EU launches Innovation Fund
The European Commission announced a new €1 billion fund for clean technology implementation on Friday 3rd July 2020. The Innovation Fund as it is known will fund mainly implementation of large capital projects but there is also €8 million set aside for project development. Development projects represent technologies that are not yet ready for implementation […]
UK business support
As we all get back to a new normal, the UK government has announced innovation funding support to help us make it a better normal. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships are projects of around £110k, with SMEs contributing around £35k and larger businesses £55k. These are particularly useful when you want to add a competitive advantage to […]
Physicists beat the lock-down
Imagine: you are expecting more than 1,000 colleagues to travel thousands of miles to attend your conference but suddenly travel becomes impossible. What to do? This was the problem facing organisers of the April 2020 meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) when COVID-19 was officially designated a global pandemic one month before the conference […]
Birds of a feather
Academics love nothing better than a good conference. A chance to meet up with old friends, hear the latest gossip and tell anyone who will listen something they know that nobody else does. Of course it is just a coincidence that conferences on a Greek island or on the Turkish coast in early summer are […]
Should I stay or should I go now?
Stick or twist? stay or go? whichever we decide, it pays to have a plan. Faced with the attraction of long summer days to bring up the family and the dangers of a long flight, it’s not surprising that some American crows choose to migrate north while others stay put. A scientific study into the […]
Brave as well as bright
Life is ‘nasty, brutish and short’ or so said Thomas Hobbes, a poet and philosopher in 1651. Nature is full of wonders but it’s true that for some, life is indeed brutish and short. For the young, the weak and the inexperienced, nature has its dangers. Many species of bird will fight bill and claw […]
Something to crow about
It’s been known for a long time that birds of the crow family are clever innovators. Now The Times newspaper has reported the recent publication (6th February) of a scientific study revealing just how discerning they are. We have all tried to open lids with our house keys (usually bending them) or turn a slotted […]