Petronas watching Canadian LNG debate unfold
Vancouver, British Columbia (UPI) Oct 7, 2014 -
Malaysian energy company Petronas said Tuesday it may have to suspend plans to develop a Canadian liquefied natural gas project because of fiscal uncertainty.
Members of the government in British Columbia are debating tax and regulatory policies on planned West Coast LNG projects. Petronas said it was encouraged by support thus far from legislatures in the province for the company's Pac ...
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Serbia: South Stream a matter between Russia and Brussels
Moscow (UPI) Oct 7, 2014 -
Matters governing the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline from Russia should be settled between the Kremlin and Brussels, a Serbian diplomat said.
Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic arrived Tuesday in Moscow for a bilateral trade summit. Serbia would play host to a section of the South Stream pipeline and the diplomat said preparatory work for the project was proceeding as p ...
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Enbridge offers oil pipeline assurances to Michigan
Lansing, Mich. (UPI) Oct 7, 2014 -
Michigan authorities said Canadian pipeline company Enbridge offered assurances two oil pipelines running under the Mackinac Straits are secured.
Line 5 of the Lakehead pipeline system splits into two 20-inch pipelines that carry the heavier grade of crude oil beneath the straits separating the Upper and Lower Michigan Peninsulas. They were installed in 1953.
Since an oil spill f ...
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Kiev says fair price for gas necessary
Kiev, Ukraine (UPI) Oct 7, 2014 -
Ukraine is ready to find a mutually acceptable solution to ensure the reliable transit of Russian natural gas, the country's prime minister said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk met in Kiev with visiting Victoria Nuland, a U.S. State Department official in charge of regional affairs. Yatsenyuk's office said "special attention" was paid to challenges of European energy securit ...
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IMF keeps China growth forecast at 7.4%, warns of 'near-term risks'
Beijing (AFP) Oct 07, 2014 -
The International Monetary Fund left its forecast for China's economic growth this year unchanged at 7.4 percent Tuesday but warned the world's second-largest economy faces a range of "near-term growth risks", especially in real estate.
GDP growth will slow further to 7.1 percent next year, the IMF said in its latest World Economic Outlook report, citing a probable tightening of credit and o ...
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Cairn announces major oil find offshore Senegal
Edinburgh, Scotland (UPI) Oct 7, 2014 -
Energy companies working off the coast of Senegal announced Tuesday a significant discovery of oil, with at least 250 million barrels in place.
Cairn Energy and its consortium partners announced the discovery in the deep waters located about 60 miles off the coast of Senegal.
"We have encountered a very substantial oil bearing interval which may have significant potential as a st ...
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Canada will miss 2020 target to cut carbon emissions
Ottawa (AFP) Oct 07, 2014 -
Canada will fail to reach its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, the environment commissioner said Tuesday.
Ottawa had vowed to reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels - matching the United States's target in a concerted continental approach to climate mitigation.
But Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand, an independent parliamentary officer, said in a ...
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Nokia suspends production at Indian handset factory
Helsinki (AFP) Oct 07, 2014 -
Finnish telecom equipment group Nokia said Tuesday it was halting production in its Indian factory near Chennai and that a dispute with local tax authorities was hindering finding a buyer for the facility that employs 7,000 workers.
The manufacturing facility, located in the southeastern city of Sriperumbudur, was not included in the sale of the Nokia handset division to US giant Microsoft, ...
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LED light earns physics Nobel for Japanese-born trio
Stockholm Oct 07, 2014 -
Three scientists from Japan won the Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for pioneering energy-efficient LED lighting, a weapon against global warming and poverty.
The trio are Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura, who has since become a US national.
"This year's Nobel Laureates are rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source - the ...
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LEDs: A light-bulb moment that is changing the world
Paris (AFP) Oct 07, 2014 -
Just over 20 years ago, three physicists working in two laboratories in Japan cracked a problem that had stumped rivals for decades - how to prise blue light from a semi-conductor.
The feat paved the way to a low-energy source of light for illuminating homes, buildings, computers and mobile phones.
