Posts tagged: news

EU">Sweden most competitive nation in the EU

The World Eco­nomic Forum (WEF) has just released its 2010 Lis­bon Review. Accord­ing to this report, Swe­den is the most com­pet­i­tive nation in the EU [SvD]. Accord­ing to the WEF press release, Swe­den is “the most com­pet­i­tive econ­omy as mea­sured by the Euro­pean Union’s (EU) own com­pe­ti­tion bench­mark, the Lis­bon cri­te­ria”. As I under­stand it, […]

Sunday May 9th, 2010 in , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Is Greece the beginning of a larger European crisis?

I’m read­ing that Nobel lau­re­ate Paul Krug­man pre­dicts that Greece will have to leave the Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union (EMU) and aban­don the euro. Going to the source, I found that this piece of news ori­gins from a post on Krugman’s own blog. Greece aban­don­ing the euro would rock the very foun­da­tions of the EMU and […]

Friday May 7th, 2010 in , , , | 1 Comment »

Ash cloud over Europe

The above dis­per­sion map, which is a sim­u­la­tion, shows that the ash cloud from the Eyjaf­jal­la­jökull vol­cano is likely to remain over Europe for at least another cou­ple of days. As seen in the pic­ture, the cloud is expected to widen and remain over parts of Scan­di­navia and cen­tral Europe as of Sun­day 06h00 GMT+1. Swedish […]

Friday April 16th, 2010 in , , , | 1 Comment »

We said “Send cash”, not ash…; How will extended flight stop influence society?

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to think of the con­se­quences if the ash cloud from the erup­tion of Ice­landic vol­cano Eyjaf­jal­la­jökull con­tin­ues to shadow Europe for a longer period of time. The above pic­ture shows how the ash cloud, clearly vis­i­ble, stretches from Ice­land across the Atlantic beyond the Faroe islands and Shet­land islands towards cen­tral Europe. Currently, […]

Thursday April 15th, 2010 in , , , | No Comments »

Batteries of seaweed

Imag­ine an e–book con­sist­ing only of a paper bat­tery with elec­tronic ink and cir­cuits printed directly on the bat­tery. Sounds inter­est­ing? This may become real­ity with a newly invented bat­tery. Read on. Algal–blooms have been a major prob­lem in the Baltic sea over the last decade or so. Causes are attrib­uted to be global warm­ing, excess […]

Wednesday March 24th, 2010 in , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Will Volvo Cars go to China?

The Chi­nese are every­where these days. Until now I’ve made no com­ment about Ford’s plans to sell Volvo Cars. But after my recent post on Chi­nese rail­roads, it feels timely to make a remark on the pos­si­bil­ity that Ford sells Volvo Cars to Chi­nese Geely. I wrote a cou­ple of posts (here, here, and here) […]

Saturday March 20th, 2010 in , , , | No Comments »

Polluting ships prevent global warming

The Inter­na­tional mar­itime organ­i­sa­tion (IMO) is about to ban the high sul­phur con­tent fuel burned by most of the world’s ships today. Accord­ing to New Sci­en­tist this will reduce sul­phur diox­ide (SO2) emis­sions will by as much as 90 per­cent, and with them the result­ing haze of sul­phate particles.

Thursday March 18th, 2010 in , , , , , , | No Comments »

China to connect Asia and Europe with high–speed trains

China is plan­ning to con­nect Asia and Europe with high–speed trains. If realised, an 8000km trip Lon­don to Bei­jing will take 48 hours. Report­edly (SvD, DN, NyT, Inhab­i­tat), three lines are planned: Beijing–London, Kunming–Singapore, and Delhi–Astana (cap­i­tal of Kaza­khstan). It appears that Chi­nese author­i­ties will spare no resources to make their con­try reclaim the name […]

Wednesday March 17th, 2010 in , , , , , , | No Comments »

Hard times ahead for Swedish universities

Accord­ing to an arti­cle in yesterday’s Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish board for study sup­port, CSN, expect a steep down­turn in the num­ber of uni­ver­sity stu­dents some­time in the years 2012 to 2013. Many Swedish uni­ver­si­ties have had a soar­ing num­ber of appli­cants over the last two years. This is in stark con­trast to the sit­u­a­tion only […]

Saturday March 6th, 2010 in , , , | No Comments »

More on the travelling wave reactor

As I wrote in a pre­vi­ous post, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is invest­ing in research on, and devel­op­ment of, the so–called trav­el­ling wave reac­tor. Accord­ing to an arti­cle pub­lished by Ny Teknik today, Ter­rapower, the devel­op­ment com­pany owned by Gates, is plan­ning reac­tors in dif­fer­ent sizes rang­ing from 0.1 GW to sev­eral GW. How­ever, we’ll have […]

Tuesday March 2nd, 2010 in , , , , | 1 Comment »