Transcu Group says it has entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with Advanced Material Technologies Co. to be the exclusive distributor for the latter’s products.
The agreement between Transcu Green Tech (TGT) and Advanced Material Technologies will give TGT the exclusive right to promote, market, distribute and sell AMT’s products outside of Japan for a period of two years and subject to renewal thereafter.
The founders of The Pirate Bay have been hit a with new order to remove links to copyright material. A Dutch court has ordered them to to remove all links to the material of a group of Netherlands-based music and film makers.
Chemical yarn, weave and fabric manufacturer Ziwo Holdings says its China unit, Zhihe (Fujian) Technology Co., has lodged the application for the registration of four patents with the State Intellectual Property Office.
The patents include a terylene weaved sandwich mesh used as material of mattresses; terylene weaved sandwich mesh used as an outer layer material of warming gloves; terylene weaved sandwich mesh used as material of camping tents; and a low density ethylene vinyl acetate used as material of floor boards.
Ziwo says these will bring the total number of patent applications filed by Zhihe Technology to 14.
{jcomments on}
The U.S. government has revealed the identity of the eighth suspect in the group that was planning terrorist attacks abroad, in Kosovo among other places. The suspect is Jude Kenan Mohammad, who along with seven other suspects, is accused of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap and injuring of persons abroad.
A material that could lead to beer with significantly longer shelf life has been designed by researchers.
The approach works by removing riboflavin, or vitamin B2, which causes changes to beer’s flavour when exposed to light passing through the bottle.
Scientists at the Technical University of Dortmund designed a polymer "trap" with tiny crevices that capture the riboflavin molecules.
The technique could be applied to other beverages such as milk, they said.
Because such riboflavin-containing beverages tend to be stored in translucent containers, they are more prone to the effects of light on their long-term storage.
In a process called photo-oxidation, ultraviolet light can strip off charged atoms that can go on to degrade other chemicals or proteins in the drink, ultimately affecting its flavour and shortening its shelf life.
Lock and key
Borje Sellergren of the Technical University of Dortmund made use of a technique called molecular imprinting to design a solution to the riboflavin problem.
The process involves chemically designing a riboflavin-shaped cavity into a polymer by moulding it around riboflavin molecules and then removing them.
These polymer cavities are then made in high quantities, selectively trapping riboflavin when dunked into a vat of beer or milk.
The idea mimics biological systems such as antibodies which are targeted in a similar "lock-and-key" way for mopping up bacteria or viruses.
The work was commissioned by Dutch brewery Heineken, but the concept is not just limited to those drinks, Dr Sellergren told BBC News.
"The technology itself is more generic than we’ve shown here," he said.
"There are a number of examples where this kind of absorbance can be used for the removal of specific unwanted compounds in food – flavours, impurities, pesticides, and spoilage agents as we’ve shown here."
"The next step is to demonstrate for the brewery industry and food industry that we have this capability now."
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By Will Grant
BBC News, Caracas, Venezuela
A tough new media law, under which journalists could be imprisoned for publishing "harmful" material, has been proposed in Venezuela.
Journalists could face up to four years in prison for publishing material deemed to harm state stability.
Public prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz, who proposed the changes, said it was necessary to "regulate the freedom of expression" without "harming it".
The move comes at a time of rising tension over private media regulation.
Under the draft law on media offences, information deemed to be "false" and aimed at "creating a public panic" will also be punishable by prison sentences.
The law will be highly controversial if passed in its current form.
It states that anyone – newspaper editor, reporter or artist – could be sentenced to between six months and four years in prison for information which attacks "the peace, security and independence of the nation and the institutions of the state".
Radio risk
A case which has often been quoted in the bitter arguments over this law is a recent advert in national newspapers by a right-wing think tank, Cedice, which shows a naked woman next to the slogan "The Social Property law will take all you’ve got, Say No to communist laws".
