EU, US to launch trade talks next month

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (AP) ? Talks on a sweeping trade deal between the European Union and the United States, the world's two largest trading partners, are to get underway in Washington next month, President Barack Obama and top European Union officials said Monday.

"The EU-U.S. relationship is the biggest in the world," Obama said after meeting with European leaders at the G-8 summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, citing roughly the $1 trillion in trade in goods and services between the two every year.

"This potentially ground-breaking partnership would deepen those ties."

The head of the EU's executive arm, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, said a deal could bring "huge economic benefits" to both sides. Summit host British Prime Minister David Cameron said the trade pact could create 2 million jobs and "could be the biggest bilateral trade deal in history."

The aim of the trans-Atlantic deal would be to promote economic growth by eliminating the import tariffs and changing regulations that keep goods made on one side of the Atlantic from being sold on the other.

When the start of negotiations were first announced by Obama in his State of the Union address in March, it was estimated that a deal could boost each economy by more than a half-percentage point annually and significantly lower the cost of goods and services for consumers.

Officials have said a deal could be reached next year. But securing one will be tricky. The talks will be watched warily by interest groups and would have to be approved by each side's lawmakers and leaders before the new trade arrangements take effect.

The EU has already yielded to pressure. When it was putting together its mandate for the negotiations last week, France managed to get state assistance of the TV and movie industries taken off the table. Barroso said the issue could be revisited later. Meanwhile, U.S. labor officials have also expressed skepticism.

The statement of support for the trade deal came just ahead of the opening of the Group of Eight Summit among the leaders of leading industrial nations: The U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia, plus the European Union.

Host Cameron greeted the arriving leaders against a backdrop of green grass and lake views at the Lough Erne golf resort near the small town of Enniskillen.

Later Monday over a working dinner, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's support for the Syrian government will be a topic for discussion.

Cameron said he wanted the summit to deliver a firm plan for promoting multi-faction talks in Geneva aimed at ending the country's bloody civil war. Moscow officially shares that goal but continues to ship military aid to the army of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Following a frosty Putin-Cameron meeting Sunday in London, the Russian leader remains opposed to plans by the West to start shipping weapons to rebels struggling to topple Assad.

Obama announced Friday that the U.S. would start sending weaponry, while Britain and France remained concerned that the firepower might end up helping anti-democratic extremists linked to Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

"How can you allow Russia to continue to send weapons to the regime of Bashar al-Assad while the opposition gets so few weapons? " asked French President Francois Hollande. "We will have this discussion ... Not to point the finger at Vladimir Putin, but for him to understand that it is in the interest of world peace to have this conference in Geneva."

The summit is taking place under heavy security, with some 7,000 police lining roads and checking vehicles.

A protest Monday attracted far fewer than the 2,000 expected by police. About 200 people gathered ahead of the march at a library in Enniskillen. Activists waved flags and placards for a range of causes as a heavy metal band played, including gay marriage, anti-capitalist criticism of the G-8 forum itself, and opposition to fracking.

__

Associated Press writers Cassandra Vinograd and Vladimir Isachenkov in Enniskillen contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eu-us-launch-trade-talks-next-month-160424544.html

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EU, US to launch trade talks next month

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (AP) ? Talks on a sweeping trade deal between the European Union and the United States are to get underway in Washington next month, President Barack Obama and top European Union officials said Monday.

"The EU-US relationship is the biggest in the world," Obama said after meeting with European leaders at the G-8 summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, citing roughly the $1 trillion in trade in goods and services between the two every year.

"This potentially ground-breaking partnership would deepen those ties."

The head of the EU's executive arm, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, said a deal could bring "huge economic benefits" to both sides.

Summit host British Prime Minister David Cameron said the trade pact could create 2 million jobs.

The aim of the trans-Atlantic deal would be to promote economic growth by cutting the import tariffs and changing regulations that keep goods made on one side of the Atlantic from being sold on the other side.

Officials have said a deal could be reached next year. But securing one will be tricky. The talks will be watched warily by interest groups and would have to be approved by each side's lawmakers and leaders before the new trade arrangements are introduced.

The EU has already yielded to a demand from France to exempt the TV and movie industries from the talks. Barroso said the exception for movies and TV shows could be revisited later. Meanwhile, US labor officials have also expressed skepticism.

__

Associated Press writers Cassandra Vinograd and Vladimir Isachenkov in Enniskillen contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eu-us-launch-trade-talks-next-month-160424544.html

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Damn that's a huge bitch.

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Autonomous energy-scavenging micro devices will test water quality, monitor bridges, more

June 13, 2013 ? Out in the wilds or anywhere off the grid, sophisticated instruments small enough to fit in a shirt pocket will one day scavenge power from sunlight, body heat, or other sources to monitor water quality or bridge safety, enabling analysis in the field rather than bringing samples and data back to the lab.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario are using optics and photonics in their quest to "bring the lab to the sample," said lead researcher Vassili Karanassios, director of the university's Institute for Nanotechnology. A major aspect of his team's solution, reported in a conference and publication by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, is scavenging energy from various sources to power instruments at the sample site.

While energy harvesting utilizes sources such as wind power, energy scavenging involves re-using discarded energy, such as the electric light that runs a calculator, Karanassios said.

The team is incorporating wake-up systems in the devices to support energy autonomy, the ability to be powered as needed without an external source, without losing selectivity, the ability to gather and accurately analyze relevant data.

An important feature of his lab's approach is the integration of several features of full-scale laboratory instruments.

"People have experimented with sensors and with lab-on-a-chip devices for a long time," Karanassios said. "But taking an entire instrument to the field in a hand-held device is new. Not many research groups have the expertise to integrate it all, to go from the sensor level to the micro-instrument level."

The team is also working to reduce the power required for miniature instruments that perform optical emission spectrometry -- using light to generate the spectral patterns that are intrinsically unique to materials -- with very small samples. The resulting spectral "signature" is used to identify what is in the sample, for example, in on-site monitoring of water quality.

Among power source optics, sunlight is one obvious answer, Karanassios said, but limited by clouds and brief daylight in some regions. Additional possible sources and applications for energy scavenging are:

• Plugging in to human body heat, unobtrusively scavenging energy in the form of otherwise-wasted heat generated by a person while walking, to power instruments for testing water quality or wearable biomedical monitors.
• Harnessing animal body heat, to recharge implanted tracking devices. "When tagging and tracking animals in the wild, you do not want to have to catch the same animal one more time just to replace the battery that powers its sensors," Karanassios noted.
• Charging up a bridge sensor using mechanical energy generated in a spring-loaded device in the road, activated by vehicles crossing the bridge.

Because smaller sensors and instruments require less power, Karanassios' lab is working toward "shirt-pocket size" micro-instruments that eventually will deliver performance comparable to full-size lab versions.

They have experimented with a device the size of sugar cube that can be used along with a portable spectrometer for rapid screening of environmental contaminants, using spectral lines generated by wavelengths in the visible light and ultraviolet regions.

A paper detailing the work by Karanassios and Waterloo colleagues Donghyun Lee and Gurjit Dulai was published 28 May in the SPIE Digital Library, and presented in a conference on Energy Harvesting and Storage at SPIE defense, securit, and sensing meeting DSS 2013 last month in Baltimore. Titled "Survey of energy harvesting and energy scavenging approaches for on-site powering of wireless sensor- and microinstrument-networks," the paper is available via open access through 31 August 2013.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/bh7kW1vQAlU/130613153343.htm

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