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Cloud services provide a new and promising opportunity for Enterprises to address the growing complexity of Information Technology. The availability of smart-phones and the expectation of immediate, simple access to private and company specific information on a global basis are driving demand for IT services centralisation and related competences required to support these effectively.

Devastating floods, deadly earthquakes, near apocalyptic tsunami, typhoons, storms, Arab spring, and economic downturn lets Acronis dub 2011 a year of disasters, yet Acronis GM Northern Europe and MEA, David Blackman comments that businesses around the world have grown in confidence about their ability to back up and then recover data and IT systems following a disaster.

The cloud offers enhanced IT service availability and flexibility, but customers need to understand their responsibilities to achieve this. The risks associated with cloud computing depend upon both the service model and the delivery model adopted. This article focuses on two specific risks: availability and lock-in.

The car has always been an accommodating electronics box, but recently seems to be taking on the role of technology showpiece. GM turns car windows into interactive displays. BASF and Phillips integrate their solar OLED into car roofs. Google pushes its autonomous vehicle programme as achieving 200,000 miles under computer control without an accident. But the US warns that questions of legal liability, privacy and insurance may be far more challenging and difficult to resolve than any mere matter of technology.

Last November, Google announced its support for a new Data Journalism competition, organised by the Global Editors Network. The competition is now open to submissions and a London event detailed on how to compete and win a total of six prizes worth €45,000. Hopefully even if the UK makes a poor fist at it this time, it will encourage higher teaching associations specialising in journalism to push at data analysis and social network analysis tools and skills.

As Scotland opens a prototype government search portal, European and Chinese experts in political science, simulation and computing technologies are working to develop new software through a 17 partner and 12 project linked FUPOL that will allow politicians to analyse opinions expressed in social networks. But concurrently political and economic theorists could also gain pragmatic wisdom learning how an ant colony allocates food resources, according to authors of a new paper in The American Naturalist.

Scotland is undertaking considerable joint collaborative work with energy researchers across the world, encompassing Hong Kong, India, the Maldives, China and most recently Abu Dhabi. Renewable energy interest however is less solar energy, a market where China already dominates globally (with perhaps the exception of ultra thin solar), and more in wind, wave, tidal power, and second generation bio-fuel. Sadly Scotland seems disinclined to team or advance with its European neighbours, despite Napier nursing solar power research. The two early 2012 concentrated solar power conferences are held in Johannesburg and New Delhi.

Focusing concerned society on issues, whether it be prostrate cancer or a lack of women in technology can range from such curiosities as UK men going hirsute with moustaches in November, or a month earlier in Seattle, men wearing kilts to the US Microsoft PASS summit SQL Server meeting, in support for Women in Technology.

Currently both TEM plates design methods require precise (less than one tenth of micrometre) mechanical alignment of the device in the back focal plane of the objective lens, a difficult requirement in practical alignment of the microscope electron optics and prevention of charging the carbon phase plate film when in use

Ultramicroscopy developed by Hans Ulrich Dodt (below left) from the Technical University of Vienna has now been taken up by Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried to develop a new method where single nerve cells can be both examined in intact tissue and portrayed in all three dimensions.

KonTEM GmbH is a November spin-off by the Caesar Research Centre and Max Planck Institute of Biophysics of an innovative phase contrast system (PCS) for transmission electron microscopes (TEM) that achieve both high contrast and maximum object resolution in TEM, opening up new potential for testing biological samples. With the Leica Microsystems agreement signed with Max Planck Society and German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Leica will develop gated STED as a commercial product for the 2012 market. Gated STED was developed at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen.

"Sustainability Assessment of Nuclear Power: An Integrated Approach" (SPRing) research shows nuclear power could contribute significantly to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. Interestingly nuclear power remains one of the safest sources of electricity, but its use would lead to considerable impacts on natural resources and the environment, claims the University of Manchester report.

"The Irish Scottish links on Energy Studies" (ISLES) study, which also includes Wales and has a Northern and Southern ISLES link concept concludes that an offshore electric grid connecting Ireland and Britain is feasible within a decade at a likely cost of $8.7bn says the EU-funded report. Hot on the heels of the Marine Energy Science identification of potential new areas for offshore wind energy, the overall plan is beginning to come together.

Beacon Dodsworth, a uk data and software consultancy providing GIS mapping software, database marketing technology, postcode products and market analysis solutions has played a key role in a pioneering system that enables a move to accurate evaluation of outdoor advertising’s effectiveness for the first time.

US researchers argue that servers can be sent to homes and ofﬁce buildings and used as the primary heat source. Calling this the Data Furnace (DF) approach, there are three advantages over traditional data centers: namely a smaller carbon footprint; reduced total cost of ownership per server and closer proximity to users.

There can be little doubt about the potential and relevance of social networks for businesses in Scotland and beyond. They have not only changed the way in which we communicate but also have the power to fundamentally change business in ways that are just beginning to emerge. Facebook, due to the sheer size and depth of the data it generates, is emerging as a more important business tool than say Twitter, or Google+. It also has the most open network for business applications. Facebook is where consumers go to engage with each other and where companies should be going to engage with consumers.

Power storage comprises new battery technologies, fuel cells, super capacitors, fly-wheels, pumped hydro storage (PHS) and compressed air energy storage (CAES). But coming in from the wings, two unusual pilots have recruited the consumer to play at being battery cells, both absorbing and storing excess electricity.

Scotland, Computer News in Scotland, Technology News in Scotland, Computing in Scotland, Web news in Scotland computers, Internet, Communications, advances in communications, communications in Scotland, Energy, Scottish energy, Materials, Biomedicine, Biomedicine in Scotland, articles in Biomedicine, Scottish business, business news in Scotland.

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