The government says it has no intention of removing the right to private property and that such publications are irresponsible and designed to breed fear among Venezuelans.
But the opposition says the draft law is an unprecedented attack on private media outlets and journalists in Venezuela.
The proposed bill, which must still be debated on the floor of the assembly, comes as some 240 radio stations in Venezuela are at risk of being closed for allegedly failing to hand their registration papers into the government ahead of a deadline last month.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Madonna is the new international correspondent for Israel’s largest daily newspaper.
The Material Girl’s has been given a byline on the front page of Yediot Ahronot with the publication of her first editorial, titled “How My Life Changed.â€
Madonna’s full article will be published this Friday. The paper has translated her words into Hebrew, the native [...]
In an experiment, a team of scientists has created a transparent material, which could provide some insight into the cores of Jupiter and the other giant planets.
According to a report in New Scientist, to create this exotic state of matter, researchers at the FLASH facility in Hamburg, Germany, took a thin piece of aluminum foil [...]
Imperial College London scientists claim that they have moved a step closer to making replacement bones for patients with damaged or fractured bones using stem cell technology.
The researchers say that they compared “bone-like†materials grown from three different commonly used clinically relevant cell types, and found significant differences between the quality of bone-like material that [...]
It sounded like something pulled straight from a grisly scene in Terminator: an unstoppable military robot that powered itself by devouring everything in its path – including trees, grass and even, according to reports, dead bodies.
But after a string of headlines that labelled the machine a “corpse eater” and “creepy”, the robot’s creators have gone on a PR offensive to extinguish the rumour that their invention will feed on human or animal flesh.
The machine’s inventors say that the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot – known as Eatr for short – does indeed power its “biomass engine” by digesting organic material, but that it is not intended to chomp its way through battlefields of fallen soldiers.
“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” said Harry Schoell, the chief executive of Cyclone Power Technologies, one of the companies behind the machine.
“We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter. The commercial applications alone for this earth-friendly energy solution are enormous.”
The remarkable move is in reaction to the buzz the project created when it emerged that it was already in the testing phase, thanks to funding from the Pentagon.
The concept was originally put forward in 2003, and has been pushed forward with money from the US military’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, Darpa, a successor to the organisation that funded early development of the internet.
US officials hope that the steam-powered engine can be used by the military to create a self-sufficient robot that could survive on its own for months at a time. Possible uses put forward by the team include a battlefield ambulance or mobile gun turret.
The early version of Eatr runs on twigs, wood chips and other plant based material, fed into an engine that burns the material and uses it to propel itself around.
Another of the robot’s inventors, Dr Robert Finkelstein of Robotic Technology Inc (RTI), said that Eatr had built-in systems that would help it determine whether material that it ingested was animal, vegetable or mineral.
“If it’s not on the menu, it’s not going to eat it,” he told Fox News. “There are certain signatures form different kinds of materials that would distinguish vegetative biomass from other material.”
It can also use more conventional fuels, such as petrol, diesel or cooking oil, to keep going. But in a statement put out by the group, it reiterated that it would be illegal to create a robot that used dead bodies as an energy source.
“Descration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and it is certainly not something sanctioned by Darpa, Cyclone or RTI.”
By Gary Duffy
BBC News, Sao Paulo
Brazilian police are investigating after 64 containers with more than 1,400 tonnes of hazardous UK waste were found in three of the country’s ports.
The authorities say that among the material which was brought in illegally they discovered batteries, syringes, condoms and nappies.
Since the initial discovery, another 25 containers with hospital waste were found, also apparently from England.
In a statement the British Embassy in Brazil promised "immediate steps".
It said the UK was completely opposed to any kind of illegal trade in waste.
Dumping ground
The discovery of the containers has caused widespread anger and comment here with one official saying Brazil was not prepared to be "the world’s rubbish bin".
The finds were made in the port of Santos near to Sao Paulo and two other ports in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.
