March 2010 Australian Oil & Gas Conference, Perth Convention Exhibition Centre, Perth, Australia

Southampton pioneers new kind of ‘chemical’ information processing technology
Inspired by chemical processes in living systems, researchers at the University of Southampton led by Dr Maurits de Planque and Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) are working on a project which has just received €1.8 million from the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Proactive Initiatives, which recognises ground-breaking work which has already demonstrated important potential.

The researchers, Dr de Planque, a biochemist, and Dr Zauner, a computer scientist, will adapt brain processes to a ‘wet’ information processing scenario by setting up chemicals in a tube which behave like the transistors in a computer chip

“What we are developing here is a very crude, minimal liquid brain and the final computer will be ‘wet’ just like our brain,” said Dr Zauner. “People realise now that the best information processes we have are in our heads and as we are increasingly finding that silicon has its limitations in terms of information processing, we need to explore other approaches, which is exactly what we are doing here.”

www.soton.ac.uk

New method for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in the air
Researchers at Birmingham University are hoping to improve airport security with a technique known as Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry (PTR-MS), which has been developed to provide real-time analysis of very low vapour pressure explosives that are hard to detect in their gas state using existing methods.

Prof Christopher Mayhew at Birmingham University believes advances in the technology could mean it will replace existing homeland security chemical sensors within the next year.

“We’re at a crucial stage of development,” Mayhew said. “Improvements in resolution and accuracy in the past two years have meant that we can now apply it to a much wider range of applications. In particular, we believe security screening will benefit considerably.”

The team is also hoping to use the same technology to develop a breathalyser for use in the early detection of diseases. This will pick up VOCs on the breath, which could provide early diagnosis of illnesses such as cancer.

Mayhew added that further applications could include research to analyse emissions from plants and in food science to understand the relationship between flavour release and perception. ‘I can see this technology opening up wide areas of atmospheric research where volatile organic compounds are being emitted in trace quantities.’

www.ph.bham.ac.uk

‘Green’ charcoal plant is planned at Aberystwyth University

The university has been given almost £180,000 to build a purpose-built facility to create “biochar,” or charcoal made from “cooked” bio-wastes. No location has been agreed, but Aberystwyth University expects it to be ready within 18 months.

The Welsh Assembly Government’s Academic Expertise for Business programme is funding the scheme. Researchers say biochar can improve farm productivity and cut demand for carbon-intensive fertilisers.

The university’s Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) said locally and nationally produced organic waste would fuel the plant. It said the plan will initially trial the use of animal residues to create biochar, but there are also plans to use waste from the pulp and paper industry.

Biochar is a porous, charcoal-like substance which is created by burning biomass with minimal oxygen in a process known as pyrolysis. The charcoal is then buried in the ground, making the process “carbon negative”.

www.aber.ac.uk

Kingston’s Small Business Research Centre to find business leaders among pupils
A test that could help identify the next generation of entrepreneurs has been devised by an academic at Kingston University in south west London.

As well as spotting students who are more likely to start their own business, the Attitudes to Enterprise test also aims to find out which young people show a flair for self-employed enterprise or through running their own community project. Researcher Rosemary Athayde of Kingston’s Small Business Research Centre developed the test to find budding business leaders among school pupils aged 15-18 and to evaluate whether schemes for young entrepreneurs had any impact on pupils’ ambitions. She has also adapted the test to suit undergraduates.

The test, which has been used in the UK, Australia and South Africa, includes 30 questions assessing pupils’ intuition, creativity, leadership skills and desire to achieve as well as the amount of control they feel they have over their future.

www.kingston.ac.uk

Bedfordshire’s Knowledge Hub sponsors one of Small Business Awards
The award is for small businesses in Bedfordshire that can demonstrate a high degree of innovation in any form. Gaynor Bray, Sales and Marketing Manager at the Knowledge Hub said: “Innovation is not just about new products but also new business processes, new approaches to market and new services so small businesses are just as capable of being innovative as larger companies are. Innovation is not as scary and high tech as some people may think and small businesses should not be discouraged from entering this competition.”

Entrants will be asked to show how their business goes about encouraging creativity and new thinking and how knowledge or technology play an important part in the development of the business. They will also be asked to focus on a particular example of a successful change implemented in the last two years as a result of an innovative idea.

The awards, which are being run by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), are specifically for businesses with fewer than 50 members of staff and aim to celebrate the best of these businesses in Bedfordshire.

Award categories include Enterprising Business Award, Best New Business Award, Employee of the Year Award and many more. Applicants can enter up to three separate categories. The top prize is worth £1000 and winners and those shortlisted also get free publicity.

