General News
AUK: Age UK is looking for a person in later life to appear in their new TV advert – could that person be you? Age UK will be broadcasting their new TV ad in July 2011. It will celebrate later life, thank their volunteers & supporters and show how they help older people.
The cast of the ad will be 100 people who’ve volunteered to take part – and they now have just one place left to fill! They are looking for someone aged over 65 who can help them show that growing older shouldn’t be a barrier to living life to the full.
PCS: Workers who support the UK government with IT services face losing their jobs under plans to offshore work to India, the Public and Commercial Services union says. Up to 200 jobs are at risk at Hewlett Packard that provides IT support to the Department for Work and Pensions at sites based in Newcastle, Lytham St Annes in Lancashire and Sheffield.
The union, which represents more than 2,000 members at HP in the UK, says the proposals have yet to be finalised and will require ministerial approval by the Cabinet Office. But the union warns plans are at an advanced stage and the necessary ‘knowledge transfer’ work could start in August 2011, with jobs moving to Bangalore in November 2011.
Press release ~ Related previous Socitm PR: Outsourcing ICT carries many risks for local authorities and can come at a heavy price says new briefing from Socitm Insight
STFC: The ALPHA experiment at CERN has succeeded in trapping antimatter atoms for over 16 minutes: long enough to begin to study their properties in detail. ALPHA is part of a broad programme at CERN's antiproton decelerator investigating the mysteries of one of nature's most elusive substances.
EH: A ground-breaking scientific dating project led by English Heritage and Cardiff University has succeeded in dating prehistoric features down to a margin of decades instead of centuries. By applying this method to a type of early Neolithic earthwork called causewayed enclosures, it has revealed that Britain experienced a frenetic period of monument building in the decades after 3,700BC, with the country's first big monuments being erected some 1,000 years before Stonehenge was created.
The new knowledge that this happened in a flurry within 2 to 3 generations will revolutionise the way prehistory is understood & studied not only in Britain, but around the world. This is the remarkable result of a dating technique that analyses each radiocarbon date of organic materials collected at a particular site within a complex & exacting statistical model that takes into account the sequence of archaeological deposits obtained from the site.
FSA: With the major E.coli incident ongoing in Europe, the start of the annual Food Safety Week (6 - 12 June 2011) is a strong reminder of the importance of following good food hygiene. This year, FSW is focusing on good hygiene in the home, which will help stop the spread of harmful bacteria. At the same time the Food Standards Agency is working closely with food businesses all along the food chain to reduce the risk of harmful bacteria reaching our plates.
HO: A new educational institution teaching fashion graduates to design clothes for a diverse range of body shapes has been launched by equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone. The Centre for Diversity has been created by All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, an initiative founded by Erin O'Connor, Caryn Franklin and Debra Bourne, that works with influential catwalk designers and top industry creatives to celebrate diversity within the fashion industry.