The authorities say they fear it may represent an attempt to use South America’s largest country as a dumping ground for hazardous waste in the way that has happened in other parts of the world, including Africa.
Among the material found in the containers were batteries, syringes, leftover food, condoms and nappies.
Public resentment over the issue increased when it was revealed that inside one of the containers was a collection of dirty toys with a note in Portuguese saying they should be washed before being given to "poor Brazilian children".
After a further investigation more containers were found in which there is said to be hospital waste including bags full of blood.
Five companies have already been fined in Brazil but lawyers for the importers say they were deceived and believed they were being sent plastic for recycling.
The authorities in Brazil are investigating the possible involvement of two UK companies, and the British Embassy says that, where there has been any breach in the strict international controls on the export of waste, the government will not hesitate to take action.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
How do you dismantle a nuclear bomb And how do you verify another country is genuinely disarming without compromising sensitive national security material
BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera was given exclusive access to a unique exercise run by the UK and Norway to find out.
The nuclear weapon is carefully lifted out of a large container and moved onto the floor.
Two engineers use an electric screwdriver to open up a side compartment and remove the "physics package" containing the sensitive parts of the bomb.
A scientist with a radiation detector beckons me forward as he points his machine towards the box.
It begins to emit an accelerating beeping noise. "The measurement is approximately a hundred times normal background radiation," he tells me.
"But it is not dangerous, I promise," he adds with a smile.
NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT PROCESS
The lack of danger is because the bomb is not real. To inject an element of realism into this experiment, a weak radioactive material – Cobalt 60 – is used.
The dismantlement experiment is a joint exercise between the UK and Norway – the first of its kind – and was held a few miles from Oslo.
The five-day exercise has been keenly anticipated internationally as a way of building trust between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states.
It is designed to see if one country can verify the disarmament of another country’s nuclear weapon, but without any sensitive information about national security and weapon design being compromised.
In a role reversal, the Norwegians play a nuclear weapons state (called Torland) and the UK team play inspectors from Luvania, a non-nuclear weapons state.
REDUCING WEAPONS
The 10 inspectors from UK/Luvania remain in character as soon as they enter the gates of the nuclear facility. During meal breaks they are kept separate from both the Norwegian/Torland team and the joint planning group.
A huge amount of work goes in to making the exercise as realistic as possible.
A large, white binder contains briefing packs with fake Torland letters inviting the team to verify dismantlement of one of their Odin gravity bombs.
Stamped "secret", the Torland brief states that all details about the size, shape, composition, etc, "must be kept outside the knowledge of inspectors at all costs".
To complicate matters, inspectors are given a printout from a fake website which features what is alleged to be leaked pictures of the weapon.
"The aim is to develop methodologies we could use in inspections of a real nuclear facility but in an environment in which can do trial and error," explains Andreas Persbo of Vertic, which helped organise the event.
It is not an exercise in which the nuclear state is trying to clandestinely divert nuclear material or the inspecting side search for a covert facility.
Paintball guards
The main aim instead is to try to look for practical lessons and solutions to build confidence between the haves and have-nots in the nuclear world.
Even so, the British/Luvania team push the boundaries during the long negotiating sessions that begin and end each day, at one point submitting 15 questions, some of which the Norway/Torland team refuse to answer.
There is even an early disagreement over the question of what type of warning – if any – the guards would give before firing their weapons.
The guards, who follow the inspectors everywhere, are real Norwegian soldiers but armed with non-lethal weapons, similar to paintball guns.
The key task for the inspectors is to establish a chain of custody and ensure that at no point is any sensitive material diverted.
But this has to be done without ever actually seeing the sensitive material itself.
Initially, a truck takes a container carrying the device to the disarmament facility.
"It is a very choreographed process, almost like a ballet"
Andreas Persbo
From the start inspectors watch, photograph, seal and tag key items. They cover entry and exit points to the disarmament chamber, sweeping all those going in and out to ensure no radioactive material is smuggled away.