All entrants will be judged by a panel of experts and winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Luton Hoo Hotel on Thursday, 27 May. The closing date for entries is 15 April.

www.fsb.org.uk/Businov - Knowledge Hub, contact Ellen Banfield, Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator for the Knowledge Hub, on 01582 743748 or email [e-mail]

University of Liverpool to lead new Virtual Engineering Centre
A new centre for virtual engineering is to be built at Daresbury Laboratory, following the confirmation of a £5.3 million investment.

The Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC), which will be financed by £2.5 million from the Northwest European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), £1.18 million from NWDA and £1.64 million from the University of Liverpool, will catalyse virtual engineering activities and joint research programmes across the sector and between industry and academia.

Virtual Engineering (VE) involves integrated product/process modelling and the creation of virtual prototypes and will form a critical foundation for all future business in the aerospace sector. Major aerospace companies are committed to VE because it provides a cost effective method of presenting future options to the customer and capturing their requirements. Despite this and the associated VE developments, integrated VE tools and techniques have not been successfully implemented across the whole lifecycle and throughout the supply chain, presenting a major barrier to organisations adopting the technology. Professor Gareth Padfield will be the Chief Scientific Officer to the VEC.

www.liv.ac.uk


University of Manchester to lead new £16m Centre for Nuclear Energy Technology
The Centre for Nuclear Energy Technology (C-NET) at the University of Manchester, which is also investing £3.5 million in the scheme, aims to increase the capability of the university sector to collaborate with industry. It will also support industrial Research &Development in the nuclear sector’s reactor technology market through collaborative international research, education and skills development.

Once C-NET has been established, the long-term aim is to secure additional private sector investment to grow the centre to £25 million. An additional £2.61 million will be invested by the private sector with further private sector investment being sought. The establishment of C-NET is conservatively estimated to contribute £20 million to the Northwest economy over 10 years, excluding firm productivity benefits, as well as creating 22 new jobs.

www.manchester.ac.uk

New £4.5 million Geospatial Building opens at University of Nottingham
It is intended to become a world class centre of excellence in global navigation satellite systems. Located in the University’s Innovation Park, close to the Jubilee Campus, the project is a regional beacon in terms of research and training facilities.

The three storey building will be the new home for the University’s Centre for Geospatial Science, the Galileo Research and Applications Centre of Excellence (GRACE) and the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy (IESSG).

The new three-storey centre has been designed by a team of three Nottingham-based firms: Maber Architects, mechanical and electrical consultants D3-Shipway and structural engineers Price & Myers. The project was delivered by cost management consultants, the WT Partnership and Clegg Construction.

The building also carries a computerised Building Management System (BMS) — to ensure energy is used efficiently, passive ventilation and biomass renewable energy.

The bold and innovative design for the building includes a striking zinc clad pavilion, a wedge shaped atrium space and a rooftop laboratory area.

www.nottingham.ac.uk

Oxford institutes become first in UK to buy robotic surgery equipment
The University of Oxford and the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust have acquired the latest technology in robotic surgery, the only one of its kind in the UK.

The new £2 million instrument in the recently opened Oxford Cancer Centre will benefit patients undergoing keyhole surgery to remove certain types of cancer. It will initially be used in some prostate and renal cancer operations, with surgeons aiming to expand its use to bladder and colorectal cancer in the future. A careful training and development programme in the use of the technology is under way for surgeons at the Cancer Centre.

A set of robotic arms, operated by the surgeon sitting at a console positioned away from the patient, is used to carry out minimally invasive surgery with great precision. Patients are known to recover faster from robotic surgery than the equivalent conventional surgery, so there is a significant benefit.

The da Vinci surgical system acquired by the University and Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals is a newly introduced model that is not available anywhere else in the UK. It is unique in having dual consoles to allow an experienced operator to train other surgeons in use of the robot, much like dual control allows driving instructors to aid those learning to drive. It should allow Oxford to become a centre for robotic surgery training in the UK.

Robotic systems are revolutionising the way surgery is carried out, offering astonishing precision,’ said Freddie Hamdy, the Nuffield Professor of Surgery at the University of Oxford. “Patients will be able to benefit from the latest developments in surgery and, with improved recovery times, they should be able to go home sooner as well.”

The system scales down the precise hand movements of the surgeon on the console’s fingertip controls, and transmits them to the robotic arms to give miniaturised movements of the keyhole surgery instruments at the patient. The console also allows the surgeon to see in 3D and at 10-15 times magnification.

www.oxfordradcliffe.nhs.uk/news/newsrecords/0911/091123robot.aspx


Testing start on a device that can ‘sniff out’ the presence of disease
Thanks to a £1.3m award from the Wellcome Trust, OdoReader, developed by Prof Chris Probert from Bristol University and Norman Ratcliffe from the University of the West of England, rapidly diagnoses Clostridium difficile by ‘reading’ the odour of stool samples.

