of the Guidance Document on Persistence in Soil and for other upcoming opinions and guidance on exposure assessment of pesticides in the environment. The objective was to undertake a data-collection on crop interception of plant protection products when applied and to collect the data in an electronic data-base.

    
Exposure assessment on pesticides  (efsa.europa)
    

  Before Pythagoras, Babylonian Mathematics

   
The cuneiform tablets illustrate three major themes: arithmetic exploiting a notation of numbers based entirely on two basic symbols; the scribal schools of Nippur; and advanced training. Many of the latter problems were much more difficult than any that they would have to deal with in professional scribal careers.

    
Babylonian tablets delivre their secrets (nyu)
    

  US media survey

   
Four years ago 43% reported some kind of newspaper reading, in print or online. These percentages still may miss some people who access newspaper content indirectly through secondary online sources such as news aggregators or search engines. Daily audiences for TV and radio, by contrast, are holding steady. Television remains the most prevalent source of news.

    
Media & News (people-press)
   

  EU Civil Justice Survey

   
DG Justice has commissioned this Eurobarometer survey to gain insight into personal experience, knowledge and attitudes of Europeans about crossborder civil justice cases within the European Union. This survey was carried out between 9 June and 30 June 2010. It is follow-up to the first survey carried out between 9 November and 14 December 2007, which was published in April 2008.

   
Eurobarometer survey   (ec.europa)
       

  The Berlin housing myth

   
Berlin may be the housing heaven that Young Urban Creative Internationals (YUCIs) envy the world over. But as prices are climbing and poor residents are being squeezed out of the centre, more and more Berliners are trying to beat the speculators with alternative housing projects.

    
Alternative housing projects   (exberliner)
       

  Gravity shows its helpful side

    
David Toms, a theoretical physicist at Newcastle University, UK, has found that gravity seems to calm the electromagnetic force at high energies. The finding could make some calculations easier, and is a rare case in which gravity seems to work in harmony with quantum mechanics, the theory of small particles. His paper is published today in Nature1.

    
Electromagnetic force at high energies  (physorg)
        

  Emerging markets & Social good

    
More than 70% (71%) of those surveyed in the UAE would promote a brand's products and services, provided there was a good cause behind them. This closely follows an average of 77% among Brazil, India, Mexico and China and contrasts to an average of 49% in major Western European economie.

    
Good cause behind Social goods ?  (ameinfo)
       

  Competing with China on solarTech

    
When Greentech Media, a Cambridge-based research firm focused on renewable energy, issued a report last month looking at the world’s 15 most successful producers of solar panels, it found that eight were based in China (including numbers two, three, and four on the list). The bulk of China’s growth happened in 2008 and 2009, said Shyam Mehta, who wrote the report.

    
Renewable energy competition  (boston)

     

  Peel me an e-book

    
The fundamental elements of e-ink and OLED displays are small enough that they won't break if laid down on flexible backing. The problem, according to Janglin Chen of Taiwanese government-funded research lab ITRI, is the backing itself. The substrate the components are mounted onto has to have certain physical properties, especially during the manufacturing process.

    
The e-ink and OLED  (news.cnet)
     

  EU copyright overhaul

    
Private copy levies are not applied in the UK, but in several other European countries they add varying amounts to the costs of memory sticks, optical drives, MP3 players and recordable media. The harmonisation of such levies across Europe could mean the cost of such items goes up in the UK.

    
Harmonizing European Copyright Law  (zdnet)

     

  Self-Cleaning Solar Panel

      
Generally, the smooth silicon surfaces used in solar cells reflect a lot of the light that hits them, lowering their efficiency. The shaped surfaces, though, barely reflect any light at all. According to the researchers' paper, High-throughput fabrication of low-cost self-cleaning surfaces, which suppress the reflection of light over a wide spectral range, is expected to have applications ranging in chemical analysis of drugs or biomolecules to photovoltaics.

    
Solar Panel Efficiency  (onlinelibrary.wiley)
      

  EU power grab on trade

A European Commission proposal to reduce member states' influence on the EU's daily decision-making is facing resistance from a group of countries led by Germany and the UK, who are insisting on keeping a say on trade policy. The Lisbon Treaty, adopted in December last year, reformed the comitology procedure by increasing the Commission and the Parliament's say in the system.

    
EU power grab on trade  (euractiv)

      

  Launch of ISO 26000 guidance

   
The publication of ISO 26000 is eagerly awaited by organizations worldwide, whether they are business enterprises, or public sector organizations. Operating in a socially responsible manner is no longer an option. It is becoming a requirement of society worldwide. What makes ISO 26000 exceptional among the many already existing social responsibility initiatives is that it distils a truly international consensus on social responsibility.

    
ISO 26000: Guidance on social responsibility  (iso)
        

  GE Buying EVs

    
It makes sense that a company called General Electric would be bullish on cars with cords. But even by that standard the company is diving into the deep end, with what it says will be the biggest order ever placed for electric vehicles. First and foremost, General Electric builds the equipment that provides one-third of the world’s electricity, so of course it will do everything possible to promote the technology.

   
General Electric eyeing on Evs  (wired)
       

  Another BRIC in the wall ?

   
Emerging markets continue to feature prominently in global economic discussions on the back of perceived economic weaknesses in both the United Sates and the European Union. Perhaps the most prominent bloc of emerging markets is that made up of Brazil, Russia, India, and China - commonly referred to as BRIC. South Africa has long been wooing the four BRIC partners to be admitted to this very prominent club of emerging economies.

    
South Africa claims its "BRIC"   (sairr.org)

    

  Is team science productive ?

    
To find a way to measure the productivity of collaborations in a young, emerging institute ? While metrics exist to measure the contributions of individual scientists, judging the effectiveness of team science has been more challenging. Reasoning that team science produces papers and grants, first author postdoctoral fellow Michael Hughes, PhD, (now at Yale University) and colleagues measured these endpoints and analyzed them over time using network analysis.

    
The Metric in scientific productivity  (scienceblog.)
       

  R&D & the economic crisis

   
Top EU firms cut investment less than US rivals, but Europe still well behind. The European Commission's 2010 "EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard" shows that R&D investment by top EU companies fell by 2.6% in 2009, even though sales and profits fell much more, by 10.1% and 21.0% respectively.

   
R&D & the economic crisis  (europa)

    

  How Vodafone increased its BI value

    
The very well-equipped and expensive Vodafone Teradata system and other supplier relationships were reviewed to extract double the number of answers for the same money. BI had to bridge the language gap by translating information the businesses valued into terms the technologists could relate to.

