Four years ago, torrential rains battered the Southern US, mudslides struck in Peru – and the inhabitants of Canada`s west coast saved up to 30% on their winter heating bills. The cause? El Niño, a huge temperature shift in the Pacific Ocean which spawns climate changes globally. Today, using satellite Earth observation data, scientists are detecting the early warning signs of a new El Niño event and predicting that it will develop over the next 3 to 6 months, bringing climate changes to countries th
Research chemists at the University of Warwick have devised and patented a new process called Living and Controlled Radical Polymerisation which can cheaply and easily grow designer polymers (plastics). They have already used the process to produce a wide range of designer polymer designs that are now being tested by major companies for use in applications as diverse as hairspray, anti-obesity drugs and inkjet printer ink.
Previously “designer-polymers” could only be synthesised by resorting
Europe’s showpiece in climate monitoring is called Envisat. Fully equipped, the largest, most complex, and most powerful Earth observation satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) is 25 meters high, ten meters wide and weighs over eight tons, scheduled for launch in the night of 28 February /1st March on an Ariane 5 launcher.
Europe’s flying behemoth is on the trail of climate change. It will deliver data about global warming, ozone depletion and climate change for at least five
New theory shows that high performance needn’t mean high risk.
For man-made systems such as machines and markets, catastrophe lurks somewhere between high risk and high performance. US physicists may have found a way to strike the optimal balance 1 .
This trade-off is familiar to the financial world. Brokers develop investment portfolios to provide the best returns within a specified level of risk. Mark Newman and co-workers at the Santa Fe Institute in New M
The research group Multimedia Lab of the Ghent University (Belgium) succeeded in putting the first MPEG-21 application online. MPEG-21 technology is the most recently developed technology for multimedia applications. After the MPEG-1, -2, -4, and MPEG-7 standards, MPEG-21 is currently considered to be one of the most promising new standard in the field of multimedia systems and applications.
The research activities of Multimedia Lab at Ghent University, Belgium (Department of Electron
Europe is one step ahead of the US in the development of a new type of semiconductor structure consisting of incredibly thin nano threads. A Swedish team headed by Professor Lars Samuelson at the LTH, the Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University, has taken the lead in this field of research. “In nano threads, we can combine semiconductor materials that no one has previously been able to grow. This results in entirely new electrical properties: a single electron can be monitored and made to run a