Clostridium difficile may cause severe diarrhoea, especially among hospitalised patients.

With the help of University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, the technology enables gasses emitted from faeces to be analysed in less than an hour, leading to a rapid and inexpensive diagnosis.

In England and Wales there are more than 50,000 cases of Clostridium difficile each year: this infection prolongs hospitalisation, is associated with high morbidity and mortality and costs the NHS £200m annually. The £1.3m Wellcome Trust Translation Award will cover a three-year programme of work starting in January 2010. It will support the development of OdoReader prototypes, which will then be tested against the industry ‘gold standard’ method of making the diagnosis. The final product will undergo a clinical trial before becoming available for commercialisation in 2012/13.

www.setsquaredpartnership.co.uk

ADDITIONAL DATES FOR MARCH 2010
12-14 March 2010 - Race Retro 2010, Stoneleigh Park, Coventry, CV8 2LZ. This is Europe’s Premier Show for historic motorsport, historic racing & historic rallying. The exibition is being held at Stoneleigh Park, Coventry.

www.raceretro.com
12-21 March 2010 - National Science and Engineering Week, venues nationwide. This is a 10-day programme of around 3,500 events running throughout the whole of the UK with the aim of celebrating science, engineering and technology and its importance in our lives. With no restrictions on who can organise events, the topics on which they are focused, the audience or the venue, the resulting programme is a hugely varied and eclectic mix suitable for people of all ages and abilities. Hundreds of thousands of people across the UK take part in National Science and Engineering Week activities every year. For example, the University of Southampton is holding its popular Science & Engineering Day, on Saturday, 13 March, Highfield Campus, 10.30am-4pm.

www.britishscienceassociation.org/nsew - www.southampton.ac.uk/scienceweek
17 March 2010 - InnovateFest Spring 2010, Staffordshire University, Octagon Building,

Beaconside, Stafford, ST18 0AD. 11am-6pm. It aims to attract 250 businesses to InnovateFest Spring 2010 to find out how working with Staffordshire University can help to increase profitability through innovation.

There will be a rolling programme of events, an all-day buffet and presentations and demonstrations in mobile technology, intelligence, information and security systems, energy efficiency, technology in media, medical technologies.

www.staffs.ac.uk/innovatefest - [e-mail] or calling 01785 353 439.

17 March 2010 – 1^st Lady Houston Memorial Lecture and Dinner, with speaker Prof Paul Kennedy CBE, (author and Prof of History, Yale University, USA), at Clare College Cambridge. 7pm. Lady Houston played a pivotal part in the UK’s aerospace industry by helping to fund not only development of the key Supermarine antecedents to the Spitfire but also of the Rolls-Royce engines that powered it. Around 100 VIPs will gather to hear Prof Kennedy talk on the urgent subject of ‘Innovation, Industrial Regeneration and Economic Prosperity’. Few tickets left but no harm in asking.. For more on Lady Houston’s extraordinary life and personality, read her profile at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy,_Lady_Houston

Organiser: Dr Martin Lawrence, Smart Club of the East of England, [e-mail].

18 March 2010 – London Regenerative Medicine Network meeting, the AV Hill Lecture Theatre, Medical Sciences Building, University College London. 6.00 pm. A short walk from Euston Square, Goodge Street and Warren Street Tube Stations and Euston Station.

Speakers: Mr. Hutan Ashrafian - Wellcome Trust Research Fellow + Senior Surgical Trainee, Imperial College London - ‘Auto-bionics – a New Paradigm in Regenerative Medicine and Surgery’; Dr. Anthony Davies - Vice President, Product Development, Geron Corp. Menlo Park, California, USA - ‘Scaling Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Therapeutics Manufacturing’, www.geron.com/technology/stemcell/stemcellprogram.aspx

Dr. Robert Deans - Senior Vice President of Regenerative Medicine, Athersys Inc. Cleveland, Ohio, USA - ‘Adult Adherent Stem Cells in Treatment of Cardiovascular Injury - Development Considerations and Clinical Experience’ - www.athersys.com.