    
BI value & Data quality  (computerweekly)

     

  Smart Grid Technologies

     
The Department of Energy (“DOE”) released a report entitled “Data Access and Privacy Issues Related to Smart Grid Technologies.” The idea behind the Smart Grid is that electricity can be delivered more efficiently using data collected through monitoring consumers’ energy use.

   
Security in Smart Grid Technologies  (gc.energy)
       

  Dream recording device 'possible'

    
For centuries, people have been fascinated by dreams and what they might mean. In Ancient Egypt they were thought to be messages from God. More recently, dream analysis has been used by psychologists as a tool to understand the unconscious mind. But the only way to interpret dreams is to ask people about the subject of their dreams after they had woken up.

   
Dream recording device 'possible'     (bbc)

    

  Petrofac's road to Damascus

    
With major projects under way around the world, including in his native Syria, the chief executive of the FTSE darling believes the sun has long to shine on the oil industry. Syria has something of a Cinderella image when it comes to the oil giants of the Middle East. With Iraq on its doorstep and huge opportunties to piggyback on that country’s post-Saddam oil boom, Mr Asfari, a Syrian by birth, knows that could be about to change.

     
Huge opportunties for Petrofac  (telegraph)

    

  Brains for hire: the thinktank

   
In western Europe, there are huge research agencies funded by public money, but again they are monolithic and don't innovate. Britain have political entrepreneurship. They have tanks of people, all thinking; they need no mandate. They just think. And then their thoughts become public policy.

    
Britain's thinktank industry  (guardian)
    

  Aleppo soap industry threat

     

Nestled among the 2,000-year-old labyrinthine streets in courtyard houses and old hotels known as khans, are a handful of workshops that have been making the famed "Savon d'Alep", or Aleppo soap, by hand for hundreds of years. But the guardians of the old tradition say greedy imitators who have begun marketing cheap industrial soap under the same name are threatening to undermine the brand in lucrative European export markets.

     
Saving the Aleppo soap  (news.yahoo)

    

  Quality of inexpensive tests

   
Disposable diagnostic tests currently under development could offer medical workers and patients in rural areas more detailed health information, such as viral counts in the blood of HIV patients, without the need for expensive equipment such as cameras, computers, or even cell phones. Researchers at two startup companies and the University of Illinois are building all the capabilities of expensive lab-bench tests onto a piece of paper, without adding significant weight or other cost to the tests.

     
Diagnostic tests development   (technologyreview)
     

  State of the Internet 2010

   
Today approximately 1.8 billion people use the Internet to do everything from conduct business,communicate with friends and family, keep up with current events or simply entertain themselves playing games or watching videos. Each individual and each Internet-connected device presents a certain footprint that is exposed and often manipulated for criminal or political gain.

   
Internet in 2010  (ca)
    

  Report on French Research Agency

   
The role of the Agency is to bring more flexibility to the French research system, foster new dynamics and devise cutting-edge strategies for acquiring new knowledge. By identifying priority areas and fostering public-private collaborations, the ANR also aims at enhancing the general level of competitiveness of both the French research system and the French economy.

    
French research system   (agence-nationale-recherche)

       

  Osteoporosis : Improving post-fracture

    
This study reviewed randomised controlled trials (RCT) involving fully qualified healthcare professionals caring for patients with a fragility fracture in all healthcare settings. Any intervention designed to modify the behaviour of healthcare professionals or implement a service delivery change was considered.

    
How to improve post-fracture ?  (implementationscience)
       

  W3C : Mobile Best Practices

      
The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published a Proposed Recommendation of Mobile Web Application Best Practices. The goal of this document is to aid the development of rich and dynamic mobile Web applications. It collects the most relevant engineering practices, promoting those that enable a better user experience and warning against those that are considered harmful.

      
Mobile Best Practices   (w3)
       

  Supply of Medical Radioisotopes

      
At the request of its member countries, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has become involved in global efforts to ensure a reliable supply of Molybdenum-99 (99Mo) and its decay product, Technetium-99m (99mTc), the most widely used medical radioisotope. The collective efforts of HLG-MR members and nuclear medicine stakeholders have allowed for a comprehensive assessment of the key areas of vulnerability in the supply chain.

    
Medical Radioisotopes & Reliable supply  (nea)
         

  Weighing a wider wealth gap

   
The fact that economists are even examining the link between inequality and financial crises shows just how much the thinking has changed in the wake of the Great Recession. Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, said that before 2008, when he spoke of inequality approaching levels last seen before the Great Depression, it would inevitably lead to questions about whether another crisis was looming.

     
The wealth gap  (reuters)
    

  World of work outlook

    
The number of people that have been unemployed for more than one year has increased in nearly all of the countries for which information is available – in some cases significantly. Over the medium term, in advanced economies job growth is expected to remain stagnant through 2010 and a return to pre-crisis levels is not foreseeable before 2015.

    
Outlook of the Labour Market   (ilo)

     

  IPCC aims for clarity

   
Leaders of the IPCC's scientific assessment were speaking to BBC News during a conference in South Korea aimed at modernising the organisation. They indicated that procedures used in compiling AR5 will reflect some criticisms made in the wake of errors uncovered in its previous assessment, in 2007.

    
IPCC: Modernising the organisation   (bbc)
      

  IVD Medical Devices Assessment

    

The European classification of IVD Medical Devices under Directive 98/79/EC faces criticism for being seen as rigid and unable to address new technologies or practices. Could a change in the rules be coming? The European Commission has launched a “public consultation” on the In Vitro Diagnostic Directive (IVDD), which has been in place since 2003.

   
Criticism around IVD  (lne-america)

     

  Measuring Competitiveness Report

   
This year’s Global Competitiveness Report is being published amid uncertainty in the global economy and a continuing shift in the balance of economic activity away from advanced economies and toward developing ones. Despite significant government stimulus spending aimed at dampening the recession, growth in advanced economies remains sluggish as they are mired in persistent unemployment and weak demand.

      
2010-2011 Global Competitiveness   (scribd)
      

  Inter. Aviation & Climate Change

   
As the world has become increasingly concerned with global climate change, ICAO has taken the lead in addressing international aviation’s contribution, which is estimated by the IPCC to be less than 2% of global human-made CO2 emissions. As this outlook discusses, projections of global aviation fuel consumption and efficiency through the year 2050 reveal that on a per flight basis, fuel efficiency is expected to improve over the period.

    
ICAO 2010 Environmental Report  (icao)
     

  Central Asian Research Network

   
Launched in January 2009, the Central Asian Research and Education Network (CAREN) is a high-capacity regional research and education network which will provide high speed internet for universities and research centers. CAREN will help decreasing the digital divide and will directly contribute to the development of the education and research sector in the region.