"It is a very choreographed process, almost like a ballet," says Mr Persbo. "Timings are very precise."
The amount of fissile material in a nuclear bomb is itself classified, so a number of techniques have to be employed by the inspectors to ensure nothing is diverted when they are not able to measure it in detail themselves.
Each country’s scientists have separately designed and built their own prototype devices known as "information barriers", which can confirm that an agreed amount of radioactive material is present in any container.
The machines provide a green light if the contents match the last reading but the actual contents are not revealed.
There is genuine relief from the scientists when both come out with an agreed result of what is inside the container.
The other means for assuring the chain of custody are tags and seals.
Tags and seals
A tag is any form of identifying label, while a seal is used to ensure a room or box is not tampered with during times inspectors are not physically watching it.
These are surprisingly low-tech. A purple strip of adhesive goes across a door hinge. If it is moved then the colour changes and a warning appears on it.
Additionally, the seal has a blob of glue with multi-coloured glitter inside. This is photographed close-up by the inspectors once it is in place and then again when inspectors return.
The unique pattern would be almost impossible to replicate perfectly in a relatively short space of time. More high-tech variants are available involving fibre-optics and the next stage of the project may involve looking at ways of designing the most effective seals.
After the "physics package" is removed from the bomb and placed in a container, the inspectors are allowed to return into the room and watch it being placed in a storage room for the night.
The next morning, in the pouring rain, inspectors follow the container as it is moved by a cart to another part of the facility where the radioactive material is – at least notionally – removed in a hot cell using robotics arms.
Finally it is moved to a storage site.
"This is about having an understanding of what it means to take some material from A to B without really knowing what it is," explains Norwegian official Ole Reistad.
"Under other verification arrangements, it might be special types of fuel, it might be commercial secrets or it might be other security interests that you have to protect in some way."
Dress rehearsal
In practice no nuclear weapons state has ever allowed a non-nuclear weapons state to verify disarmament. But if there was to be multilateral disarmament in the future, it may well be important to provide such states with confidence over its actions.
Officials on both sides hope that this and any future events will lead to better understanding between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states and more collaborations, allowing trust and confidence to be increased.
"This project in a way shows our commitment to try and find good practical ways of making sure we have nuclear disarmament"
Gry Larsen, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Norway
"Norway is very much committed on the disarmament agenda," explains Gry Larsen, Norway’s State Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
"This project in a way shows our commitment to try and find good practical ways of making sure we have nuclear disarmament."
UK inspectors and observers say they learnt about the challenges of being a non-nuclear weapons state and providing confidence, as well as ways of ensuring their own sensitive material is protected.
The Norwegians say they garnered a first-hand perspective of the sensitivities of nuclear states in protecting classified information.
The UK has talked of acting as a "disarmament laboratory" and being part of the process allows the UK to say that it is living up to its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty for disarmament, although the emphasis is on developing the technical aspects of verification.
"It was lots of hard work but there’s opportunity for more progress in the future," said one UK Ministry of Defence official.
Other countries are also said to have shown interest in the work, including the US, Canada, Russia, Australia and Japan. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
In a breakthrough study, scientists from University of Minnesota in St Paul have developed a new material that can repel hot water.
The new discovery could help protect vulnerable members of the population such as elderly, children, physically impaired people from hot-water burns.
Scientists have long been working on producing water-repelling materials inspired by natural surfaces, such [...]
Priština has announced that it too will be submitting comments on the depositions by other countries in the case concerning Kosovo’s independence at the ICJ. The closing date for this is July 17.
Changing a room’s accessories can brighten up tired-looking décor. An easy addition is homemade cushions – Sally Cameron Griffiths shows you how to make them
Changing the cushions is the simplest way to redecorate a room. You avoid dustsheets, brushes and paint, and if you go off the print you can use the material for something else, hide it in another room, or pop another cushion cover over the top.
