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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.

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.

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.

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.

Pyrrho is a compact and efficient relational database management system for the .NET framework. It supports the SQL2003 standard including advanced OLAP functions, and the free edition works for database files up to 8MB in size. The server has a 500KB footprint, so will run successfully on .NET enabled PDAs and mobile phones. Despite its small size it is scalable and efficient. It has been tested on high-volume scenarios, where it significantly outperforms existing commercial products, and the DataCenter edition is designed for supercomputing clusters.

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.

A construction surge in transoceanic cable is under way. The new cables will connect the world more closely than ever, add far more bandwidth, and provide enough redundancy for data signals to survive accidents and outages. At present, the transoceanic information system has enough capacity, but that could soon change, and the system has some physical vulnerabilities. In January, an anchor tore two cables linking Europe and Egypt, causing massive outages.

I had no idea what was going on, Murray was reported as saying later. He had slammed the ball down the middle of the court, and started to moved towards the net. Malissehad raised his hand. Malisse wanted to challenge the call with the Hawk-Eye ball-tracking system. Umpire Lars Graff thought that he was indicating that he had not been ready to receive. Graff did not react. Malisse sat on his racket thinking there was a gremlin in the Hawk-Eye computer, and Murray carried on being applauded.

Venture capital firm 3i today says it has not scaled back its investments in Scotland in the first half of the year and predicted a strong deal pipeline for the coming months. In the six months to the end of September, 3i Scotland invested a total of £43 million north of the Border, unchanged from the same period last year, although at 12 the number of deals was slightly lower.

"As part of the [IMF] assessment," German newspaper Der Spiegel said, "the US Federal Reserve Bank, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds will be asked to hand over confidential documents to the IMF team. They will be required to answer the questions they are asked during interviews. Their databases will be subjected to so-called stress tests — worst-case scenarios designed to simulate the broader effects of failures of other major financial institutions or a continuing decline of the dollar."

Gartner Inc has reported that worldwide silicon wafer revenue has expanded from .2bn to .5bn, a 22.5% increase from 2006 to 2007. Takashi Ogawa, research VP for Gartner's Semiconductor Manufacturing Research Group, said that the increase was due to two factors: first, the continued rise in demand for 300mm wafers, which commanded a price premium; second, the general benefit of high wafer prices, partly caused by a shortage of polysilico

Whalsay Island is to be without its main ferry for the next two or three weeks after its computer control system which monitor the diesel electric engine’s propulsion system and play a key role in the ship’s operation broke down last weekend. The 36 metre Linga has been fraught with technical problems since it first arrived from the Gdansk shipyard in 2002, and now must have three computers replaced after the originals had their hard discs corrupted.

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)

Speedo has unveiled the special Olympic edition Team USA LZR Racer suit, working with legendary design house Comme des Garcons to develop a one-of-kind look for Team USA featuring the red, white and blue of the American flag. The launch of the Team USA Speedo LZR RACER allows the original Comme des Garcons design to be finally revealed as the traditional gray and black silhouette has been updated with the patriotic stars and stripes of the USA flag. The design by visionary founder of Comme des Garcons, Rei Kawakubo, joins the distinctive metallic silver calligraphy that already appears on the suit. The calligraphy, painted by celebrated artist Inoue Yu-ichi, means 'kokoro' representing the heart, spirit and mind.

Edinburgh based firm Big DNA Ltd, which is developing new methods of delivering vaccines, has been awarded a SMART award of £70,000. SMART Scotland gives grants to small and medium sized enterprises to help support R&D projects representing a significant technological advance for UK industry or a sector.

Microsoft, Google and PayPal, a unit of eBay, are among the founders of an industry organisation The Information Card Foundation, that hopes to solve the problem of password overload among computer users and create a single industrywide approach to managing identity online that promises to reduce drastically use passwords and create a system that is less vulnerable to fraud.

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.

In Scotland, adopting or sponsoring a zoo animal is quite commonplace and elsewhere people are encouraged to adopt vineyards or olive trees, while Laphroaig offers a virtual piece of peat for its malt aficionados. Now in the US, two Maine brothers have found a way to offer consumers the chance to adopt a Maine lobster trap an idea which just might lend itself to the Scottish lobster industry.

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