   
CAREN & The Silk Road  (cordis.europa)
     

  Rinderpest virus wiped out

  
If confirmed, rinderpest would become only the second viral disease - after smallpox - to have been eliminated by humans.The FAO said it was "confident" the virus has been eradicated from those parts of the world where it is prevalent.The eradication of the virus has been described as the biggest achievement in veterinary history.

    
Rinderpest have been eliminated  (bbc)
      

  Botox maker

   
Botox manufacturer Allergan has seen cosmetic use of the toxin shrug off the recession but now its potential for therapeutic treatments such MS has made the firm 'ecstatic'. It is all its other less sexy applications for Botox – 20 of them in total, including the recently approved application as a preventative medicine for chronic migraine – that opens up another potential goldmine.

   
Botox Effect  (guardian)

   

  Kyoto & 2020 targets in EU

   
This report presents an overview of the progress achieved so far by the EU, its Member States and other EEA member countries towards their respective targets under the Kyoto Protocol and the EU burden-sharing agreement. The assessment is based on greenhouse gas (GHG) emission data in Europe for 2008, the first year of the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period which runs from 2008 to 2012.

  
Tracking progress towards Kyoto  (eea.europa)

      

  Botnet & malicious commands

    
Bots in early 2000 were aimed at remote control and information theft, but the move towards modularisation and open-sourcing began the huge increase in variants and the expansion of functionality. Malware authors gradually introduced encryption for ransomware, HTTP and Socks proxies allowing them to use their victims for onward connection or FTP servers for storing illegal content.

   
Know your Enemy & Tracking Botnets  (zdnet)

   

  Brazil: microchips for forest management

    
It could be just another of the thousands of trees felled each year in Brazil's portion of the world's largest forest except for one detail: a microchip attached to its base holding data about its location, size and who cut it down. The chips allow land owners using sustainable forestry practices to distinguish their wood from that acquired through illegal logging that each year destroys swathes of the forest.

   
New Tech and environment  (reuters)
      

  Old jobs require more skills

   
Economists have long worried that millions of people who have lost jobs in depressed areas like construction don't qualify for work in growing sectors like health care. But it turns out that some of the jobless no longer even qualify for their old positions. Workers aren't just being asked to increase their output. They're being asked to broaden it, too.

   
More skills, wage Less  (news.yahoo)

     

   

Engineers at Google have tested a self-driving car on the streets of California, the company has announced. Mr Thrun - professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University - insisted that safety was the "first priority" in the project. While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science.

    

Google's self-driving car  (googleblog.blogspot)

     

  10 great free desktop tool

  
Most everyone who's had some experience with free open source software has learned about the OpenOffice.org suite of productivity programs: a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and drawing tool that provide a good deal of the functionality of their commercial counterparts. But apart from OpenOffice.org, what else is there?.

   
Free open source software   (infoworld)

   

  Business link to ecosystem services

   
in the past 50 years, human activity has altered ecosystems faster and more extensively than ever before. This is unfortunate, as the degradation of ecosystems and the services they provide destroys business value and limits future growth opportunities. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation come at a price, which has been estimated to be between Euro 1.35 trillion and Euro 3.10 trillion each and every year.

   
Ecosystems & Business    (wbcsd)

    

  FAA Warning over Li. battery shipments

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the batteries, widely used in consumer products, could ignite in a fire, overwhelming suppression systems. The FAA said a US cargo flight that crashed last month near Dubai carried a shipment of lithium batteries. The warning did not apply to batteries carried by passengers, the FAA said.

  
FAA Warning   (faa)

     

  Galileo project

   
As the US prepares to launch its third-generation global positioning system (GPS) and Russia and China push ahead with their own competing systems, the European Union continues to face delays and soaring costs with its prestige project. The EU now calculates that the Galileo project will be completed by 2018 – nearly a decade later than initially planned – and will cost taxpayers an additional 1.5 to 1.7 billion euros.

   
Galileo project   (dw-world)
     

  Energy-efficiency & cloud computing

   
Conventionally, data storage and data processing are done at the user's own computer, using that computer's storage system and processor. An alternative to this method is cloud computing, which is Internet-based computing that enables users at home or office computers to transfer data to a remote data center for storage and processing.

   
Cloud computing alternative   (physorg)
     

  Turning Europe into Innovation Union

   
There is no one single definition. But innovation as described in the Innovation Union plan broadly means change that speeds up and improves the way we conceive, develop, produce and access new products, industrial processes and services. Changes that create more jobs, improve people's lives and build greener and better societies.

   
Changes that speed innovation  (europa)

     

  Infected computers should be quarantined

    
Millions of computers around the world running versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system are infected by viruses without their user's knowledge and used to generate billions of spam emails and attacks against websites, such as that used against a British law company earlier this month. The new proposal, Microsoft claimed, is built on the lessons of public health.

   
Microsoft's new proposal  (guardian)

   

  Wind farms trouble

     
Wind farms, especially big ones, generate turbulence that can significantly alter air temperatures near the ground, say researchers. As turbines often stand on agricultural land, these changes could in turn affect crop productivity.

      
Wind farms generate turbulence   (bbc)
       

  Hungary sludge

   
A lethal torrent of toxic red sludge from a metal refinery engulfed towns in Hungary, burning villagers through their clothes and threatening an ecological disaster Tuesday as it swept toward the Danube River. Emergency workers wearing masks and chemical protection gear rushed to pour 1,000 tons of plaster into the Marcal River in an attempt to bind the sludge and keep it from flowing on to the Danube some 45 miles away.

    
The toxic red sludge  (news.yahoo)

       

  Bios: Final step

  
Bios' replacement, known as UEFI, will predominate in new PCs by 2011. The upgrade will spell the end for the 25-year-old PC start-up software known as Bios that initialises a machine so its operating system can get going. The code was not intended to live nearly this long, and adapting it to modern PCs is one reason they take as long as they do to warm up.

  
Bios' replacement   (bbc)
      

  EU Carbon & Energy Markets

   
The European Union’s refusal to delay phasing out free carbon-emission allowances may drive up costs for refiners already struggling with a slide in crude-processing profits. Operating expenses may jump about 13 percent for refiners by 2013, when polluters will be forced to pay for more carbon permits under the EU’s cap-and-trade system.

    
EU carbon rebuff energy markets  (businessweek)

   

  Prediction of embryo survival

    
Two-thirds of all human embryos fail to develop successfully. Now, in a new study, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown that they can predict with 93 percent certainty which fertilized eggs will make it to a critical developmental milestone and which will stall and die.