But this material makeover doesn’t always come cheap. A single cushion by Marimekko (and yes, I am a fan of this Finn’s finish) can set you back £34.
If scrimping is more your style, you’ll find that most cheap cushions have the cover sewn on. This means that your newly purchased cushion enters your home with a precarious life span – and it is my experience that guests and red wine have a knack of meeting non-washable objects in any room.
The worse case of this I’ve ever seen was at a New Year’s Eve party. One white armchair looked like it had been the scene of a bloody fight … Enough said.
It’s far better to invest in some inner cushions, which can be reinvented with a new, homemade cover whenever the mood takes you.
You’ll need to source inexpensive material. My top tips are offcuts in fabric stores or Ikea’s material, which starts at £1.99 a metre. If you pick up some offcuts every time you pass a fabric shop, you’ll quickly accumulate an eclectic mix of materials to do up your home.
Offcuts of plain or patterned material, enough to cover your inner cushion
Inner cushion, 40cm x 40cm
Pins
Ribbon
A sewing machine, Sewfree or a needle and thread (but that way will take you a long time)
Up to an hour
1. Cut your material into three pieces. For the front of the cushion you need one square (44cm x 44cm). For the back of the cushion you need two rectangles (44cm x 30cm).
2. Pin the pieces together so that the two back rectangles slightly overlap to the front square piece of the cushion.
3. Stitch the material together.
4. Attach ribbon to each side of the split in the back to create a seal for the cushion (this is easier than adding a zip). Fold over the ribbon and pin it to the rectangular material, then stitch it on with the sewing machine. Do this with two bits of ribbon on at least two or three points on the cushion.
5. Insert the inner cushion and tie up the cover. Voila! You have a cushion with a cover that you can take off and wash or use elsewhere as you wish.
What tips do you have for decorating a home on the cheap? Do you have any cushion-making and material shopping tips? Let us know in the comments section below
By: Ron Hart
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Over the last ten years, Capitol/EMI has been notorious for treating its reissue campaign of George Harrison‘s post-Beatles catalog like some kind of under-appreciated stepchild whose parents force ugly new clothes and disgusting new food onto.
First was the 30th Anniversary reissue of the Quiet One’s masterpiece, All Things Must Pass, from early 2001, considered by many to be the single greatest work by a Beatle outside of the band itself. In addition to the ghastly “colorization” of the original album artwork that would even make the people who tarnished It’s A Wonderful Life cringe, whoever engineered the remaster somehow buried the vocals and guitars even deeper in the mix than original producer Phil Spector had already done initially with his Wall of Sound recording style. Then, there was the label’s 2005 hatchet job on Harrison’s sublime 1971 double-live album chronicling his acclaimed Concert for Bangladesh. While the remastering job of the actual live cuts themselves was great, they cut out the majority of the breaks between songs, destroying the natural flow of the concert that made you feel as though you were right inside Madison Square Garden when listening to the original LP. And worst of all, Capitol finally got its way with the album artwork. After losing its original battle with Harrison over the cover concept – that stunning, iconic image of a malnourished refugee child sitting cross-legged in front of an empty bowl of food, which the suits thought was too depressing and would hurt album sales and then wound up becoming a bestseller and winning the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1973—the label went with the cover they had wanted all along, an image of Harrison from the accompanying concert film, for the reissue (and doing so after Harrison’s tragic demise due to cancer in November 2001, thus adding a whole new layer of sleaze to the whole predicament). Meanwhile, the label’s 2006 reissue of 1973′s Living In The Material World as well as the box set covering the albums released on the guitarist’s own Dark Horse imprint were modest campaigns that somewhat offered a reprieve for fans otherwise annoyed by the label handling of the Quiet One’s catalog thus far, in that it vastly improved upon the original issues in both sound quality and packaging (although some beefier bonus material would have been nice).
