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The MoD has signed contracts with industry to build the two future aircraft carriers (CVF). The contracts in the region of £3bn, were signed with the newly-formed British shipbuilding company BVT Surface Fleet and the Aircraft Carrier Alliance onboard HMS Ark Royal. Glasgow-based Thales secured £425m for design and engineering; BVT Surface Fleet secured £1.325m for construction of both ships at Govan and Portsmouth; Babcock Marine taking £675m for bow section and final assembly at Rosyth; BAE System has £300m for construction at Barrow-in-Furness yards and BAE Systems INSYTE has £275m for design and supply of mission systems.

The joint conferences Electro Magnetic Remote Sensing and Systems Engineering for Autonomous Systems in Edinburgh last week, show the Ministry of Defence to be committed to fostering new technologies for the changing battle frontline and to accordingly is to set up a new Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE). The brand new, shiny Centre, situated at Harwell, logistically in the Oxford-London-Cambridge Golden Triangle will bring together inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and academics who will incubate new technologies and turn ideas to cutting edge reality, fostering new technologies for the front line. It even has its own in-house journal, Defence Codex, Issue 1 Summer 2008.

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Hot on the heels of The Ministry of Defence publishing Sir Edmund Burton's report into the lost laptops of January 2008, containing the personal details of individuals who expressed interest in joining the Armed Forces, comes news that a senior hospital manager has been suspended after a laptop containing unencrypted personal data of more than 20,000 patients was stole from the NHS staff member's car in an Edinburgh carpark. And in Edinburgh, another furore as a USB memory stick has gone missing also with confidential NHS patient information.

One day after Azzuri launched its Azzurri Communications today launches Instant Retailer, an innovative new service that uses the 3G mobile network to deliver on-demand voice, data, fax and Internet connectivity wherever and whenever it is required, Martin McColl Ltd, claimed as the country’s largest chain of convenience and newsagent stores, has entered into a 5-year fully managed service agreement with East Kilbride based Azzurri and will adopt Azzurri’s Retail Application Network (RAN) across its 1300 stores including 160 stores throughout Scotland.

Margaret Clarke has been promoted from acting principal to the new principal of Hamilton College. Prior to joining in August 2006 she held several education sector senior posts. A mathematics teacherin Dundee in 1978, she subsequently added a teaching qualification in computing to her CV in 1983. Over the next 20 years, she was involved in developing new material and courses with the Scottish CCC, Scottish Examinations Board, and latterly with the SQA.

Ardana, the Edinburgh pharmaceutical firm, has placed itself in administration.The company, which focuses on treatments for human reproductive conditions, in February, calling for interested parties to buy it or merge to provide the cash to develop its portfolio. It has been in discussions with a number of parties about licensing tie-ups but had concluded those deals could not be completed before its cash reserves had been exhausted.

Diary

Most employees do not understand business continuity, or whether their firm has such a plan, according to new research.Carried out by BT, the study found that three-quarters of staff do not know if their firm has a plan, or what it involves. For them, the British Standard Institute 3rd annual Business Continuity Management on day conference is being held 18 months on from the publication of the first British Standard on Business Continuity: BS 25999-1.

The precise control over chemical transformations, both in terms of ‘tuning’ reaction products and allowing site specific chemical control is the subject of one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of modern science - introducing the potential for the creation of new materials and the development of new technologies with dramatic implications for advances in such fields as nanotechnology, quantum electronics and biophysics. Related research is driven by the emergence of new experimental tools and techniques (e.g. ultrafast lasers, electron induced processing and scanning tunnelling microscopes) each of which may provide control of chemical reactions with high selectivity. The first method uses laser pulses with a duration of a few femtoseconds, the timescale on which the atoms in a molecule move, to manipulate molecular wavepackets and control dissociation pathways; the second uses very low energy electrons to dissociate the molecular target at well defined reaction sites while the third methodology uses scanning tunnelling microscopes to manipulate single molecules absorbed on surfaces. Together these three techniques offer the unique ability to select and ‘tune’ chemical pathways allowing us unprecented control over chemical reactions.