  
Understanding human development  (physorg)
        

  The Carbon Age

    
An important tension is unfolding between two types of carbon--atmospheric carbon in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and elemental carbon as a building block for a new generation of devices designed to manage and abate those same pollutants. Our way of life has become dependent on energy generated by the process of extracting carbon from the earth in the form of fossil fuels and then burning it to form carbon dioxide.

   
The Carbon Age  (cnet)
      

  Back Biodiversity 100

    
In less than a month, unless we can rouse sufficient public indignation to avert it, a widespread suspicion that humanity is incapable of looking after this planet will be confirmed. The world's governments will meet at Nagoya in Japan to discuss the catastrophic decline of life on the planet. The outcome is expected to be as tragic and as impotent as the collapse of last year's climate talks in Copenhagen.

    
Climat talks  (guardian)

    

  Solar cells

    
Photovoltaic cells work by absorbing photons and using that energy to shift electrons to the conduction band, which creates an electron-hole pair called an exciton. The key to improving photovoltaic economics is more efficiently utilizing the energy that the cells receive, as recently demonstrated by solar cells that utilize a combination of light and heat.

    
Energy & Efficiency  (arstechnica)

    

  BlackBerry Development

   
A variety of money-making opportunities should be arriving from RIM in the near future. One item that RIM announced last year is the creation of an advertising services platform. It has finally arrived, and you should need only three lines of code to insert simple or rich media ads into Java-based or Web-based apps.

    

BlackBerry Development  (developer)

     

  Lighting Revolution

   
Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, have become popular with backpackers and cyclists who mount them on headbands for a reliable, hands-free source of illumination. Now, a new lab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is helping to bring these tiny but brilliant devices into your home, to help save both energy costs and the environment.

      
A vision of illumination’s future  (nist)
       

  Sil.Val.tech on hiring practices

   
The Justice Department has reached an agreement with six major Silicon Valley companies to settle allegations that they colluded to stifle competition for employees by restricting the way they could poach workers from each other. The settlement, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia late Friday, names Google Inc., Apple Inc., Intel Corp., Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc. and Walt Disney Corp.'s Pixar Animation Studios.

    
Six major on Hiring practices   (startribune)
   

  The European Chemical Industry

  
The €449 billion EU chemical industry is still in a strong position, but has lost its top ranking in terms of sales to Asia, mainly due to the rise of China. Taken together, the European Union, Asia and North American Free Trade Area, account for 89.7 per cent of world turnover. Developments during the previous 10 years from 1999 to 2009 indicate that the European Union was the clear leader in terms of world chemicals sales, but the region has gradually lost ground to Asia (excluding Japan).

    
Report on EU Chemical Industry   (cefic)
    

  BMW's Tiny Little Electric Car

    
The company spent years developing hydrogen-combustion technology, using hard-to-handle liquid hydrogen, which needs to be cooled to minus 253 degrees Celsius, just 20 degrees above absolute zero, to become a fluid. BMW showcased the technology in 2007 by outfitting 100 of its 7-Series sedans with bulky hydrogen tanks; the fuel, however, boiled away despite insulation equivalent to 17 meters (55 feet) of Styrofoam.

    
BMW's hydrogen-combustion technology   (businessweek)
      

  US: Accountable Science

    
For more than 10 years, peer reviewers of NSF proposals have been asked to consider both whether the proposed activity constitutes good science and whether it would have an impact (presumably positive) on the larger society outside of science, as well as within the scientific community. NSF instituted its more streamlined approach to merit review (prior to FY 1998, there were four criteria) in an effort both to simplify the process.

US: Accountable Science  (scienceprogress)
      

  A sophisticated computer virus

    

The computer virus, known as Stuxnet, is a "working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that could lead to the creation of a new arms race," Kaspersky Labs, an Internet security firm based in Moscow, warned in a statement. The German engineering conglomerate Siemens, which developed the systems attacked by Stuxnet, said the malware spreads via infected USB thumb drive memory sticks.

   

The Stuxnet virus   (news.yahoo)
       

  China: to reverse 'Brain Drain'

   
Thousands of Chinese go abroad every year to study science, engineering and other fields and many never return home _ not because they want to emigrate but because their still-developing economy lacks jobs to match their advanced skills. Of the 1.4 million Chinese students who received student visas to go abroad since 1979, only 390,000 have returned _ just over a quarter, according to China's statistics bureau.

   
Chinese Students 'Brain Drain'  (economictimes.indiatimes)

     

  Most unusual telescopes

   
Floating just over one kilometre below the surface of the world's deepest lake - Baikal in central Russia - the NT-200 telescope points not at the sky but towards the centre of the Earth. The telescope was built to capture an elusive fundamental particle called the neutrino, in a bid to unravel the secrets of how the Universe formed.

       
The NT-200 telescope  (bbc)
    

  Interna. scrutiny on offshore drilling

   
Draft proposed by Germany and seen by the Guardian specifically recommended an international review and talked about a "moratorium on certain new oil exploration activities in deep waters". The original documents made clear that Germany's worries lay beyond just BP's Deepwater Explorer accident and it made specific reference to North Sea incidents.

    
Offshore drilling regulation  (guardian)

   

  Quality of Life Index

The UK came 9th out of the 10 European countries in the Index, thanks to high living costs, below average government spending on health and education, short holidays and late retirement. The Index shows that people in France enjoy the highest quality of life, closely followed by Spain.

   
Quality of Life Index  (uswitch)

    

  London to Frankfurt by train

   
A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn said: "DB is committed to introducing high speed passenger rail services between London and Germany, enhancing connectivity between these two countries. Services are expected to start at the end of 2013. DB is considering a route that would start in Frankfurt – the heart of Germany's finance industry – with possible stops at Cologne and Brussels en route to London.

    
The London & Frankfurt Speed passenger rail    (guardian)
       

  Travel Smarter, Live Better

     
From 16 to 22 September 2010, hundreds of European towns and cities will participate in the ninth edition of European Mobility Week and invite their citizens to a wide range of activities promoting sustainable mobility. The 2010 campaign theme – “Travel Smarter, Live Better” – was selected as the focal theme for European Mobility Week 2010 in recognition of the detrimental effects that current urban transportation trends have on health.

     
European Mobility   (mobilityweek)

    

  Siluria Tech startup

   
Converting methane directly to valuable chemicals and liquid fuels is an industrial challenge that has defied the best minds in chemistry. Now catalyst developer Siluria Technologies claims to have solved the problem. Siluria's solution is a catalyst that efficiently turns methane into ethylene, the feedstock underpinning more than two-thirds of global chemical production.

