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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Researchers at Intel have unveiled a silicon test chip that can encode 200Gbps on a beam of light. In contrast, the most advanced chips used in today's fastest optical networks operate at speeds of 100Gbps. And these 100-gigabit chips, which are made from nonsilicon materials, have limitations that Intel's chip doesn't as they can't scale to faster speeds as inexpensively as silicon can.

Swiss Debiotech and STMicroelectronics have introduced evaluation prototypes of a unique miniaturised insulin-delivery pump. The tiny device can be mounted on a disposable skin patch to provide continuous insulin infusion, enabling substantial advancements in the availability, treatment efficiency and the quality of life of diabetes patients. The breakthrough Nanopump, which relies on microfluidic MEMS echnology, has successfully passed initial testing stages and is now ready for volume manufacturing.

Braveheart, the technology commercialisation and investment management company has signed an agreement with the University of Aberdeen. it follows hot on the heels of the Perth based investment company tie-up with Edinburgh University in June 2007 creating a dedicated £25m fund having rights of first refusal to invest in all commercial investment opportunities that arise in respect of companies and intellectual property emanating from the university, other than in the field of medicine, veterinary medicine and life sciences, where it may take a co-investment position. In February 2007 a £12m funding deal for the Strathclyde Innovation Fund partnership with Strathclyde University shared 25% of its performance bonus with the university. In addition, when an investment is made, a payment will be made to the department which has sponsored the investment opportunity, encouraging university departments to participate in the commercialisation partnership.

Back in May AeroVironment, Inc was awarded a Phase II contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and build a flying prototype for the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program. AV had completed a preliminary design review at the end of its Phase I, .7m program. Phase II, which was initiated in March, is a new six-month, 6,000 development program that will culminate with the demonstration of a rudimentary, three-inch flapping-wing air vehicle system. Following a successful demonstration, DARPA has the option to extend the program for an additional 18 months which could increase the Phase II contract value. But in Europe, research is keeping pace with ingenuity, if not the funding muscle of DARPA as research shows.

The Fraunhofer IPMS researching organic based materials and the Fraunhofer FEP, focused on large-area vacuum deposition on flexible substrates, have joined forces in the development of a technology for an organic devices roll-to-roll production process in Dresden, home to Scotland's Microemissive Displays manufacturing.

A University of Bath academic, who oversees a global effort to develop an open-source machine that ‘prints’ three-dimensional objects, is celebrating after the prototype machine succeeded in making a set of its own printed parts. The machine, named RepRap, was exhibited publicly at the June Cheltenham Science Festival.

Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co Ltd and IBM are collaborating to establish new, low-cost methods for bringing the next generation of solar energy products to market, more products affordable and easier to install.The companies are to jointly develop processes, materials, and equipment suitable for the production of CIGS (Copper-Indium- Gallium-Selenide) solar cell modules. Currently, the relatively high-cost of electricity produced by solar cells compared to electricity from other energy sources is an inhibitor to widespread adoption. But use of thin film technology, such as CIGS, has great promise in reducing the overall cost of solar cells and further enabling their widespread adoption as the rush of CIGS startups in the US implies.

Under the current programme schedule, BAE will deliver four production MRA4s to RAF Kinloss in Scotland by the end of 2010, when the new type is expected to be declared in-service. This will require a concerted effort by both parties to be successful, says Joe Harland, the company MD, large aircraft in an interview with Craig Hoyle at Flight Global. Other factors needed to achieve the milestone include the availability of sufficient trained air crew and maintainers, plus ground support equipment.

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