Red Poppy Studios and Gallery at 800 Main St., after major remodeling of the existing building, will add yet another layer to our already vibrant downtown arts scene. Joanna Retherford heads this energetic venture and envisions her gallery to
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The American Beauty star last year (11) announced he was giving budding moviemakers from the U.S., South Africa, and Russia the chance to direct him in a short film.
He drew up a list of contenders and then chose one winner from each country, who were then given the chance to shoot their movie with Spacey in the lead role.
The actor has travelled to South Africa to attend the red carpet premiere of one of the films - South African Alan Shelley's A Spirit of a Denture - and he's adamant the project has inspired him to continue searching for talented filmmakers in far-flung lands.
Spacey told reporters in Johannesburg, "There is no doubt that as you start to look around the world, you start to look at the Asia-Pacific region, you start to look at what's happening here, you look at what's happening in European cinema, there's a lot going on.
"I like the idea of going to as many places as possible and (enjoying) as many experiences as you can."
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Kevin Spacey heads to South Africa for movie project premiere
Updated: Monday, 14 May 2012 19:14 Frankel and Excelebration cross swords for a fourth time in the Lockinge Stakes
Frankel is the star name among nine confirmations for the JLT Lockinge Stakes at Newbury on Saturday.
Unbeaten in nine starts to date, Henry Cecil's colt is the world's highest rated racehorse and while he suffered an injury scare early last month, he is all set to make his eagerly anticipated four-year-old debut this weekend.
He is set to be joined by his stablemate, regular work companion and half-brother Bullet Train.
Frankel's biggest danger appears to hail from Aidan O'Brien's Ballydoyle yard.
Excelebration chased home Frankel three times when trained by Marco Botti last year, winning his other three starts.
He made a fine start for his new trainer when winning last month's Gladness Stakes at the Curragh.
O'Brien said: "He's fine. He's a very relaxed horse and good enough to compete.
"Marco Botti did a great job with him, but he's a year older and has strengthened up.
"It will be interesting taking on Frankel and if you know his achilles heel, I wish you'd let me know!"
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As the injuries began to pile up for the Red Bulls, forcing coach Hans Backe to field a young, inexperienced back line for at least a month, heres what even the most optimistic fan had to be thinking:
Theyre on an elevator to the Eastern Conference basement.
Then, 22 minutes into their April 28 game against the New England Revolution at Red Bull Arena, leading scorer Thierry Henry went down with a hamstring strain and the less-than-sunny assessment had to be updated.
Make that an express elevator to the Eastern Conference basement.
Fast forward to today, with the Red Bulls sitting in first place following a four-game winning streak, and it would be easy to start an explanation with Well, a strange thing happened ...
But why would it be such a strange thing?
Americans know how to play defense. We grow up playing defense in all sports, not just soccer, and the phrase defense wins championships is constantly pounded into our heads.
Heres something else. We can play goalkeeper, too, as the honor roll of Tony Meola, Kasey Keller, Brad Friedel and Tim Howard over the past two decades can attest. So the fact that Ryan Meara, a New York kid who played at Fordham, can come into Major League Soccer and play well as a rookie shouldnt surprise anyone.
Ireland sure noticed. They wanted Meara to join their Under-21 team for European U-21 qualifying, but the Red Bulls blocked the call-up.
But back to the defense.
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Attempts to form a government in Greece collapsed on Tuesday, jolting financial markets at the prospect that leftists opposed to the terms of an EU bailout could sweep to victory in a June election and tip the euro zone deeper into crisis.
The turmoil in Athens sent shock waves around other troubled members of the 17-nation European single currency area. The euro slipped below $1.28, world stocks slid and Spanish and Italian bond yields rose above the danger level of 6 percent as investors scurried for shelter in safe haven German Bunds.
The tremors from Greece, compounding worries about Spain's debt-laden banking system, ended any honeymoon for new French President Francois Hollande, thrusting the growing risks to the euro zone to the top of the agenda for his first ever meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin the same evening.
The leaders of the Franco-German alliance that sits at the heart of the single currency project said after their talks that both wanted Greece to remain in the euro zone and were ready to work to promote ideas for economic growth that could help achieve that - though differences remain over what can be done.