    
Liquid fuels development  (technologyreview)
    

  The Ecology of Intern. Security

   
How much security does more than $1 trillion buy? It may buy very little or even make matters worse. According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, the United States has spent to date this amount of money on the War on Terror, especially about $784 billion on the Iraq war and $321 billion on the military operations in Afghanistan.

   
Ecology vs Security  (fas)
    

  Public Company & Risk Management

    
"The financial crisis underscored the importance of risk management in the pursuit of a business strategy," says Matteo Tonello, director of corporate governance research at The Conference Board and founder of the Director Notes series. "Today, as companies recover from that turmoil, many corporate directors wonder if they and their boards are doing all they should to fulfill their fiduciary duty with respect to risk oversight."

    
Business strategy  (prnewswire)

     

  Berners-Lee Grid Net's vision

    
Berners-Lee suggested that concerns over privacy and the sharing of personal data will mean that businesses will have to improve their ability to segment the use of user-specific data such as addresses and where people are using their phones.On net neutrality – which has become a major talking point in the US, especially as Google appears to have ceded the principle to some of the major mobile carriers there.

   
Berners-Lee personal view  (guardian)

     

  Office Romance on the Wane

    
As job insecurity has mounted and third party claims have risen, the office fling may become the recession's latest victim. "It seems likely that there's a certain opportunistic element to what's happening out there," says Sondra Solovay, a director of Workplace Answers, a San Francisco-based compliance services company.

   
Work relationship & job involvement  (businessweek)

      

  Magic BEANs

   
Working with germanium tin nanoparticles embedded in silica is the initial BEANs, where researchers were able to stabilize both the solid and amorphous phases and could tune the kinetics of switching between the two simply by altering the composition.

  
Magic BEANs  (pddnet)
     

  Quality Remix

   

Lean engineering became fairly ubiquitous in the aerospace industry in recent years. Lean was pushed much harder by aerospace management than the earlier programs were. In some companies, lean achieved the status of a cult religion. Individuals who embraced the program, or just wanted to please management, got on the “lean bandwagon.”

   
Lean engineering in today's world  (qualitymag)

      

  Insulating materials in sealed equipment

   

The connector selection process becomes critical when the application involves sealing the connectors against various environmental conditions. Harsh situations include salt water for a remotely operated underwater vehicle or vacuum in research instrumentation. Leakages occur due to gaps and other paths in the connector body, the insulating material, the contacts or the wires.

   
How products can pertain your needs  (engineerlive)
    

  Nuclear Fuel Cycle future

   

This MIT report focuses on what is known as the “nuclear fuel cycle”—a concept that encompasses both the kind of fuel used to power a reactor (currently, most of the world’s reactors run on mined uranium that has been enriched, while a few run on plutonium) and what happens to the fuel after it has been used (either stored on site or disposed of underground—a “once-through” cycle—or reprocessed to yield new reactor fuel).

  
MIT report on Nuc fuel  (mit)

     

  Getting Started with Memcached Data

     
Apparently, Memcached is best implemented for queries that are triggered multiple times in a second and demand huge data as output. Access to Memcached data is faster than the access time to disk drives because the Memcached data is stored in temporary memory. You will find Memcached preinstalled on almost any production server. But if you are trying Memcached for the first time, the first step is to install the Memcached extension on your server.

    
Memcache rules   (developer)

     

  Who Makes Your iPhone ?

    
It actually wasn't until late May, after the ninth Foxconn employee had leaped to his death, that Foxconn went into full crisis management mode, stringing more than 3 million square meters of yellow-mesh netting around its buildings to catch jumpers and setting up a 24-hour counseling center staffed by 100 trained workers.

   
Foxconn Growth (businessweek)
   

  Thalesgroup's training suites approbation

     
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have approved two Boeing Training Boeing 787 Dreamliner Full Flight Simulators, manufactured by Thales, to Interim Level C. In addition, the FAA has also approved the associated Boeing 787 Flight Training Device (FTD) to Level 5 and EASA has approved the FTD to EASA Level 2.

    
Thalesgroup & Flight Simulators   (thalesgroup)
    

  Microbes are eating BP oil

    
Government scientists studying the BP disaster are reporting the best possible outcome: Microbes are consuming the oil in the Gulf without depleting the oxygen in the water and creating "dead zones" where fish cannot survive. Outside scientists said this so far vindicates the difficult and much-debated decision by BP and the government to use massive amounts of chemical dispersants deep underwater to break up the oil before it reached the surface.

    
BP oil feeds Microbes!  (news.yahoo)

    

  About Dikerogammarus villosus !

     
Dikerogammarus villosus is an invasive non-native shrimp that has spread from the Ponto-Caspian Region of Eastern Europe. The killer shrimp is a voracious predator. It kills a range of native species, such as freshwater invertebrates, particularly native shrimps and even young fish. This alters the ecology of the habitats it invades. It often kills its prey and leaves it uneaten.

    
The invasive species  (secure.fera.defra.gov)
      

  Global Oil Depletion Report

      
A growing number of commentators are forecasting a near-term peak in global oil production with potentially serious economic impacts. Others, however, argue that production will be sufficient to meet rising demand well into the 21st century. The report, a review of over 500 studies, analysis of industry databases and comparison of global supply forecasts, seeks to bring some clarity to this debate.

    
Global Oil Depletion Report  (ukerc.ac)
       

  Nurture as Important as Nature

     
Researchers have long overestimated the role our genes play in determining intelligence. As it turns out, cognitive skills do not depend on ethnicity, and are far more malleable than once thought. Targeted encouragement can help children from socially challenged families make better use of their potential.

    
Nurture as Important as Nature  (spiegel)
     

  Vitamin B 'puts off Alzheimer's'

   
Brain shrinkage is one of the symptoms of mild cognitive impairment, which often leads to dementia. Researchers say this could be the first step towards finding a way to delay the onset of Alzheimer's. Experts said the findings were important but more research was needed. The study looked at 168 elderly people experiencing levels of mental decline known as mild cognitive impairment.

      
Vitamin B to counter Alzheimer's development  (.bbc.co)
      

  BP internal investigation

   
BP has published its internal investigation team's report into the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010. The investigation found that no single factor caused the Macondo well tragedy. Rather, a sequence of failures involving a number of different parties led to the explosion and fire which killed 11 people and caused widespread pollution in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year.

   
Latest BP Oil Spill Report   (bp)

    

  Works on algae-based fuel

    
Arizonans have cleaned algae from cattle tanks, swimming pools and fish tanks for decades.Now, Arizona researchers are developing algae as a promising 21st-century alternative fuel to power cars, trucks and planes and propel the state's economy into the future. With its ideal climate and abundance of available land, Arizona is poised to become algae-based, biofuel industry site.

