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EDF INVESTS IN VIETNAM
French utility EDF plans to invest $4bn in a coal-fired power plant in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang, a state newspaper has reported. According to the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper, the government has approved the project and EDF has been studying a site at Song Hau industrial park to build the plant. If built, the plant will have a total capacity of 3,600-MW, making it the country’s biggest coal-fired electricity generator.
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GM EXPORTS TO CHINA
General Motors Corp will export more than $800m worth of U.S. built Buick sport utility and other vehicles and components to China starting in 2008 in its second export agreement with China this year. The Detroit automaker signed the multi-year deal with Shanghai General Motors, one of its Chinese joint ventures, it said in a statement. China has provided a rare success story for GM, which sold a record 876,747 vehicles in 2006 to become one of the top brands in the hotly contested market. The latest deal would take t
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ARCTIC NOAH’S ARK
In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world’s crop seeds in case of a major disaster. The aim is to preserve genetic diversity, needed by plant breeders in the future to produce varieties able to adapt to challenges like climate change. Norway is contributing some 50 million crowns ($8.6m) to build the cavern. The Gates Foundation, the philanthropic giant created by the founder of Microsoft, has given an additional $30m grant to the project, including money for packagi
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MISSILE STUDENTS
India’s secretive defence research agency has helped launch a university course in missile sciences and opened its labs to students, hoping to infuse young talent into a stagnating technology program. India’s missile program has built short- and long- range missiles, including one that can hit targets deep inside China. But its projects have been hit by time and cost overruns and the programme has also struggled to attract young engineers and scientists in the face of stiff competition from the more lucrative IT secto
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NEW TECHNOLOGY EXPLAINS READING
Scientists have been interested in the movements of our eyes while reading for forty years. However, until now most assumed that when a person reads both eyes look at the same letter of a word concurrently.
Now ground-breaking research by cognitive psychologist, Professor Simon Liversedge and his team at the University of Southampton has shown that this is not actually the case. They found that a person’s eyes are actually up to something much more exciting when reading- the eyes look at different letters in the sa
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INTEL’S MOORE MUSES ON THE END
OF HIS OWN TECHNOLOGY MAXIM
Gordon Moore, the unassuming billionaire co-founder of Intel Corp, says the end of the technology maxim bearing his name is drawing to a close, perhaps as soon as 10 years from now.
Moore’s Law - based on the San Francisco native’s observation in 1965 that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles roughly every two years - has for more than 40 years dictated the pace of change in the technology and I.T. industries.
To be sure, many, including Moore himself, have predicted the law’s demise numerous times
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SAIF AL ISLAM GADAFI OF LIBYA LAUNCHES THE WORLD’S LARGEST SUSTAINABLE REGION
At an historic ceremony amongst the archaeological treasures of Cyrene in the Green Mountain region of Eastern Libya, Saif al-Islam Gadafi signed the Cyrene Declaration on September 13th before an invited audience of journalists, VIP’s and people’s representatives from Libya and abroad. The launch of the Cyrene Declaration marks the inception of the world’s first regional-scale conservation and development project responding to the challenges and opportunities for sustainable development in the ‘Green Mountain’ region
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ELECTROLUX REVIEWING FUTURE OF BRITISH PLANT
Electrolux AB, the world’s second biggest home appliances maker, is evaluating the viability of its plant at Spennymoor in north east England, in the face of downward pressure on prices.
The firm, whose brands include AEG, Zanussi and Frigidaire, said in a statement the investigation regarding the factory, which has about 500 employees, was expected to be concluded during the fourth quarter of this year.
“Imports from countries with lower cost levels have intensified over the last few years, therefore resulting in
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CHINA TARGETS DRUG FIRMS IN CRACKDOWN
More than half China’s drug factories will have to improve their waste disposal or face shutdown under the first pollution standards for the industry, to be unveiled this year.
China’s evironmental watchdog has closed down or suspended 649 firms and given dozens of others a deadline to clean up their act, amid growing concern about pollution ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
The State Environmental Protection Administration launched a two-month campaign in July to clean up the country’s heavily polluted rivers. Now it is
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WORLD STEEL MAKERS ARE READY TO COLLECT GLOBAL CLIMATE DATA
The world steel industry has agreed a global approach on climate change with voluntary collection of pollution data, the world industry body International Iron and Steel Institute (IISI) said recently.
“This involves the collection and reporting of carbon dioxide emissions data by steel plants in all the major steel producing countries,” the association said at a news conference at the IISI annual steel congress in Berlin.
“Establishment of the data on a common and consistent basis is the starting point for the se
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Furness and West Cumbria’s West Coast is about to experience a major investment that will strengthen the tourism and industry s ...
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| National Stadium, Beijing |
At the pinnacle of its construction, the National Stadium in Beijing had 7,000 workers toiling over the infrastructure. ...
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No smoke without fire
It seems that commentators, industry heads, central bankers and, dare I say it, Industrial Focus’s own journalists have made so ...
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Innovation for the nations
Hope for the future has arisen from the turmoil of the last few months, as industrial technologies have spun out some marvels o ...
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Supposedly the construction
materials of the future, composites are increasingly seen in
applications where optimum efficiency is paramount including
aircraft construction and renewable energy. As two research
examples show in this video, composites really are the future
for efficiency.
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