After a meeting at which both stressed a commitment to the political ideal of the euro, despite coming from opposing sides of Europe's left-right party divide, Hollande told a news conference: "I hope that we can say to the Greeks that Europe is ready to add measures to help growth and support economic activity so that there is a return to growth in Greece."
"On growth, the method that we agreed is putting all ideas and all proposals on the table and seeing what legal means exist to put them into effect," added the French leader, who landed in Berlin late after lightning struck his presidential jet.
Earlier, in his inaugural address, the Socialist president called for a European pact to revive growth and temper the conservative Merkel's preference for Europe-wide austerity, seeking to change the direction of euro zone economic policy.
"I will propose to our partners a pact that will tie the necessary reduction of our public debt to the indispensable stimulation of our economies," Hollande declared, saying Europe needed "projects, solidarity and growth".
GREEK CRISIS
In Athens, President Karolos Papoulias abandoned efforts to broker a compromise on a cabinet of technocrats to steer the country away from bankruptcy, nine days after an inconclusive general election. A caretaker government will now be formed pending a new vote probably in mid-June.
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US stocks closed firmly in the red Monday as Greece's political stalemate and Spain's banking problems drove new fears about the strength of the eurozone.
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Five straight wins.
Jon Lester throws a complete game.
Still, no respect.
Just ask any Red Sox fan today "How are you doing?" You might likely get this answer, even with the team still in last place: "I'm all right, don't nobody worry about me."
With that tune in our heads, birthday boy Josh Beckett (he's 32) had a 4:05 p.m. tee time at Fenway Park Tuesday. Snobs. Slobs. Golf. Dysfunction. Beckett, who was dealing Tuesday with nine strikeouts and seven shutout innings, almost single-handedly turned Fenway Park into Bushwood. So here's a look at the 2012 Red Sox through some of the classic scenes from the original "Caddyshack."
Rodney Dangerfield got "no respect." Beckett has not earned any respect. But they both put family first. Sort of. And each have some questionable doctors. We begin with Beckett (portrayed by the legendary Al Czervik) showing little patience or concern while John Henry (Judge Smails) takes his time trying to set up the perfect tee shot.
Things aren't much better on the course. Beckett continues to cause one distraction after another, whether he's getting shelled by the Indians, whining about his 18 days off, not caring, tormenting Henry. Meanwhile, Henry's caddy, the young, idealistic and impressionable Ben Cherington (Danny Noonan) watches helplessly. "The man is a menace," exclaims an exasperated Henry.
How true.
After that ill-fated outing, Beckett sits down with his agents and members of Red Sox management over dinner to discuss his sore lat:
Unsatisfied with the assistance offered by Henry, Cherington talks shop and seeks life guidance from the slick and smooth Larry Lucchino (played by Ty Webb), as he carries the bag for the Red Sox president.
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At 7 days old, the trio of red-cockaded woodpecker chicks -- blind and writhing about in the palm of the biologist's hand -- looked impossibly fragile.
But U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Eric Spadgenske worked quickly and carefully Monday morning, fixing color-coded bracelets of pink and yellow on the spindly legs of this next generation of the endangered species.
"There they are with all their new jewelry," Spadgenske said, showing them off before tucking them back into a coffee can and ascending the ladder to return them to the nest 22 feet up a skinny longleaf pine on an island on Lake Mitchell.
The banding expedition is part of long-term effort by Alabama Power, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to preserve the critically endangered population of about 30 birds that make their home near the reservoir on land owned by the power company, a private individual, the state Forever Wild program and John Hancock Timber Resource Group.
Nationwide, there might be 16,000 red-cockaded woodpeckers stretched across 11 southeastern states.
Intensive efforts to preserve the cluster of colonies on Lake Mitchell were launched in the aftermath of a 2004 tornado that swept through the area toppling several of the nesting trees. Spadgenske, who heads the Service's Partners for Fish and Wildlife in the state, helped devise a recovery program that included installing dozens of artificial nests. It has since come to include a regular regime of prescribed burns to maintain the habitat, as well as frequent monitoring.