    
Algae fuel development  (savannahnow)

     

  Pay-as-you-drive

    
A satellite-based meter in the car determines "internally and privately" every piece of road you drive — when, where and how many kilometres. That information is applied to a pricing database that knows how much you owe, depending on where you were driving. Many trips would cross municipal or provincial boundaries. Skymeter would calculate how much you owe to individual road authorities.

    
Pay-as-you-drive  (thestar)

   

  Key Coal-Chemical Exhibition

   

The "2010 China International Exhibition on Coal Processing & Utilization and Coal Chemicals" took place in late August 2010 with over 100 exhibitors to showcase their most recent coal chemical technologies and equipment, among which there are multinational companies such as Shell, Total, GE, Dow Chemical and Davy.

   
China International Exhibition  (prnewswire)

    

  Re-employed' Workers Overqualified

     
Workers who suffered a spell of unemployment during Great Recession are, on average, less satisfied with their new jobs than workers who didn't. They are more likely to consider themselves over-qualified for their current position. And six-in-ten say they changed careers or seriously thought about it while they were unemployed.

   
Are you Overqualified ?  (pewsocialtrends)
      

  The Web of Intent is Coming

   
The Web of Intent will be largely driven by consumers’ actions and interests. It will be based on implicit actions consumers take around what is most important to them. There’s an emerging opportunity for content publishers (and the publishing technologies they rely upon) to dramatically improve how they filter the stream for the consumers they serve.

    
Web & implicit actions   (gigaom)

      

  Submarine fiber-optic cables

     
The ship is usually based in Calais, France, but made a stop recently in Greenwich, England, to pick up components from Alcatel-Lucent's factory. The telecommunications infrastructure company invited ZDNet UK to see the factory and the ship, and have a look at a vital part of the global Internet that's normally hidden by miles of water.

      
Alcatel-Lucent at work  (news.cnet)
   

  NFS: Future Internet Architecture

    
The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today awards for four new projects, each worth up to $8 million over three years, as part of the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program. These awards will enable researchers at dozens of institutions across the country to pursue new ways to build a more trustworthy and robust Internet.

    
Future Internet Architecture   (NSF)
       

  Pharma: Middle Eastern market

     
The coming three years will be very hard to forecast because we are talking about the years following the credit crunch, and several pharmaceutical companies have reduced their workforces, which would affect new investment in new markets and new research projects. And at the same time, additional cautiousness from FDA staff will lead to a reduction in the ability to get approval, which will delay launching drugs and reaching markets.

    
ME investments   (social.eyeforpharma)

    

  UN Development Goals

   
The Millennium Declaration in 2000 was a milestone in international cooperation, inspiring development efforts that have improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Ten years later, world leaders will gather again at the United Nations in New York to review progress, assess obstacles and gaps, and agree on concrete strategies and actions to meet the eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

     
A milestone in international cooperation  (UN)

     

      
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

      
The Rights of Privacy   (news.yahoo)

     

  RFID: Vulnerability of PAP

     
In this paper, the authors analyze the security of an RFID authentication protocol proposed by Liu and Bailey, called Privacy and Authentication Protocol (PAP), and show its vulnerabilities and faulty assumptions. PAP is a privacy and authentication protocol designed for passive tags. The authors claim that the protocol, being resistant to commonly assumed attacks, requires little computation and provides privacy protection and authentication.

     
RFID vulnerability (arxiv)
    

  Plastics industry: New mould

    
Gulf petrochemical producers are accelerating plans to replace low-value commodity exports with value-added plastics in a bid to boost revenues, add jobs and make better use of the dwindling natural gas supplies that are the lifeblood of the industry. A shortage of low-cost natural gas, and in some cases high unemployment, is pushing regional governments to reorient their petrochemical strategies to more sophisticated manufacturing, an industry trade group said last week.

      
How to replace low-value commodity ? (thenational)

    

  China clean energy plan

    
The world's second-largest economy faces formidable challenges to make the plan work. Beijing must upgrade its rickety electricity grid, open up the network to alternative energy and raise tariffs to make new energy sources competitive with coal-fired power. All that while retaining investor confidence China will remain the low cost factory of the world.

    
China alternative energy  (reuters)
       

  Synaptic Plasticity & Memory Formation

    
Reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton is essential for synaptic plasticity and memory formation. Presently, the mechanisms that trigger actin dynamics during these brain processes are poorly understood. In this study, we show that myosin II motor activity is downstream of LTP induction and is necessary for the emergence of specialized actin structures that stabilize an early phase of LTP.

     
Brain processes   (download.cell)
       

  The Wheat genome

    
UK scientists have released draft sequences of the wheat genome, which they think could make a vital contribution to securing global food supplies. The researchers also say their efforts could help British farmers to develop new strains with greater yields.Global wheat production has been under threat in recent years from increasing demand and climate change. Wheat is regarded as one of the most important crops for human consumption.

     
The wheat genome  (bbc.co)
       

  Bioengineering Design

      
New testing instrumentation developed ASU researchers promises to make the procedure less costly and produce results in less time. Current testing is slow and expensive because of the complications of working with blood, saliva, urine, and other biological fluids, says Garcia, a professor in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

   
New testing instrumentation  (qualitydigest)

      

  Bill Gates talks energy

      
When Bill Gates is interested in something new, his organizing, capacious intelligence learns everything about it, and he imagines ways it could be better. Now the cofounder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is interested in energy. At his offices in Kirkland, WA, he spoke to Jason ­Pontin, Technology Review's editor in chief.

     
Former MS CEO talks energy  (technologyreview)
      

  Beyond the Black Box

   
The black box may be the greatest single invention in the history of safety engineering. Nevertheless, technology has moved on, and we can—we must—improve on it. Rather than store data in an onboard box that might be unrecoverable if the aircraft goes down in the sea, it would be far better to transmit the data continuously and in real time to a ground-based system that would record the output of the plane's sensors and electronics.

     
Transmitting data rather than storing it!  (spectrum.ieee)

       
    

  How to restructure German vacations ?

      
Germans should shorten their trips to Spain's beaches or Italy's piazzas in the future to help the economy, two German business associations have said. According to them, six weeks, the amount of paid holiday most Germans get, is too much, or should at least be restructured. The UMW business association, a Koblenz-based group which represents small and medium-sized firms, would like to see those six weeks cut down to four.