20.15 - 22.00 - LRMN Reception - Network whilst enjoying a glass of wine or two in the Garden Room, Wilkins Building, UCL.

http://lrmn.com/meeting/next - Sponsors: www.cronustechnologies.co.uk - Lawford Davies Denoon

www.lawforddaviesdenoon.com
22 March 2010 – 10^th anniversary party, Meantime Brewery, Discover Greenwich complex at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London. Meantime’s investment in 2010 will be a bar, restaurant and brewery at the new £6.5m Discover Greenwich complex at the Royal Naval College. This is to be opened by Mayor Boris Johnson on March 22nd 2010, to coincide with Meantime’s 10th birthday celebrations.

www.meantimebrewing.com
24 March 2010 – UK Space Conference 2010, Charterhouse School, Godalming, Surrey. The Conference brings together members of the UK space community including: students, young professionals, academics, institutions, organisations and commercial ventures. They are able to take part in lectures, panel discussions, networking opportunities, a careers fair and other events.

Beyond the conventional speakers, debates and discussion sessions, the conference aims to include a wide range of activities, attracting a large population base and inspiring young people to take a greater interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

The Grand Finale of the conference is the Sir Arthur Clarke Gala awards ceremony. The UK Space equivalent of the Oscars, the Arthurs is a ‘black tie’ dinner attended by the elite of the UK Space community will come together to raise money for Sir Arthurs favourite Sri Lankan charity Sarvodya.

The conference provides a unique environment to exchange and develop ideas, concepts and the direction and strategies of future space programmes.

www.ukspaceconference.org
24-26 March 2010 - Australian Oil & Gas Conference, Perth Convention Exhibition Centre, Perth, Australia. The UK sees huge opportunities in Western Australia and the Northern Territory’s oil and gas industry, recently leading a nearly 20-strong trade mission to Darwin and Perth, with another 50-strong contingent due in March. Darwin is the centre of a massive LNG plant that will make it one of the key energy hubs in south east Asia.

www.aogexpo.com.au
22-26 March 2010 – Alimentaria, Fira de Barcelona, Barcelona city, Spain. Alimentaria is one of the world’s leading events for the food and drink industry, and the largest food trade event in Spain. Alimentaria is an important show for producers looking to expand on the world stage, with 4,000 leading food and beverage manufacturers and distributors expected to visit along with 150,000 buyers, and representatives from 155 countries.

www.alimentaria.com/en
30 March 2010 - Collaboration Nation, Business Design Centre, London. The Technology Strategy Board is hosting two groundbreaking showcase events at the end of March in London, under the name Collaboration Nation.

The events will feature the winners of the Autumn 2009 feasibility study competitions showing off their innovative projects, and offer a great opportunity for other innovative companies, investors and potential partners to find out about a wide range of innovations, meet project leaders and network.

The first, on March 30, focuses on ‘technology inspired’ projects in the areas of low carbon and energy, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, data, and measurement. The second, being held the next day, features projects in the digital arena, from online applications and services to the deployment and operation of digital infrastructure.

Over the two days more than 100 small and medium sized companies will present their project findings. The events are open to all but of particular interest to other innovative companies and to potential investors. Early bird tickets - £50 until March 12.

http://digitalbritain.innovateuk.org
31 March 2010 - Collaboration Nation: Inspiring Innovations for a Digital Britain, Congress Centre, 28 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS

http://techinspired.innovateuk.org

AND FINALLY..
Employers running out of time to prepare for new Vetting & Barring Scheme
The government’s controversial new Vetting and Barring Scheme which becomes law in July 2010. Many thousands of organisations and individuals who will have to master the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA)/ Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) scheme time to prepare.

By the time the scheme is fully operational in 2015, over nine million people will have to be registered. Organisations will have to check all their employees and change their employment policies and recruitment practices to avoid committing a host of new crimes. Responsibility now lies with the employer. For the first time if you knowingly or unknowingly employ someone without the proper ISA/CRB checks you will be liable.

The new scheme will create massive managerial time and cost implications for employers and their accreditation agencies. The average employee cost for a ISA/CRBcheck will be £80 generating around £277m by 2015 for the Government scheme.

For the first time if you knowingly or unknowingly employ someone without the proper ISA/CRB checks you will be liable. Some 9 million people or over one third of the UK’s working population will need to register, and leaders of organisations will be criminally liable if they don’t conform to new Act.

There is a potential minefield when the authorities must be notified of a potential risk. Organisations concerned include local authorities and their contractors; nurseries, schools and colleges; hospitals, clinics and surgeries; care and residential homes; dentists and opticians; regulatory bodies; registered and umbrella bodies; HR and safeguarding professionals; nannies, domestic workers and private tutors; contractors to education, health and care providers; juvenile detention centres, specialist lawyers, prison administrators.