While Alabama Power is required to make efforts to preserve endangered species as a condition of its license to operate Mitchell Dam, Spadgenske gave the company credit for going beyond the minimum requirement.
"They've done a tremendous job. This is phenomenal habitat," he said. "The efforts of the power company have really saved this population."
Among the earliest species added to the endangered species list, the woodpecker's decline tracks very closely with the disappearance of the tree where it prefers to make its home: the longleaf pine, Alabama's state tree that once dominated from the coastal plain to the edges of the Appalachians. The red-cockaded is just one of 29 threatened or endangered species imperiled by the virtual disappearance of the longleaf dominated ecosystem that once covered an estimated 90 million acres. After being cut for its valuable, rot-resistant timber, most long-leaf forests were replanted with faster growing species like the loblolly pine. Longleaf was also adapted to and dependent on frequent wildfires, which are now for the most part controlled.
In those rare places where a mature canopy of mature longleaf survives and fire still burns, the forest floor is park-like savanna, where more than 600 different species of plant can occur: a host of native warm season grasses and legumes that provide ideal habitat for wild turkey, bobwhite quail, white-tailed deer and fox.
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Red-cockaded woodpecker gets care and protection in Alabama (with video and gallery)
The 15-19 Boston Red Sox are coming off their first series win at home since their first home series of the year as they welcome the 16-20 Seattle Mariners to Fenway Park. The Red Sox and Mariners will play a short two-game series on May 14 and 15 before Boston heads out on an eight-game road trip.
Boston's lineup is enjoying a boost from its AAA reinforcements. Will Middlebrooks and Daniel Nava combined for ten hits and eight RBI in Boston's 3-1 series against the Cleveland Indians. Also swinging a red hot bat, Dustin Pedroia rides a 14-game hitting streak into the series. The Mariners are dependent on strong pitching for success. They have the second lowest team on-base percentage in the majors and they score only 3.75 runs per game, but they boast a 3.87 team ERA. Second year third baseman Kyle Seager enters the series as Seattle's hottest hitter with a .325 average and 25 total bases in 11 May games. He is hitting .295 with a .804 OPS on the season.
Pitching matchups:
Jon Lester (4.29 ERA, 28/18 K/BB) vs Jason Vargas (2.79 ERA, 38/13 K/BB)
The Red Sox are still waiting for Jon Lester to find his form. His last start against the Kansas City Royals was plagued by adventures in outfield defense, but he didn't exactly compensate well. Slow starts are not uncommon for Lester who has a lifetime 3.99 ERA in April and May compared to a 3.57 mark overall. Vargas, the lone lefty in the Mariners' rotation, has enjoyed an excellent start to the season. Through 51.2 innings, he has the lowest ERA and walk rate of his career. He has allowed two or fewer runs in six of his eight starts.
Josh Beckett (5.97 ERA, 26/11 K/BB) vs Blake Beavan (4.32 ERA, 14/4 K/BB)
Beckett's return to the rotation against the Cleveland Indians was a complete disaster as both his command and velocity were nonexistent. Overall, both his four and two-seam fastballs are clocking in 1.5 mph lower than they did in 2011. His strikeout rate of 6.8 per nine innings is lower than that of any previous year in his career. 21 starts into his MLB career, Beavan has established himself as a strike-thrower. He has only 19 walks in 130.1 innings of work, but he gives up a ton of flyballs and struggles to miss bats. He has a groundball-to-flyball ratio of just 0.52 with a 3.78 strikeout rate.
Sources:
Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners, Yahoo! Sports
Baseball-Reference.com
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Red Sox Look to Build Momentum Against Mariners: Fan Preview
After becoming the first probe to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in July 2011, NASAs Dawn spacecraft has spent the last 10 months orbiting said object - the giant asteroid Vesta. During that period it has captured more than 20,000 images of Vesta and a multitude of data from different wavelengths of radiation. What it reveals is an asteroid that in many ways shares more in common with a small planet or Earths moon than it does with another asteroid.
With a mean diameter of around 326 miles (525 km), Vesta is one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System and the second most massive after Ceres. Formed in a similar way to the terrestrial planets and Earths moon, Vesta boasts a geologic complexity that scientists attribute to a process that separated it into a crust, mantle and iron core with a radius of around 68 miles (110 km) some 4.56 billion years ago.