      
How to shorten germans's holidays ?   (dw-world)
        

  From machete to machine

     
For nearly five centuries, the classic image of sugar production in Brazil has been one of workers setting cane fields on fire and then descending on the crop with their machetes for harvest. The transition, driven by both increased competition and tougher Brazilian environmental laws, has been a boon for multinational equipment manufacturers supplying the world's leading producer of sugar and the second largest ethanol producer after the United States.

    
Boom of the agricultural machinery  (reuters)
       

  Formation of plant vacuoles

      
Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have now discovered a new protein essential to the formation of vacuoles. In the process they uncovered new clues that may help demystify the vacuole formation mechanism. They now hope to unravel the process completely. Cells – whether plant, animal or human – comprise a variety of organelles. In plant cells, the largest organelle by far is the so-called vacuole.

      
The formation of vacuoles   (biochemist)
       

  2010 Global Cities Index

      
We are at a global inflection point. Half the world's population is now urban -- and half the world's most global cities are Asian. The 2010 Global Cities Index, a collaboration between Foreign Policy, management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, reveals a snapshot of this pivotal moment. In 2010, five of the world's 10 most global cities are in Asia and the Pacific.

    
50% world's population is now urban   (foreignpolicy)

       

  Giving Up Meat

     
The number of conscientious eaters is growing, including those who practice restraint purely to help save the planet. In the past, the people who stayed away from meat did so because of fears of disease, religious rules or love of animals, but today many are motivated by a concern for the rest of the world. Residents of big German cities are holding meat-free "veggidays."

    
How to stay away from meat ?   (spiegel)
        

  Stark warning from Google chief

    
Chief executive of Google, has issued a stark warning over the amount of personal data people leave on the internet and suggested that many of them will be forced one day to change their names in order to escape their cyber past. For a man whose company is built on the ability to store information and retrieve it again in a faster and more efficient way than its rivals, Mr Schmidt's admission revealed a surprising concern among Google's leadership over the importance of data privacy.

     
Web: You will never be forgotten !   (independent)

    

  Broadband performance

   
Consumer broadband speeds are roughly 50 percent slower than their advertised rates, according to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission.Though consumer broadband speeds have doubled every four years since 1997 and broadband providers increase their advertised, available broadband speeds by 20 percent annually, not all consumers are actually getting that kind of performance from their high-speed Internet connection.

    
US Broadband performance   (fcc)  

      

  German radioactive boars

      
Almost a quarter century after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Ukraine, its fallout is still a hot topic in some German regions, where thousands of boars shot by hunters still turn up with excessive levels of radioactivity. In fact, the numbers are higher than ever before. The total compensation the German government paid last year for the discarded contaminated meat shot up to a record sum of euro425,000.

     
German contaminated meat  (news.yahoo)

       

  Rogue Microbes

   
Biologists often speak of switching genes on and off to give microbes new abilities--like producing biofuels or drugs, or gobbling up environmental toxins. For the most part, though, it's nearly impossible to turn off a gene without deleting it (which means you can't turn it on again). This limits biologists' ability to control how much of a particular protein a microbe produces. It also restricts bioengineers' ability to design new microbes.

       
Gene manipulation   (technologyreview)
        

  Smile to the sky, You are pictured!

    
High-tech eyes in the sky — from satellite imagery to sophisticated aerial photography that maps entire communities — are being employed in creative new ways by government officials, a trend that civil libertarians and others fear are eroding privacy rights. "As technology advances, we have to revisit questions about what is and what is not private information.

     
Sophisticated aerial photography   (news.yahoo)

     

  India forefront of outsourcing

     

Indian companies have made great strides in the global arena across different business segments. They have also demonstrated their ability to play the leader’s role in each of the segments. Currently, the Indian pharma industry ranks third worldwide in volume of production that is, 10% of the world’s total pharma output by volume and 14th by value, which is nearly 1.5% of the global value.

    
India forefront of outsourcing  (stockmarketsreview)

       

  The Successful Optimist

   

Optimism is not about fooling yourself and being all rosy; it is about seeing options to reality--i.e., being an "optionist." That requires having a good lock on what is actually happening. To be a successful optimist, you must also have an accurate barometer on reality. If you are correct about reality, you can become an excellent "optionist." Most people think of optimists as flaky nonrealists, which they can be if their perception of reality is distorted.

    

Being an "optionist"   (entrepreneur)

     

  The best Web browser

     

Not too long ago the job of a Web browser was simple: Get the text from the Internet and pour it into the window. If a tag like <strong> comes along, change the font. Now the challenges are greater because the browser is becoming the home for almost everything we do. Do you have documents to edit? There's a website for that. Did you miss a television show? There's a website for that. The Web browser handles all of that and more.

      
Comparison of web browsers  (infoworld)

     

  Pedagogical Innovation in NLC

   

The main aim of this study is to collect evidence on the learning innovation emerging in online communities and to draw conclusions on the lessons learnt and on emerging models and features that could eventually be transferred to Education and Training systems to support lifelong learning, innovation and change in Europe.

    

online: Learning innovation    (jrc)
        

  New Drug Approvals in 2009

    
Thirty-four new drugs and biologics created by America’s pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients in 2009. These new medicines—three more than the 31 approved in 2008—represent significant advancements in the treatment of a wide range of disease and will contribute to improved patient care, disease treatment and prevention as well as help patients to live longer and healthier lives.

    
2009 approved Drugs  (phrma)
    

  Reinventing the City

      
Our cities play a vital role in the quest to achieve global ecological sustainability (GES). They are the largest contributors to greenhouse gases and climate change. However, if we can achieve sustainable construction and use of urban infrastructure, our cities could become a critical leverage point in global efforts to drastically reduce emissions and avoid the social and economic costs.

     
City & GES  (policyinnovations)

      

  Great Pyramid exploration

     
A robotics team from Leeds University, working with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, is preparing a machine which they hope will solve one of its enduring mysteries. The pyramid, known as the Pyramid of Khufu after the king who built it around 2,560BC, is the only wonder of the ancient world still standing. At its heart are two rooms known as the King's Chamber and the Queen's Chamber.

     
Great Pyramid exploration   (archaeologydaily)

                  

  Critical move in engine war

   
Airbus and Boeing are sweating this summer over whether to upgrade their best-selling aircraft with new, more efficient engines, a move which could reshape the $80-billion jetliner industry. Billions of dollars in profits and trade balances are at stake as they act to fend off emerging competition from Canada, China and Russia.

     
Airbus, Boeing & Other future competitors  (reuters)
    

  Glass biochips

    
The Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT will be showcasing an innovative In-volume Selective Laser Etching (ISLE) process for glass on the joint Fraunhofer stand C41 in hall 14 of this year's glasstec, the flagship trade fair for the glass industry, which takes place in Düsseldorf from September 28 to October 1, 2010. This process enables micrometer-fine structures to be created in transparent material like silica glass, borosilicate glass, sapphire and ruby.

