Sunday, December 25th, 2011
Mapping of utilities, a tool to identify gaps in civic amenities, may soon cover more areas in major cities, including Chennai, with the National Informatics Centre planning to suggest measures for suitable modifications to the Ministry of Defence guidelines on digital map data handling. This follows an appeal to this effect to the NIC from officials
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
A Chinese company has bought a majority share in a Tasmanian wind farm. The deal, worth more than $88 million, saw Hydro Tasmania sell 75 percent of its stake in the Woolnorth Wind Farm to Chinese company Guohua Energy Investment. Read More
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
Det Norske Veritas (DNV) made its name in the 1800s as a ship inspector in Norway. This year it entered a more 21st-century sector: checking if bonds that call themselves green are really all that environmentally-friendly. The National spoke to Noel Peters, DNV’s manager of climate change and environmental services in Oceania. Read More
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
Russia’s recent poor launch record has continued with yet another Soyuz rocket failure. This time, a Soyuz-2 vehicle failed to put a communications satellite into orbit after lifting away from the country’s Plesetsk spaceport. Debris is said to have re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere near the western Siberian town of Tobolsk. Read More
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
Industrial challenges surround the development of new homes in Bradford South East. The total number of sites identified is 66 covering 107 hectares making up ten per cent of the new homes need-ed throughout the district. Read More
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
This year, the world’s largest agriculture research for development partnership, the CGIAR, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Carlos Pérez del Castillo, the CGIAR’s Consortium Board Chair, looks at the alliance’s history and achievements to illustrate the role of agricultural research in helping feed the world. Read More
Saturday, December 24th, 2011
The idea of creating your own plastic objects using a 3D printer is very cool. Imagine, for example, being able to print Christmas gifts at home. Looking for a special toy? No need to visit the toy store when you can download that race car design file from a library of toys on the Internet
Saturday, December 24th, 2011
For the first time in Europe a commercial scheduled airline is using an EGNOS based LPV procedure for landing. From December 21, the Trislander aircraft operated by Aurigny Air Services, a regional airline operating connection flights between the Channel Islands and the UK and France can use EGNOS when approaching the runways. This is possible after the
Saturday, December 24th, 2011
Some of the salient features of Indian agriculture include fragmented landholding; rain-fed cultivation (irrigated farming is about 40 per cent); low level of input usage (seeds, fertilisers, agro-chemicals); varied agro-climatic conditions; antiquated agronomic practices; poor pre- and post-harvest technology adoption; inadequate marketing infrastructure; low yields and, often, unrealistic prices; and tardy flow of price and
Saturday, December 24th, 2011
During the past decades the main problem in geographical analysis was the lack of spatial data availability. Nowadays the wide diffusion of electronic devices containing geo-referenced information generates a great production of spatial data. Volunteered geographic information activities (e.g. Wikimapia, OpenStreetMap), public initiatives (e.g. Spatial Data Infrastructures, Geo-portals) and private projects (e.g. Google Earth, Microsoft