Now comes Let it Roll: Songs by George Harrison, a single-disc retrospective released by the EMI group on June 16 touting itself as the first-ever collection spanning the length of George’s career. Compiled largely by George’s widow Olivia Harrison and engineered by legendary Beatles producer George Martin’s son Giles Martin, who did such an outstanding job in 2007 mashing up classic Fabs tracks for the soundtrack to Cirque de Soleil’s Beatles-themed production Love at the Mirage in Las Vegas, the 19-track collection focuses primarily on Harrison’s biggest successes as a singles artist, something he was much stronger at as opposed to his former mates John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who exhibited supremacy creating both killer hit songs and outstanding full-length albums to back them up. Harrison, meanwhile, produced albums that basically consisted of one or two really great songs backed by a majority of filler material that was neither here nor there. True, Harrison did produce some gems in his solo career beyond All Things Must Pass, notably 1973′s Living In The Material World (which, to its credit, EMI did a masterful job reissuing back in 2006) and his 1987 comeback album, Cloud Nine. Not to mention 2002′s posthumous swan song Brainwashed and his pair of experimental solo albums he released while still with The Beatles, 1968′s Moog-tastic Electronic Sound and 1969′s Indian-flavored drone-fest Wonderwall Music, both of which remain woefully out of print at press time.
While there have been George Harrison compilations in the past, none have chronicled the span of his entire career. And though Let It Roll is not exactly a completist’s ideal set, as this collection could have easily been beefed up to anthology status given there are much stronger points in Harrison’s solo catalog than, say, Ringo Starr, but it certainly does an excellent job in gathering the guitarist’s sonic crème de la crème. Sequenced not by chronology but almost seemingly by vibe, the 19 tracks that ultimately made the cut here interweave as though they have existed side by side on the same long player for all these years. For instance, the segue between Brainwashed‘s “Rising Son” and Cloud Nine‘s phenomenal tribute to his old bandmates, “When We Was Fab,” flows one into the other so perfectly. The same can be said for the blending of “Blow Away” off Harrison’s eponymous 1979 effort into the thankfully-included “Cheer Down” from the Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack, not to mention “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” going into Let It Roll‘s title track, “The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp,” originally featured on All Things Must Pass. And while stubbornly elitist Beatles fans (like this writer) might wonder why the likes of “Old Brown Shoe” and “Blue Jay Way” were excluded from the fray here, the inclusion of his big three from his Fab Four output – “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Something” and “Here Comes The Sun” – is imperative to any collection with GH’s name on it, and the fact that the versions came from the Bangladesh concert album seems more appropriate for this project. Another great inclusion on this set is Harrison’s rarely-spoken-of cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Don’t Want to Do It,” which was originally featured on the soundtrack to 1985′s comedic bomb Porky’s Revenge (which should give you a good clue as to why it was little heard).
Sure, one can rail against the powers that be who oversaw the creation and production of Let It Roll and their failure to include such glaring absences as “You” off his 1975 EMI swan song Extra Texture and “Crackerbox Palace” from 1976′s diamond-in-the-rough Thirty Three & 1/3 – his first release on Dark Horse. It’s understood there are only 80 minutes on a CD, but these omissions – not to mention the exclusions of such rarities as Harrison’s working version of Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy” or “Bangla Desh,” the 1971 charity single that spearheaded the famed concert and has only appeared on album once via 1976′s The Best of George Harrison collection – could have made this very good single-disc set into an excellent double-disc compendium.
Nonetheless, any Beatles fan, be they casual or hardcore, would benefit from adding Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison to their CD shelves, as it is gorgeously packaged in a tastefully designed digipak with a 28-page booklet loaded with great information and amazing photos, making it one of the finer justices given to any kind of Beatle-related reissue in recent years (don’t even get me started on the John Lennon stuff). A quality George Harrison best-of has been a long, long time coming, and one can only be grateful that EMI has finally done right by this amazing man and his cherished legacy.
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