This conference will bring together leading experts from the fields of electron-, laser-, and plasma-driven chemical processing. Despite their common goals and synergies between the different approaches (e.g in understanding molecular dissociation dynamics and fragmentation patterns) this is the first time in any international research forum that the different communities exploring routes to chemical control will be brought together at a single dedicated research conference. The aim of this meeting is therefore to (i) promote the awareness of a common research basis and (ii) to discuss new opportunities and directions such as facile processes for surface functionalization and nanostructuring that may be developed through collaboration between the different communities. This will include not only research on fundamental aspects of molecular fragmentation and chemical control but also highlight the applications in the areas of surface, material science and the ability to extend such knowledge to the study of biomolecular systems (e.g. in development of DNA as a functional engineering material).

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Feature Articles

Anyone curious to know of developments in the remote sensors or engineering systems for autonomous vehicles simply has to visit the joint EMRS & SEAS conference held in Edinburgh. At least 500 people were sufficiently involved to attend an event that requires of visitors sufficient disruptive technology to create doppelgangers for being at two desired deliveries simultaneously. SEAS breaks into three parallel sessions on sensor exploitation and communications, mission planning and decision making and algorithms, architectures, propulsion, power and energy management themes, EMRS contents itself with two parallels sessions on RF and EO

Scottish companies are missing out on huge savings in mailing costs due to their failure to take advantage of deregulation of the UK postal market says Gary Sweeney, MD of Altus, a leading independent postal estate management company. Lack of awareness means that many businesses are failing to cash in on potential savings as a result of deregulation introduced by government more than two years ago.

Back in 2001 London's National Portrait Gallery unveiled its first entirely conceptual portrait - a "DNA image" of the leading genetic scientist Sir John Sulston by artist Mark Quinn. Now seven years later US based DNA 11, focused on DNA art announce that they have created the GenePak that allows customers to identify specific genetic traits in their custom DNA-portraits.

Thanks to the web, a Glasgow piping centre acquires new pupils, with mobile cams being the next likely move, while the computer is behind the bendy pipes and is part of the piper robot in the US. On an accompanying tartan front, the computer lurks in the design for Scottish Highlands and Islands Film Commission new tartan.

Business & Markets

One day after Azzuri launched its Azzurri Communications today launches Instant Retailer, an innovative new service that uses the 3G mobile network to deliver on-demand voice, data, fax and Internet connectivity wherever and whenever it is required, Martin McColl Ltd, claimed as the country’s largest chain of convenience and newsagent stores, has entered into a 5-year fully managed service agreement with East Kilbride based Azzurri and will adopt Azzurri’s Retail Application Network (RAN) across its 1300 stores including 160 stores throughout Scotland.

Hardware

Geberlunzie, struggling with 4-pin bank security numbers (at least two that keep getting used for the wrong card) phone banking security numbers (another couple) to say nothing of email passwords (alpha-numeric) about three, was rather less than thrilled to fall into the comfort of the local Edinburgh library and discover the bar code plastic library card is now scanned and needs another memorable pin!

IBM plans to build the world's largest "noise free" nanoelectronic fabrication facilities in Switzerland. By shielding equipment from external electromagnetic, thermal, and seismic noise, the new facilities should help advance research in a wide range of fields, such as spintronics, carbon-based devices, and nanophotonics.

Software

Using an adaptation of a computer program developed to calculate lung densities in people with emphysema, with a medical scanner, researchers have been able to analyse the physical properties of violins without risking damage to instruments worth millions of dollars. Their findings as to why a Stradivarius violin sounds so good is now attributed of the remarkably even density of their wood.

IT services provider Alchemy Plus, is using DataCore's SANmelody software to provide a hosted server virtualisation farm environment for small businesses, und a 'pay as you use' utility computing frameworks. The Alchemy data center is located in Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands. David Massey, CTO at Alchemy Plus, said, “We wanted to bring the power and efficiencies of virtualisation to smaller organisations that typically were only running a single server or a couple of servers at most. We knew in order to succeed that we would have to develop a model that was as cost effective as it was functionality rich, using the principles of utility computing – a concept where the customer only pays for what is used.”

Plexus Systems, provider of Plexus Online on-demand software for the manufacturing enterprise, announces the availability of fully integrated Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) functionality. Manufacturers access comprehensive and integrated PLM capabilities in the Plexus Online Software as a Service (SaaS)

Dr Bernd Fischer at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has received £300,000 funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop systematic techniques and supporting tools that will allow application developers to customise automatically generated code efficiently and reliably without needing to modify either the code generator or the generated code, improving the safety and usability of automatically generated software code commonly used in the space and automotive industries.