"Vesta has been recording the history of the solar system from the beginning," said Christopher T. Russell, a professor in UCLA's Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Dawn mission's principal investigator. "We are going back to the beginning of the solar system - more than 4.5 billion years ago. We're going back further than ever before on the surface of a body."
Deep gashes in Vestas surface observed by Dawn reveal a pattern of minerals that NASA says may suggest the asteroid was once molten inside and had a subsurface magma ocean, which occurs when a body undergoes almost complete melting and leads to layered building blocks that can form planets. Vestas iron core would have formed during this molten period at the dawn of the Solar System.
Data collected by Dawn also reveal that Vesta is the source of a distinct group of meteorites found on Earth. These meteorites, with signatures of an iron- and magnesium-rich mineral known as pyroxene, account for about six percent of all meteorites falling to Earth, making Vesta one of the largest single sources of Earths meteorites. Dawns mission also marks the first time a spacecraft has visited the source of samples after they were identified on Earth.
Vesta has also been found to have a topography that is quite steep and varied, and includes large mountains formed by a major impact on the asteroids surface the largest of which is more than twice the size of Mount Everest. While scientists had thought that, outside the south polar region, Vestas surface may be flat like the moon, some of the craters outside this region formed on very steep slopes and have nearly identical sides, with landslides often occurring.
NASA scientists were also surprised to discover that Vestas central peak in the Rheasilvia basin in the southern hemisphere is much higher and wider, relative to its crater size, than the central peaks of craters on bodies like our moon.
There are also similarities with other low-gravity worlds, such as Saturns small icy moons, and the light and dark markings on its surface dont match the predictable patterns seen on Earths moon. While Vestas surface contains bright spots of various sizes, there are also some areas that are dark as coal, with the light and dark markings forming intricate patterns that suggest the dominance of impact processes in creating mixed layers in Vestas regolith.
"We know a lot about the moon and we're only coming up to speed now on Vesta," said Vishnu Reddy, a framing camera team member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany and the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. "Comparing the two gives us two storylines for how these fraternal twins evolved in the early solar system."
Dawn will continue to examine Vesta until it departs the asteroid on August 26 headed for a 2015 study date with Ceres, the Solar Systems largest asteroid and only dwarf planet in the inner solar system.
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With all of its satellites, telescopes, gizmos and gadgets, NASA collects thousands of data points every month. But what if NASA could present that all of that data in a clean, fun and useful way to the public?
The NASA Tournament Labhopes to find an answer to this question in its latest series of competitions that challenge students, teachers, game designers and interested civilians to build mobile or web-based applications using any of the more than 100 terabytes of information in the NASA planetary data system.
The space agency hopes that by encouraging the public at large to create interesting apps, it might be able to develop something that a coder from the agency would have never thought of. NASA has assembled a judging panel of prestigious scientists, researchers and an astronaut to declare winners of each competition.
Most competition winners will earn $7,000 and other prizes. The final round of the competition, called "the penultimate contest" by the agency, will award winners with $10,000. "The bar is higher here and judges will be looking for applications that showcase entirely new ways of thinking about PDS data," says NASA of the final competition.
The next major day of competition is May 16, when two different projects will take place. The first competition is open to 13- to 18-year-old members of NNS. It challenges these members to build "the ultimate app." The second competition is a challenge to teachers and asks competitors to "develop and submit fabulous apps for leveraging PDS data in an educational setting." More details about the challenges can be seen on the official PDS Challenge page.
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"[The] approach, often termed 'crowd sourcing' or 'broadcast search,' lessens the effects of uncertainty in software development by searching for a problem's solution through multiple, parallel paths," said NASA in a written statement about the Tournament Lab. "Instead of relying on one individual or team, the researcher can access many, independent ideas, which increases the chances of a successful solution."
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NASA Challenges Public To Build Apps Using Planetary Data System
It looks like the commercial space race might be over before it's even really begun.
