Jun202017
The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi today inaugurated building of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, dedicated 400KV Lucknow-Kanpur D/C transmission line and distributed sanction letters to the beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana in Lucknow.
Jun202017
The Department for International Trade has helped GE Aviation win a multi-million dollar contract by guaranteeing a loan through the government’s export credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF).
Worth $18.7 million, the contract sees GE upgrade engines for cargo and charter airline Atlas Air. With the work carried out in GE’s Prestwick workshop in Scotland they will supply and install energy efficient Performance Improvement Program (PIP) kits to 3 engines in the Atlas Air fleet.
This initial contract has led to a second multi-million dollar agreement for UKEF to finance upgrades of 3 more engines in the coming months.
The announcement comes as International Trade Minister, Mark Garnier, attends the Paris Air Show where the Department for International Trade is exhibiting.
International Trade Minister, Mark Garnier, said:
Our civil aerospace industry is world leading and the Department for International Trade is committed to doing all it can to boost exports and support UK businesses in this sector – including through UKEF where this deal will help do just that, as well as protecting jobs in Scotland.
I’m pleased to be flying the flag for the UK at the world’s oldest and largest Air Show. It’s a real opportunity to meet with potential investors and promote the strengths of the UK aerospace industry.
While at the Paris Air Show, Mark Garnier met with a range of businesses and discussed positioning the UK aerospace sector for the next generation of technology driven growth.
The UK leads the way in whole aircraft capability, particularly in:
It is also well placed to provide access to:
UKEF, Atlas Air and GE may extend the programme, which could see further support worth millions of dollars for the future supply and installation of PIP kits to 33 more of Atlas Air’s engines over the next 4 years.
Last year (2016) the UK aerospace industry generated revenues of £32 billion with £28 billion of production exported.
Highlighting the strengths of this important sector, the Department for International Trade’s investment showcase is in the design of an aircraft cabin. There are 8 windows highlighting some of the international aerospace businesses located in the UK including:
Jun202017
Chinese President Xi Jinping Tuesday underscored centralized and unified leadership to boost integrated military and civilian development.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks at the first plenary meeting of the central commission for integrated military and civilian development, which he heads.
Upgraded as a national strategy, integrated military and civilian development is a major achievement of China’s long-term exploration of coordinated development of economic and national defense construction, Xi said.
It is also a major decision concerning national development and overall security, and a major measure to deal with complicated security threats and gain national strategic advantages, Xi said.
Li Keqiang, Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli, who are all members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and also deputy heads of the commission, also attended the meeting.
Working rules and recent tasks of the commission, as well as a guideline on setting up local leading and working organs for integrated military and civilian development, were adopted at the meeting.
The military and civilian integration must be based on the situation of the country, Xi said, noting the integration process must bear distinctive Chinese characteristics.
“The ideas, decisions and plans of military and civilian integration must be fully implemented in all fields of national economic and defense construction and in the whole processes,” Xi said.
The integration should value national socialist advantage of pooling resources to solve major problems and raising working efficiency, Xi said.
The integration must combine state guidance with the market’s role, and comprehensively employ institutional innovation, policy support and legal guarantee to give full play to military and civilian integration, he said.
Xi also noted that the ultimate approach to deepening military and civilian integration lies in reform and innovation, calling for pilot schemes and exemplary models to explore new ways, and expand new space for military and civilian integration.
He also highlighted the proper use of the law in guiding and protecting the integrating procedure and called for improvement in market entry to encourage a larger number of competent enterprises, staff, technology and capital to play a role.
On deepening integrated military and civilian development, Xi called for focusing on key areas such as infrastructure, national defense-related sci-tech industry, weapon and equipment procurement, talent cultivation, socialization of the support system for the military, as well as the mobilization for national defense.
Ideas and requirements of integrated military and civilian development should be implemented in the fields of sea, outer space, cyber space, biology and new energy, Xi said.
Jun202017
The Committee holds open meetings that members of the public may attend to observe and ask questions.
Jun202017
Plato (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) was adopted at the European Space Agency’s Science Programme Committee meeting today (20 June 2017), following its selection in February 2014. That means work to build the science instrument payload can begin and in the coming months industry will be invited to bid to ESA for the contract to supply the spacecraft.
The UK Space Agency is investing £25 million in the development of the novel scientific instruments on board.
Dr Katherine Wright, Head of Space Science at the UK Space Agency, said:
Investment in Plato builds on UK science and engineering strengths in this area and secures us a leading role on this pre-eminent space science mission for the next decade. Plato has the exciting potential to discover Earth-like planets around other stars, which may eventually lead to the detection of extra-terrestrial life.
Planned to launch in 2026, Plato will monitor thousands of relatively bright stars over a large area of the sky, searching for tiny, regular dips in brightness as their planets cross in front of them, temporarily blocking out a small fraction of the starlight.
Astronomers have so far found over 1,000 planets beyond our Solar System (exoplanets), but none as yet has been shown to be truly Earth-like in terms of its size and distance from a Sun similar to our own.
Plato’s innovative design is set to change all that. Its suite of multiple small telescopes and cameras, reminiscent of the compound eye of an insect, will allow it to ‘stare’ at a large number of the nearest and brightest stars, with the aim of discovering Earth-sized planets orbiting Sun-like stars in the ‘habitable zone’ – the distance from the star where liquid water could exist at the surface.
This will allow them to be studied with unprecedented accuracy and assessed for their potential to host life. An important part of this investigation will be to perform an intricate study of the structure and properties of the host stars themselves, providing key complementary information needed for the proper characterisation of rocky Earth-like exoplanet worlds.
UK scientists and engineers in collaboration with the UK Space Agency are leading participants involved in all aspects of the mission. Prof Don Pollacco, of Warwick University, leads the Plato Science Management Consortium. Scientists and engineers at UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory are responsible for the design and manufacture of the electronics for the camera system that sits behind the telescopes, and for characterising the camera detectors to optimise their performance.
The detectors are charge-coupled devices (CCDs), produced by the e2v company in Chelmsford under contract to ESA. A team of UK scientists, coordinated by Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, is also developing the Exoplanet Analysis data processing system on the ground.