Distilled power of start-ups challenges big incumbents
Christopher Ahlberg can predict the future – or at least he hopes his company can. Recorded Future provides companies and governments with intelligence updates based on scouring the internet for…
De Beers arm seeks to grow diamond atoms
©Handout In a leafy corner of England a short drive from the Ascot racecourse, a team of researchers is engaged in perfecting a new class of materials that could revolutionise…
How the kilo put on weight
©BIPM A prototype of the kilogram, the world’s official unit of mass, at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures Beneath three antique bell jars in a Paris vault lies…
Farmers must adapt to extreme weather
©Ingram Pinn Nyetimber, the best-known English producer of sparkling wine, abandoned its 2012 vintage because the grapes did not ripen well enough. Supermarkets are selling misshapen apples they would previously…
Banks rethink in-house trading technology
Faced with rising compliance costs, more trading venues and torpid markets, banks are reassessing one of their biggest fixed costs – the technology they use to trade. This week JPMorgan…
Military prone to cyber attack, say MPs
The UK armed forces would be “fatally compromised” in the event of a cyber attack due to its reliance on information technology, MPs have warned. The defence committee criticised the…
Global pharma: check that pulse
The patent has expired – please do not resuscitate. That has been the pharmaceutical industry’s excuse for a decade of underperformance in the face of a wave of patent expiries.…
Lights off for Van Gogh?
©Vincent van Gogh Museum Van Gogh’s ‘Bank of the Seine” (1887), featuring his trademark chrome yellow, which is gradually darkening Art conservators worry about the effects of air pollution and…
Abramovich invests in ‘gas-to-liquids’ in UK
Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea Football Club, has invested £5m in a small UK technology company that specialises in turning natural gas into synthetic liquid fuels. Mr Abramovich’s…
InterDigital calls for handsets ban
InterDigital, the Philadelphia-based wireless technology developer, has asked the US International Trade Commission to ban imports of certain handsets made by Samsung, Nokia, ZTE and Huawei, which it claims infringe…
Protecting information in the cloud
The use of very large, shared, and automated IT platforms – known as cloud computing – is growing rapidly, driven by the prospects of increasing agility and gaining access to…
Bombardier targets bus market entry
Bombardier will break new ground early this year when it tries to enter the bus market with the launch of two commercial trials of electric-powered vehicles. The Canadian maker of…
Happy to swim against the tide
©David Parry / FT There is something unapologetic about the Jugged Hare, a pub and hotel near the Barbican, on the fringes of London’s financial district. The walls are decorated…
Miners ready to take punt on rare earths
Rare earth elements, as every commodities nerd knows, are in fact not very rare at all. Some, such as cerium and lanthanum, are among the more abundant elements in the…
Quick learner earns his Pure reward
Hossein Yassaie appears to be a quick learner. In 1976, at the age of 19, he came to the UK from Iran to complete his A-levels in just six months,…