Last week, Congress approved a spending bill that demands NASA immediately choose one company for the commercial crew program, and this week they will be voting on it. Killing the private competition is meant to save money and speed up development, but more likely it will be devastating to NASA's already stretched budget.
ANALYSIS: Money: The Next Human Spaceflight Incentive?
Currently, NASA is providing subsidies to companies vying to develop a viable manned launch system. There are a lot of interesting and promising commercial programs under development right now. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Blue Origin project is working on a launch vehicle, Sierra Nevada is working on the Dream Chaser orbital vehicle, ATK just announced its intention to add a spacecraft to its Liberty rocket, SpaceX has its Falcon 9 and Dragon, and Orbital Sciences has its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft.
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are the front runners, both planning flights to the ISS this year to demonstrate their capabilities. SpaceX is scheduled to launch this coming Saturday. But these missions are unmanned cargo flights; manned mission aren't expected until 2017. So why stop the competition before NASA has a viable commercial crew system?
The short answer is money.
Commercial crew projects fall under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program that was started in 2006 with the goal of easing the transition out of the shuttle era by having private companies take over the low Earth orbital launches allowing NASA to focus on its loftier goals of deep space manned missions on Saturn V-type powerful rockets. There's no money for the COTS program in NASA's 2013 budget. The bill will remove continued COTS costs and streamline the commercial launch effort by giving one company more money to develop its system faster.
ANALYSIS: NASA Deputy Administrator Faces the Tough Questions
The problem with the short answer is that it's short sighted. The layered approach with multiple companies vying for the contract to build a new space transportation system is exactly what NASA needs right now. The competition has yielded creativity and innovation. The rockets and spacecraft these companies have come up with has cost NASA millions instead of billions since the agency isn't alone in footing the bill, and there are clearly viable systems on the horizon.
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NASA is currently training astronauts to land on asteroids and hopes to send humans to one of the distant space rocks in about a decade, The Telegraph reported over the weekend. As in the movie Armageddon, one motivation for the endeavor is to figure out a way to destroy or deflect a large asteroid that could be on a collision course with Earth.
In June, a group of astronauts will begin learning how to operate vehicles and move about on asteroids, according to the U.K. newspaper, which interviewed a British astronaut who is participating in the training program.
Major Tim Peake, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, told The Telegraph that a manned mission to intercept an incoming asteroid would be a last resort but could prove necessary because even large space objects can be difficult to detect.
"With enough warning we would probably send a robotic mission to deflect an asteroid, but if something is spotted late and is big enough we might come into Armageddon type scenarios where we may have to look at manned missions to deflect it," the ESA astronaut was quoted as saying.
Peake, formerly a test helicopter pilot, told the newspaper that "an asteroid mission of up to a year is definitely achievable" with technology that's currently available or being developed.
Asteroids are primarily located in a belt beyond the orbit of Mars, but some "near-Earth" objects swing much closer to our planetsometimes even within 100,000 miles or closer, obviously, when they strike us. Still, The Telegraph noted that a mission to visit an asteroid would likely take space explorers much further from Earth than the 239,000 miles traversed by NASA's Apollo astronauts when they visited the Moon.
Aside from getting about safely on the near-zero gravity conditions on an asteroid, landing on such small, fast-moving objects could prove thorny.
NASA is scheduled to officially announce details of its plan to land astronauts on an asteroid at the Japan Geoscience Union Meeting later this month, The Telegraph reported. The U.S. space agency reportedly hopes to send a robot probe to an asteroid by 2016 and begin sending manned missions to them beginning in the late 2020s.
The presentation in Japan reportedly details a manned mission that would "rendezvous with an asteroid up to three million miles from the Earth, taking around a year to make the entire round trip." The astronauts aboard that mission might stay on the asteroid for as long as month.
A group led by commercial spaceflight pioneers Eric Anderson and Peter Diamandis recently formed a company, Planetary Resources, which will also attempt to visit asteroids by the end of the decade. Planetary Resources said last month that it planned to send robotic spacecraft to near-Earth asteroids to mine water and metals, which along with exploration and planetary safety could also be an objective of the NASA project.
