Researchers at the University of Toronto have invented a flexible plastic solar cell that is said to be five times more efficient than current methods in converting energy from the sun into electrical energy. Team leader Ted Sargent, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the university, said the cell harnesses infrared light from [...]
Oil output by the world’s number three exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia fell to 2.58 million bpd in December from 2.77 million in November, hit by closure of the 205,000 bpd Snorre and Vigdis fields after a gas leak on Nov. 28. The state-run directorate said that Norway’s total output of oil, gas and [...]
The survey, by Russian, British and Norwegian researchers, showed that bear numbers in the region were at the bottom of previous rough estimates of 3,000-5,000. Still, "a stock of 3,000 animals is relatively large in biological terms," the Norwegian Environment Ministry said in a statement. The total is about 12 percent of an estimated global [...]
Russia has been in the grip of a demographic crisis since before the fall of the Soviet Union, as economic collapse cut the birth rate and rampant smoking, drinking and growing levels of disease have pushed up mortality. "Forecasts show that by the middle of the 21st century the population will fall by around one [...]
Biodiesel has been gaining in popularity elsewhere in Europe for up to a decade but is only now beginning to make an impact in Britain. "I believe we’re in the right place at the right time," Sean Sutcliffe, the firm’s newly-appointed chief executive told Reuters by telephone. "Our top priority is to get our new [...]
The EU scraps trawlers every year, but instead of destroying the boats European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said they could be given to the coastal Indian Ocean states ravaged by the Dec. 26 wave, which wiped out the fishing industry. "We have all seen pictures of boats wrecked by the tsunami and our own [...]
"Our products have been sold out for 2005. We are now writing contracts for 2006," Frank Asbeck, 46, told Reuters in an interview at his office in the former capital of Germany. SolarWorld and local rivals such as Q Cells and Conergy have benefited from Germany’s renewable energy law that guarantees above-market prices for solar [...]
The normally ferocious Russian winter, the bane of invaders from Napoleon to Hitler, has been unusually mild this year with temperatures hitting record seasonal highs. "For a second day we are organising extra observation of a female black bear, which has woken up because of the warmth," a spokesman for the zoo in Russia’s second- [...]
Researchers from Vector, the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk, showed in an unpublished study that children in areas of Siberia where the fuel is sprayed during take-off suffer serious health problems. "The level of some diseases such as endocrine and blood disorders in polluted areas is more than twice the regional [...]
In Northern Ireland’s second city, Londonderry, a man was killed when the vehicle he was driving was blown off a bridge and plunged 100 ft (30 metres) onto a riverbank. A second driver was killed in eastern Scotland when a lorry rolled onto his car. The storm, one of the strongest to hit northern Britain [...]