On Tuesday, it earned Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura the 2014 Nobel Phys ...
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Thermotolerant yeast can provide more climate-smart ethanol
Gothenburg, Sweden (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
With a simple mutation, yeast can grow in higher than normal temperatures. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology demonstrate this in an article to be published in the scientific journal Science. The findings may result in ethanol being more effectively manufactured for vehicle fuel, as well as increase the possibility of using residual waste as a raw material.
If industrial yeas ...
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Kyocera, IBM and Tokyu Community Test ADR Energy Management Systems
Kyoto, Japan (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
Kyocera, IBM Japan, Tokyu Communitywill start a demonstration test of an automatic demand response (ADR) network this October. ADR is a mechanism that automatically optimizes the balance between supply and demand of electric power to ensure a stable supply.
This test adopts the OpenADR 2.0 Profile b international standard and is Japan's first demonstration test that will automatically exec ...
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Pressing the accelerator on quantum robotics
Madrid, Spain (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
Quantum computing will allow for the creation of powerful computers, but also much smarter and more creative robots than conventional ones. This was the conclusion arrived at by researchers from Spain and Austria, who have confirmed that quantum tools help robots learn and respond much faster to the stimuli around them.
Quantum mechanics has revolutionised the world of communications and c ...
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Paper-thin and touch-sensitive displays on various materials
Saarbrucken, Germany (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
Until now, if you want to print a greeting card for a loved one, you can use colorful graphics, fancy typefaces or special paper to enhance it. But what if you could integrate paper-thin displays into the cards, which could be printed at home and which would be able to depict self-created symbols or even react to touch? Those only some of the options computer scientists in Saarbrucken can offer. ...
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A Quick Look at Electron-Boson Coupling
Berkeley CA (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
Imagine being able to tune the properties of a solid material just by flashing pulses of light on it, for example turning an insulator into a superconductor. That is just one potential payoff down-the-road from the physical phenomenon of electrons and atoms interacting with ultrashort pulses of light.
The technology of ultrafast spectroscopy is a key to understanding this phenomenon and no ...
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Metallized Carbon Corporation Announces Silver Metcar Material
Ossining NY (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
Metallized Carbon has announced that it produces Silver Metcar, a silver impregnated, carbon-graphite material useful for electrical applications that require low resistance, low voltage drop, and low electrical noise.
The material is ideal for DC motor brushes, non-welding electrical contacts, and rotary slip ring brushes or contacts in air traffic control radars, telecommunications syste ...
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Researchers Pump Up Oil Accumulation in Plant Leaves
Upton NY (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
Increasing the oil content of plant biomass could help fulfill the nation's increasing demand for renewable energy feedstocks. But many of the details of how plant leaves make and break down oils have remained a mystery. Now a series of detailed genetic studies conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and published in The Plant Cell reveals previously unk ...
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A new liquid phase 3D printing method using low melting metal alloy ink
Beijing (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
Three-dimensional metal printing technology is an expanding field that has enormous potential applications in areas ranging from supporting structures, functional electronics to medical devices. Conventional 3D metal printing is generally restricted to metals with a high melting point, and the process is rather time consuming.
Now scientists at the Beijing Key Laboratory of CryoBiomedical ...
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New technique may enable silicon detectors for telecommunications
Southampton, UK (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
A team of researchers led by the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) has demonstrated a breakthrough technique that offers the first tantalizing possibility of silicon detectors for telecommunications.
For decades silicon has been the workhorse of the microelectronics revolution and, owing to its excellent optical properties in the near- and mid-infrared range, is now promising to have a ...
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Fundamentals of physics confirmed
Darmstadt, Germany (SPX) Oct 08, 2014 -
To explore any possible limits of the two theories, they have been experimentally verified many times already and both have passed all the tests so far. Hence, scientists look for deviations in experiments with increasing precision or under extreme conditions.
For this purpose, Nortershauser's team has now accelerated ions to velocities near the speed of light and illuminated them with a l ...
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