Continued here:
NASA collects and publishes thousands of data points every month: images of lunar craters, spectrum analysis of far-away stars, rocket telemetry and so on. Now, the space agency wants to create apps that let people do a variety of things with those data, but first it wants to figure out exactly what people would want from NASA apps.
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For most manufacturers, cracks are usually something to be avoided and the semiconductor industry is no exception. But now physicists in South Korea have shown how initiating and then controlling the spread of nanometre-sized cracks can be used to create pre-designed patterns in a silicon wafer. They say that their approach offers a potentially faster and cheaper alternative to conventional lithography for the fabrication of integrated circuits.
Cracks can form when two materials with mismatching crystalline structures are placed on top of one another. Stress builds up at the interface between the materials, deforming the crystal structures and creating a crack that spreads throughout both materials if the deformity builds up enough potential energy to break atomic or molecular bonds. This can happen when a thin layer of silicon nitride is deposited on a silicon substrate, with cracks spreading uncontrollably through one or both of the layers.
Koo Hyun Nam of the Ewha Womans University in Seoul and colleagues have controlled the formation of such cracks to create elaborate patterns within a silicon substrate. To do this they etched tiny structures at particular positions and with specific orientations within 0.5mm-thick silicon wafers. The idea was that these "micro-notches" would concentrate the stress resulting from the deposition of a thin film of silicon nitride on the substrate. They also carved out step-like structures within the substrate to halt the spread of cracks or to isolate certain regions of the wafer from cracks.
Using chemical vapour deposition to lay down the silicon nitride, Nam and co-workers found that the cracks formed and propagated spontaneously. They were able to make the cracks either straight or wavy by changing the orientation of the crystal planes in the wafers as well as adjusting other parameters such as the temperature and pressure of the vapour. By laying down a film of silicon dioxide between the substrate and the silicon nitride they were able to generate a third shape "stitch-like" cracks, which are straight cracks with short, parallel, angled branches.
The width of the cracks varied between about 10120nm, with the wavelike variety generally wider than the straight cracks. In addition, the researchers found that they could change the direction of a crack, causing it to "refract" much like a light wave passing into and then out of a block of glass, by separating only a part of the wafer and the silicon nitride with the silicon-dioxide film. Where there was no silicon dioxide, the crack penetrated more deeply into the silicon substrate and aligned itself more closely with the substrate's atomic planes, whereas this alignment was weaker where there was silicon dioxide, causing the crack to change direction in this region.
Writing in Nature, Nam's team says that this method of controlled cracking could offer a faster and cheaper alternative to conventional lithography for microchip fabrication. In an accompanying article, Antonio Pons of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, agrees. He says that lithography, which allows patterns to be etched in silicon using a mask created via beams of light, electrons or ions, is often complex, expensive and time-consuming.
Pons told physicsworld.com that the advantage of the new approach is that the time needed to form the pattern "is simply the time taken for the crack to propagate", estimating that it should take only a few hours altogether to prepare the substrate, deposit the film and create the pattern, compared with the "days or weeks" needed using standard lithography. He admits, however, that he does not know how long it would take to make the micro-notches and other features. He also says it remains unclear how closely the cracks can be positioned to one another, something, he points out, "that is crucial when making small structures".
But Pons believes that the new technique should also find applications beyond the semiconductor industry. One possibility, he says, is making microfluidic devices. These are networks of tiny channels within which fluids, containing molecules such as DNA, can be manipulated for study. He also wonders whether it might prove useful at larger scales, perhaps allowing buildings in earthquake zones to fracture more safely. "The answer to that is not necessarily yes," he says. "Scale is very important, and we would be going from atomic-level interactions to the size of a house. But maybe this work will inspire people in other fields."
Zhenan Bao, a chemist at Stanford University in the US, says that the strength of the latest work is in showing the formation of controlled cracking, pointing out that other groups have previously used cracks to create nanoscale patterns, but that they were not able to carefully control where the cracks formed. Bao cautions, however, that such controlled cracking would only be possible with certain combinations of materials, which may mean the technique has more limited appeal than standard lithography. "It would be nice to see a demonstration of this method for device application," she adds.
