General News
CIOB: The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) has awarded 300 members Chartered Environmentalist status.
To become a ‘Chartered Environmentalist’ a CIOB member must be able to demonstrate (through qualifications and experience) competence, knowledge and engagement in sustainable environmental management and development. The CIOB was granted a license by the Society for the Environment to award Chartered Environmentalist status.
Home Office: The new National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS) was seen by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on a Tackling Gangs Action Programme visit to West Midlands Police. The £8m NABIS database will roll-out incrementally from April this year and be fully operational by September, operating via three hubs in Birmingham, London and Manchester.
It will include:
* A complete registry of all recovered guns & ammunition coming into police possession in England & Wales
* A ballistics comparison capability to link crimes & incidents within 24 to 48 hours
* Intelligence relating to suspects, weapons, locations & incidents
COIB: The Chartered Institute of Building’s (CIOB) Vision 2020 seminar held at the recent Ecobuild exhibition in London is now available as a webcast. The seminar involved some of the international industry’s most visionary & respected leaders sharing their views on the challenges, considerations and opportunities facing the construction industry in the coming years.
STFC: For many years scientists have been trying to take advantage of the natural ability that certain bacteria have for creating chains of tiny magnets that are less than 1/1000th of the size of a human hair. Known as ‘bio-nanomagnets’, they could hold the key to creating effective, targeted anti-cancer therapies.
Guided magnetically, they could be used as miniature shuttles for moving drugs around the human body to specific sites, particularly to cancer tumours. The heat generated from another external magnet to make the nanomagnets vibrate very rapidly would then also destroy the surrounding diseased cells without affecting healthy tissue.
Press release ~ Remote control of cellular behaviour with magnetic nanoparticles : Abstract : Nature Nanotechnology ~ Daresbury Laboratory ~ About STFC
DCSF: The Department for Children, Schools and Families has announced the preferred bidder for the contract to deliver Teachers TV. Education Digital 2, a consortium of Ten Alps PLC and ITN, is in final negotiations over the £50m five-year contract to provide high quality news, information and resources to people who work in schools.
Teachers TV was launched on 8th February 2005 and is available 24 hours per day to viewers across the UK on Sky, Virgin Media and Tiscali TV and on Freeview from 4-5pm daily. Programmes are also made available through the channel's website.