BT has joined forces with Retalix Ltd to launch a range of products and services which will meet the entire in-store technology requirements of food and convenience retailers in the U.K. The co-operation agreement brings together Retalix's industry-established store technology platform with BT's team of retail experts, with a track record of delivering successful store infrastructure implementations across a variety of retail store types. Combined with its communications and network capabilities IT, BT will be able to offer a new end-to-end grocery solution to the UK marketplace.

Server/Data Storage

IT services provider Alchemy Plus, is using DataCore's SANmelody software to provide a hosted server virtualisation farm environment for small businesses, und a 'pay as you use' utility computing frameworks. The Alchemy data center is located in Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands. David Massey, CTO at Alchemy Plus, said, “We wanted to bring the power and efficiencies of virtualisation to smaller organisations that typically were only running a single server or a couple of servers at most. We knew in order to succeed that we would have to develop a model that was as cost effective as it was functionality rich, using the principles of utility computing – a concept where the customer only pays for what is used.”

Networking/Community

One day after Azzuri launched its Azzurri Communications today launches Instant Retailer, an innovative new service that uses the 3G mobile network to deliver on-demand voice, data, fax and Internet connectivity wherever and whenever it is required, Martin McColl Ltd, claimed as the country’s largest chain of convenience and newsagent stores, has entered into a 5-year fully managed service agreement with East Kilbride based Azzurri and will adopt Azzurri’s Retail Application Network (RAN) across its 1300 stores including 160 stores throughout Scotland.

Raytheon Company demonstrated the potential to employ a UK adaptation of the US-deployed Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) to provide a more accurate, timely understanding of an adversary and their actions. The demonstration took place during the 2008 Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration in Portsmouth, U.K. The Raytheon team used key technologies, including DCGS and the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), to integrate existing applications, data bases and shared services from diverse intelligence suppliers and users providing UK forces with network-enabled solutions.

Services

Gaberlunzie was delighted to discover that a cartoon for programmers exists in the US, and in his ignorance wonders why this has never developed in the UK. This was an article in the New York Times, slightly shortened. For a certain subset of Internet users, “Sudo make me a sandwich” may as well be “Take my wife ... please.” Perhaps some explanation is in order. Before giving up the goods, however, we should heed the warning of Randall Munroe, the 23-year-old creator of xkcd, a hugely popular online comic strip (at least among computer programmers) where the sandwich line appeared. Mr. Munroe believes that analysing a joke is like dissecting a frog — it can be done, but the frog dies.

Hot on the heels of The Ministry of Defence publishing Sir Edmund Burton's report into the lost laptops of January 2008, containing the personal details of individuals who expressed interest in joining the Armed Forces, comes news that a senior hospital manager has been suspended after a laptop containing unencrypted personal data of more than 20,000 patients was stole from the NHS staff member's car in an Edinburgh carpark. And in Edinburgh, another furore as a USB memory stick has gone missing also with confidential NHS patient information.

One day after Azzuri launched its Azzurri Communications today launches Instant Retailer, an innovative new service that uses the 3G mobile network to deliver on-demand voice, data, fax and Internet connectivity wherever and whenever it is required, Martin McColl Ltd, claimed as the country’s largest chain of convenience and newsagent stores, has entered into a 5-year fully managed service agreement with East Kilbride based Azzurri and will adopt Azzurri’s Retail Application Network (RAN) across its 1300 stores including 160 stores throughout Scotland.

Margaret Clarke has been promoted from acting principal to the new principal of Hamilton College. Prior to joining in August 2006 she held several education sector senior posts. A mathematics teacherin Dundee in 1978, she subsequently added a teaching qualification in computing to her CV in 1983. Over the next 20 years, she was involved in developing new material and courses with the Scottish CCC, Scottish Examinations Board, and latterly with the SQA.

Geberlunzie, struggling with 4-pin bank security numbers (at least two that keep getting used for the wrong card) phone banking security numbers (another couple) to say nothing of email passwords (alpha-numeric) about three, was rather less than thrilled to fall into the comfort of the local Edinburgh library and discover the bar code plastic library card is now scanned and needs another memorable pin!

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