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NAPLES, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Industrial Nanotech, Inc. (Pink Sheets:INTK), an emerging global leader in nanotechnology based energy saving and sustainable solutions announced today that the Company is opening a Corporate Sales Office in India with the next 4-6 weeks. Industrial Nanotech, Inc. has seen significantly increased demand in India for their Nansulate energy saving and protective coatings from OEM manufacturers as well as end manufacturing users to reduce energy costs. The company plans to establish an office first in Southern India, in or near Bangalore, with expansion to Northern India and Western India in the near future.
India has become an increasingly important country as their manufacturing sectors and economy as a whole continue to have a healthy growth rate, stated Francesca Crolley, VP of Business Development for Industrial Nanotech, Inc. We began a strategy this year focused on boosting our marketing and brand presence in India as an energy saving solution and it has returned significant results. These include multiple inquiries from manufacturers that want to use Nansulate coatings for insulation of their equipment for energy savings and surface temperature reduction, as well as a meeting with a leading OEM manufacturer of process cooling systems with 14 locations throughout India, and an international client base, that is interested in incorporating our technology into the process cooling systems they manufacture and sell. We have seen our marketing, which was focused on commercial and industrial, bring in sales and inquiries from multiple markets and at such a response level that it was obvious to us that setting up an Industrial Nanotech, Inc. office in India, staffed by a sales and technical support team which we hire and train, was the logical next step. The availability of a well educated workforce with an excellent work ethic presents a tremendous opportunity for the Company and will allow us to both accommodate factory visit requests from around the country with our own technical teams, as we do in the US, and the ability to more rapidly service and grow this vital market.
India's economic growth is expected to remain robust in 2012 and 2013, despite likely headwind of double-dip recessions in Europe and the US, according to a United Nations' annual economic report - World Economic Situation and Prospects 2012. The Indian economy is expected to grow between 7.7 per cent and 7.9 per cent this year, as per the report. India is the second most preferred destination for foreign investors, according to the report 'Doing Business in India' by Ernst & Young. The report explores India's key sectors, investment climate, funding scenario, laws and regulations, to aid companies that are doing, or plan to do business in India.
About Nansulate
Nansulate is the Company's patented product line of award winning, specialty coatings containing a nanotechnology based material and which are well-documented to provide the combined performance qualities of thermal insulation, corrosion prevention, resistance to mold growth, fire resistance, chemical resistance and lead encapsulation in an environmentally safe, water-based, coating formulation. The Nansulate Product Line includes industrial, residential, agricultural and solar thermal insulation coatings. Additional information about the Company and its products can be found at their websites, (www.inanotk.com) and (www.nansulate.com). Blog: http://www.nansulate.com/nanoblog, Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NanoPioneer, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Nansulate.
About Industrial Nanotech Inc.
Industrial Nanotech Inc. is a global nanoscience solutions and research leader and member of the U.S. Green Building Council. The Company develops and commercializes new and innovative applications for sustainable nanotechnology which are sold worldwide.
Safe Harbor Statement
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This release includes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products, the ability to meet customer demand, the ability to manage growth, acquisitions of technology, equipment, or human resources, the effect of economic and business conditions, and the ability to attract and retain skilled personnel. The Company is not obligated to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.
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Industrial Nanotech, Inc. Announces Expansion to India with Corporate Sales Office
A nanotechnology system that will allow sailors on Navy submarines to breathe easy has won Pacific Northwest National Laboratory a national award.
The 2012 Federal Laboratory Consortium Interagency Partnership Award was given to the Department of Energy national lab in Richland.
Researchers created a system that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air within a submarine to improve air quality, while providing a more environmentally friendly removal process.
The technology -- self assembled monolayers on mesoporous supports or SAMMS -- can be used to replace a system relied on for more than half a century by the U.S. Navy and many other countries.
The current system is a bulky, heavy, corrosive and malodorous liquid process that produces a significant amount of organic solvent waste, according to PNNL.
"This is a new application of a technology that was previously developed by PNNL to remove heavy metal contamination from ground and surface waters found at many DOE waste sites," PNNL material scientist Glen Fryxell, one of the key inventors of the SAMMS technology, said in a statement.