Contact: Independent Safeguarding Authority – www.isa-gov.org.uk

Apple’s new gizmo has certainly attracted the critics. The name iPad is just one of several gripes circulating among the tech pundit circuit. Other complaints include lack of camera, lousy virtual keyboard and no killer technology breakthroughs.

First up in Gizmodo’s eight-item roundup of bad iPad features was the one-inch-wide bezel. That’s the black casing around your iPod or iPhone, and according to the gadget blog’s Adam Frucci, “It’s huge! I know you don’t want to accidentally input a command when your thumb is holding it, but come on.”

WriteWeb lamented the lack of a camera, something users expect in a multi-purpose device. The Forbes technology staff thinks a camera would be essential for videoconferencing. The absence of Flash may not seem like a big deal but if Apple wants this to be a serious computing device it is a big drawback
Bloom Energy Corp, one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive startups, unveiled long-awaited ‘power plant in a box’, a collection of fuel cells that the company says can provide clean electricity to homes, office buildings–even whole villages in the developing world.

The Bloom Energy Server, a metal box the size of a pickup truck, can generate electricity from multiple fuels while producing relatively few greenhouse gas emissions. With government subsidies - power from the server costs less than that from the grid.

In 2008 Peter Frykman founded Driptech, his for-profit social venture located in Palo Alto, CA, with a mission to create extremely affordable, water efficient irrigation solutions for small-plot farmers in developing nations.

By devising drip irrigation technology that eliminates the complexity of emitters, Frykman and his team reduced the number of parts for a drip system by over 85%, cut the costs typical of commercial drip irrigation by over 60%, and simultaneously improved reliability and ease of maintenance.

This innovation makes Driptech the first company to design and manufacture drip irrigation specifically for the world’s poorest farmers, allowing them to grow crops year-round while conserving water, labor, and time. Not only can these farmers now finally produce enough vegetables to meet their own families’ nutritional needs, they become micro-entrepreneurs by growing additional crops to sell in local markets, substantially raising their incomes.

www.driptech.com
International fake degree fraud even bigger than the bogus language schools scam exposed by the British press last year, which found thousands of fake ‘language schools and colleges’ acting as ‘visa factories’ to fuel immigration crimes.

The ‘Accredibase Report’ by Eyal Ben Cohen of Verifile Ltd, a background screening firm, is the result of an 18-month research project supported by the East of England Development Agency and Cambridge University into what the authors call degree and accreditation mills – fake universities and colleges which con students out of their money and supply fake degrees that deceive employers into offering jobs, sometimes with alarming or fatal consequences.

Eyal Ben Cohen says: “We have so far identified 1,762 fake institutions, and we are still investigating a further 1,545 currently filed as ‘suspicious’ before publishing them on the online Accredibase database.”

The UK was found to be Europe’s bogus college capital - 60% of Europe’s bogus universities and colleges claim to operate from the UK. Devious fake university owners are clever at disguising themselves, the Report explains. Many establishments such as Blackpool University, for example, use an Ascension Island web domain ‘.ac’ – and this is commonly adopted to cause confusion with the regulated ‘.ac.uk’ domain.

The driving force behind many of the UK ‘visa factories’ exposed and shut down last year continues to live on. For example, ‘Manchester College of Professional Studies’, exposed by the Press as responsible for issuing more than 600 bogus qualifications and closed after a Home Office investigation, was affiliated with ‘Blackpool University’. Blackpool University, which claims to be located in Dublin, is neither recognised as an Irish institution of higher education nor as a body with the power to award its own UK degrees. On its website, Blackpool University now claims to be affiliated with at least 10 other UK colleges.

Multiple ‘fake university businesses’ are often run from one address – The ‘St. Regis University’ network ran as many as 121 phony institutions all from a single office in Spokane, Washington. This allows the scammers to easily shut down one business if the authorities become suspicious, while suffering minimal disruption to the fraud - or to the huge profits being generated.

Official estimates that the fraud is earning those involved more than £60m million every year are supported by the revelation that one degree mill alone (known variously as ‘Kennedy-Western University’ and ‘Warren National University’) was revealed to have banked approximately £16m in only one year of operation.

Fake degrees can make it easier for terrorists to infiltrate facilities by securing them jobs on the inside. The sale of Doctorates can also result in deaths. The BBC exposed one purchaser in the UK who works as a clinical director in a hospital. There could be many more. In 2007 a teenage cancer patient’s death was hastened by the treatment given by a ‘Doctor’ practicing naturopathic medicine. In October of last year, eminent British forensic psychologist, Gene Morrison, was convicted of raping three children. Morrison had earlier received £250,000 for his ‘expert’ services before he was exposed as possessing a fake degree purchased for £130.

www.accredibase.com - verifile.co.uk
END