   
Innovative process for glass   (innovations-report)

   

  Norway Boosts Biotechs

     
Norway, which built its wealth on salmon and oil, is emerging as a force in biotechnology as companies around Oslo discover new ways to fight cancer. PCI Biotech Holding ASA, whose product attempts to blast tumors with a drug charged by light, surged eight-fold on the Oslo stock exchange in the past year. Algeta ASA, working on a way to destroy cancer cells and spare healthy tissue, doubled over 12 months.

    
Building future on Biotech.   (businessweek)

     

  Study: Campylobacter in chickens

    
EFSA has published an evaluation of factors that may contribute to the spread of Campylobacter in live chickens and chicken carcasses in the European Union. The scientific report follows the publication of the first EU-wide survey carried out by Member States on the occurrence of this bacterium in chickens and their carcasses. The findings will be utilised by risk assessors to further investigate the role of chicken meat in human campylobacteriosis.

    
Campylobacter in live chickens  (efsa.europa)
       

  Scientists : Gulf Can Recover!

       
It's too soon to know the full effects of the BP disaster. But to get a sense of where the Gulf has been and where it's going, the AP surveyed 75 scientists about the health of the Gulf of Mexico before the spill. On a 0-to-100 scale, the scientists graded its general health a 71 on average. That's a respectable C, considering 100 would be considered pristine and untouched by civilization.

Gulf of Mexico health!  (pddnet)

   

  How to define your need for Statistical Process Control ?

      
An ambitious quality manager knew statistical process control (SPC) software would be an essential tool for his company’s goal of reducing manufacturing costs, improving quality and increasing competitiveness. He drew up a detailed plan for a successful launch. And while the process started off well, a few weeks after the SPC software implementation launch, problems became evident.

      
How to define your need for SPC ?  (qualitymag)

      

  A World Without Stimulus

   
In today’s world of commerce, as we try to sort out what is failing and what has worked in this subdued recovery, two widely respected economists offer a vision of how the U.S. economy would have fared without the much-maligned stimulus program and other massive government rescue efforts. Their answer, in “How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End?".

     
A vision of U.S. economy  (joc)
     

  Magnetic detectors's true potential

     
Magnetic fields play some really important roles in modern life. We store information in the alignment of magnetic fields on hard disks, we use the molecular response to magnetic fields to determine the shapes of proteins and image inside the body. In these cases, we apply a magnetic field and measure a response to that applied field. However, a lot of information could potentially be gained just by measuring naturally occurring magnetic fields.

   
Magnetic detectors's true potential  (arstechnica)

      

  Feds admit storing body scanning image

     
For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded." Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all.

     
The intimacy at stake  (news.cnet)

      

  US: To Reduce Hazards from Fertilzer

      
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Justice Dept. today announced that CF Industries, Inc. has agreed to spend approximately $12 million to reduce and properly manage hazardous wastes generated at its Plant City, Fla. phosphoric acid and ammoniated fertilizer manufacturing facility. The settlement resolves CF Industries’ Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) violations and requires the company to pay a civil penalty of more than $700,000.

      
New regulation on fertilizer   (yosemite.epa)

     

  Infrengement: SAP/ORACLE dispute

   
You have to wonder if SAP is experiencing buyer's remorse from its 2005 purchase of TomorrowNow. It looks like the company is trying to put the issue behind it and has accepted that the third-party software provider committed copyright infringement of Oracle's intellectual property, but is disputing over the amount.

     
S.A.P recognises the infringement   (.zdnet)
       

  6 cool innovations for data center

   
Some of these new technologies are already on the market, and some have yet to hit -- but they all promise to make your data center operation run more smoothly. consumer gadgets are getting most of the attention these days, but data centers are getting some love too. These new products and technologies promise to solve real data center problems or are already working to make enterprise operations run more smoothly. How many are on your wish list?

   
What's new in Data Center   (computerworld)

   

  Gene makeovers

   
Gene therapy has advanced substantially since 1999, when it gained notoriety after an 18-year-old named Jesse Gelsinger died in a research study. Recently, gene therapy has been shown to be effective in a handful of small human trials. The premise of gene therapy is that well-functioning genes can be substituted for missing or mutated ones — producing the crucial protein the patient is lacking.

    
Gene therapy   (boston)

    

  Nuc. fusion test reactors

   
Researchers have discovered mechanisms critical to interactions between hot plasma and surfaces facing the plasma inside a thermonuclear fusion reactor, part of work aimed at developing coatings capable of withstanding the grueling conditions inside the reactors. Fusion powers the stars and could lead to a limitless supply of clean energy.

    
Critical mechanisms discovered in Nuc-Fusion  (purdue)
    

  EU survey on B & C

    
Sentiment in industry, which increased by 2 points in both regions, was the main contributor to the overall improvement. Most respondents in this sector reported substantial improvements in their order books. However, managers were cautious on their production expectations. The quarterly manufacturing survey indicates an increase in capacity utilisation.

     
EU Business & Consumers survey  (ec.europa)

     

  Context-aware computing

      
As Web search, mobile advertising and social platforms become increasingly interwoven, businesses will have new opportunities to provide not just content and applications, but context-aware user experiences to end users, according to Gartner, Inc. By 2013, 40 percent of Global 2000 enterprises will have context-aware computing projects focused on the user experience under way.

     
Context-aware computing  (itpreport)

      

  Threat Level & Security

    
A security researcher created a cell phone base station that tricks cell phones into routing their outbound calls through his device, allowing someone to intercept even encrypted calls in the clear. The device tricks the phones into disabling encryption and records call details and content before they’re routed on their proper way through voice-over-IP.

     
The information security  (wired)

     

  The big cheese

     
The UK, after all, is a major cheese-producing country: 700 varieties are produced within these shores, 14 of which are subject to protected designation of origin in the same manner as champagne or Parma ham. According to the British Cheese Board (BCB), the British consume some 600,000 tonnes of the product each year, or 10kg per person - but this is still only about half as much as consumers in Germany, France, Italy and Greece manage to put away.

    
UK cheese  (bbc)
    

  Wind farm location site

   
The parameters used to identify sites can be fine-tuned to suit the individual requirements of any developer - such as wind farm and turbine size, minimum wind speed, distance from houses, designated areas, roads, rail and proximity to the electrical distribution grid. The size of overall land areas reviewed can vary widely from 20,000m2 up to 2000 hectares or more.

    
Where to build best wind farm ? (engineerlive)

     

  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)