The SAMMS materials can absorb large quantities of liquid and airborne contaminants without creating secondary waste and can be disposed of as nonhazardous waste.
The SAMMS technology is based on a new class of hybrid nanoporous materials that can rapidly capture contaminants such as carbon dioxide, mercury or arsenic directly from the atmosphere or liquid environments.
For air rejuvenation systems, SAMMS can provide a controlled release of the carbon dioxide using a gentle application of heat or vacuum, according to PNNL.
"The technology could open doors to other large-scale or small-scale air quality treatments," Fryxell said.
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NEW YORK, May 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:
Nanotechnology Market Forecast to 2014
In the coming years, nanotechnology is set to play a pivotal role in various industry segments. The evolving technology has already influenced a large number of industrial segments, and the economic activity generated from it has been high in magnitude and wide in scope. The nanotechnology-based products, which have had a huge impact on almost each industrial sector, are now entering the consumer market in a big way. As per the findings of our latest report, increased applications of the technology in sectors like electronics, cosmetics, and defense, would propel the growth of the global nanotechnology market, which is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of about 19% during 2011-2014.
According to "Nanotechnology Market Forecast to 2014", electronic companies are finding new ways of incorporating nanotechnology into consumer products like music systems and mobile phones in order to improve their processing capabilities. Similarly, the technology could help improve cosmetics by changing their physical properties. We also observed that the use of nanotechnology in defense technologies provides enhanced performance at lower cost. Besides, the budding technology has revolutionalized dental care as it decreases the healing time and improves the Osseo-integration during dental implant. Our report discusses in detail these application areas and the key market trends.
Though nanomaterials would continue to dominate the nanotechnology market in the coming years, nano devices, comprising nanolithographic tools for manufacturing the next generation semi-conductors, are estimated to grow at a much faster rate than nanomaterials in near future. The crucial country-level analysis, included in the comprehensive research, identified that the US is the world's most prominent nanotechnology market and will continue to enjoy the biggest pie of the global industry in the years to come, despite developing economies like China, Korea, India, and Brazil investing huge sums in the nanotechnology R&D. Our report elaborates the application areas and regulatory environment relating to nanotechnology in these countries, along with the patent analysis.
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(ISNS) -- No longer the stuff of science fiction, nanoparticles are becoming more and more common. The extremely tiny objects can do just about everything, from filtering pollution to delivering medicine in the body. However, no one is sure of the effects if they get loose in the environment.
A team of scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst thinks there may be something to worry about.
They have not proven the particles are dangerous, but have shown that some nanoparticles can be absorbed into plants and mutate the plant's DNA, and that, they say, is worth a further look.
Nanoparticles are so small that they act as a bridge between the size of atoms and something of tangible substance. The thickness of a human hair is measured in millionths of a meter; nanoparticles, in billionths of a meter.
And now, they are everywhere. Manufacturers put them in clothing such as socks to kill bacteria. They are in a type of house paint that cleans itself in sunlight and in the coating on eyeglasses. Clear sunscreen lotion now on the market contains zinc or titanium nanoparticles. Cars will soon have paint that heals itself from scratches.
Nanoparticles have become so common it is assumed inevitably they will end up in the environment.
To see what would happen to plants exposed to nanoparticles, the researchers took particles of copper oxide and exposed three kinds of plants to them: radishes and two types of rye, the researchers reported in Environmental Science & Technology.
They chose nanoparticles of copper because they are widely used for coloring glass, in ceramics, as a polish and in the manufacturing of rayon. They also are used in the electronics industry to manufacture semiconductors, said Bryant Nelson of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The research team also used particles of copper oxide larger than nano-size as a comparison as well as regular copper ions.
Copper oxide is an oxidizing agent, and some oxidizing agents from metals can cause cancer in humans, a reason for the concern.
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We're back! With a round up of the news featured in the May issue of Materials Today. 14 May 2012
Round up of the news featured in the January-February issue of Materials Today. 21 February 2012
Interview with: Prof Jackie Ying, Editor of Nano Today. 01 February 2012
Interview with: Prof Ian Robertson from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 11 January 2012
Round up of the news featured in the December issue of Materials Today. 04 January 2012
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