Standard Chartered bosses give up bank bonuses
Hong Kong, China (AFP) March 4, 2015 -
Bosses at Standard Chartered have given up their bonuses after profits at the Asia-focused bank fell by more than a third last year.
Standard Chartered, which last week said chief executive Peter Sands would step down in June followed by chairman John Peace next year amid various troubles at the bank, saw net profit slide 37 percent in 2014, the second consecutive year of decline.
The Br ...
more
First scientific publication from data collected at NSLS-II
Upton NY (SPX) Mar 05, 2015 -
Just weeks after the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory, achieved first light, a team of scientists at the X-Ray Powder Diffraction (XPD) beamline tested a setup that yielded data on thermoelectric materials.
The work was part of the commissioning activities for the XPD beamline, a pr ...
more
Understanding electric car 'range anxiety' could be key to wider acceptance
Washington DC (SPX) Mar 05, 2015 -
Manufacturers of battery electric vehicles, or BEVs, have increased their offerings in response to rising consumer concerns over gas prices and the environment. Drivers have been slow to adopt BEVs due to "range anxiety," the fear of becoming stranded with an empty battery. This phenomenon was recently addressed in a study published in Human Factors that aims to explain range anxiety and determi ...
more
Breakthrough in particle control creates special half-vortex rotation
Glasgow, UK (SPX) Mar 05, 2015 -
A breakthrough in the control of a type of particle known as the polariton has created a highly specialised form of rotation.
Researchers at the Universities of Strathclyde and Pittsburgh, and Princeton University, conducted a test in which they were able to arrange the particles into a 'ring geometry' form in a solid-state environment. The result was a half-vortex in a 'quantised rotation ...
more
Lithium from the coal in China
Handan, China (SPX) Feb 27, 2015 -
Coal from China could become a major source of the metal lithium, according to a review of the geochemistry by scientists published in the International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology.
Lithium is an essential component of rechargeable batteries used almost ubiquitously in mobile gadgets such as phones, laptops, tablet computers and in many electric vehicles. Worldwide annual consu ...
more
British nuclear site clean-up costs soar
London (AFP) March 4, 2015 -
The cost of decommissioning and cleaning up Britain's Sellafield nuclear site have been revised upwards to Pounds 53 billion ($81 billion, 73 billion euros), the National Audit Office said.
The cost has gone up by Pounds 5 billion and work at the site on the northwest English coast is taking much longer than planned, the NAO said in a report.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which owns Sellafi ...
more
Robot acquires chef skills via YouTube instructional vids
College Park, Md. (UPI) Jan 30, 2015 -
The Internet is filled with useless info, but buried in the rubble are nuggets of information - whole instructional videos, in fact. Building off of previous artificial intelligence work, scientists have engineered a robot capable of acquiring and demonstrating cooking skills learned by watching YouTube videos.
Computer engineers have previously constructed processing systems capable o ...
more
