The Bioenergy Association invites owners and operators of waste water treatment plant or anyone interested getting their trade waste processed instead of disposing to landfill to attend this webinar.
The focus of this webinar will be to:
Registration at this webinar is FREE courtesy of EECA Business however registration is essential to be able to access the event.
A new technique called Dense Footprint Cache (DFC) can boost application speed and cut energy use. By improving the efficiency with which computer processors find and retrieve the data they need from memory, researchers from Samsung Electronics and North Carolina State University (NC State) have given computer applications a speed boost of over nine percent, while reducing energy use by over four percent.
Though computers store all data to be manipulated off-chip in main memory (aka RAM), data required regularly by the processor is also temporarily stored in a die-stacked DRAM (dynamic random access memory) cache that allows the data to be retrieved more quickly. This data is stored in large blocks, or macroblocks, that allows the processor to locate the data it needs, but means additional, unwanted data contained in the macroblocks is also retrieved, wasting time and energy.
Balance of Payments and International Investment Position: Year ended 31 March 2016Key facts at 31 March 2016:
Balance of Payments and International Investment Position: Year ended 31 March 2016 – tables
The Productivity Commission released its draft report “New models of tertiary education” today.
The report is a detailed inquiry into how well New Zealand’s tertiary education system is set up to respond to, and take advantage of, trends in technology, internationalisation, population, tuition costs and demand for skills. As part of the inquiry, the Commission was asked to identify potential barriers to innovation.
“A good tertiary education system is one that meets the needs of all learners – including those from diverse backgrounds and with diverse goals. Our current system serves many students well and does many things very well. However, its design and operation constrain innovation and perpetuate certain inequalities - even though there have been some improvements” says Commission Chair, Murray Sherwin.
“Over time, additional rules and regulations have been added to the system as new fiscal and political risks have emerged. The result is a tightly controlled and inflexible system. This report and its package of recommendations seek to cut through regulatory and administrative knots.”
Key recommendations include better quality control; making it easier for students to transfer between courses; abolishing University Entrance; enabling tertiary institutions to own and control their assets; making it easier for new providers to enter the system; and facilitating more and faster innovation by tertiary education providers.
While the Commission believes that those changes would enable the tertiary education system to be more innovative and better cope in the face of emerging trends, it also believes that such changes would be vulnerable to reversal without a substantive change to the current funding system.
That’s why the Commission is seeking feedback on the concept of a Student Education Account – a student-centric model which shifts purchasing power of the Government’s current tertiary education spend of about $2.8 billion each year from providers to students.
Mr Sherwin says the Student Education Account is a high level concept that warrants further discussion and development.
“A Student Education Account would reorient the system around student needs and preferences. This would provide a model that embraces innovation rather than stymies it. All students, including those who currently miss out on the opportunities of a good post compulsory education, and those adult students seeking retraining as job markets change, would have access to funding to meet their needs.
“Instead of the Government channelling funding through subsidies to providers, the same money would go directly into individual student accounts – potentially up to $45,000 for every young person turning 16 years of age – enabling purchase of approved training from licensed providers.
“While the Commission is confident its recommendations can help to make the tertiary education system more open and responsive to emerging trends, the Government needs a different regulatory and funding model if it is to cut through the inertia and facilitate the development of innovative models of tertiary education. This report aims to provoke discussion on how that can best be done.”
Next steps
The Commission is seeking submissions from all interested parties. Submissions are due by 21 November 2016, and the Commission’s final report to the Government is due February 2017.
The draft report and details on how to make a submission are available at www.productivity.govt.nz.
About the inquiry
The Government has asked the Productivity Commission to carry out an inquiry into “new models of tertiary education”. The inquiry takes a whole-of-system perspective, considering how trends – especially in technology, tuition costs, skill demand, demography and internationalisation – may drive changes in business models and delivery models in the tertiary sector.
Inquiry timeline
21 November: Due date for submissions on the draft reportFebruary 2017: Final report due to Government
New Zealand Pharmaceuticals, the specialty biopharmaceuticals manufacturer, is researching ways to use alternative raw materials in the manufacture of new products due to a potential shortage of bile supply from cows.
The 45-year-old company was originally set up by a consortium of New Zealand meat companies to extract and purify biochemicals from meat processing by-products. Its first products were pharmaceutical intermediaries for the global healthcare market, extracted from cow and sheep bile.
The Manawatu-based company is best known for making high purity bile acids, which comprise the majority of turnover. It’s the world’s second-largest manufacturer of cholic acid, which is used in a range of pharmaceutical and diagnostic applications such as treatments for liver disease.
After Andy Lewis took over the chief executive role in 2010 he decided the company, which now has 150 staff in New Zealand and the UK, had got too diversified and needed to “defend on bile acids”. His strategy involves developing new bile acids which are used in modern western medicines and traditional Chinese (Eastern) medicines.
An NZP business development scientist spent two years travelling the world talking to drug companies and research groups to identify bile acids being evaluated for new therapeutic uses as varied as oncology, neurodegenerative and metabolic disorders including type . . .
Who: Sophie Punte, Executive Director of the Smart Freight Centre. Ms Punte will address attendees on the role of collaboration referencing global examples of best practice, some of the levers and trends that have enabled this and look at what can be applied in our country.
What: EECA and Sustainable Business Council seminar about how we can create a low emissions freight sector for New Zealand.
Where: Auckland Beca auditorium, Ground Floor, 21 Pitt St
When: 11.55am – 12.30pm, Wednesday 5 October
About Sophie PunteSophie Punte is the Executive Director of the Smart Freight Centre she founded in 2013 as a mission-driven organisation to catalyse more efficient and environmentally sustainable freight on a global scale. Previously, as Executive Director of Clean Air Asia, Sophie played a lead role in putting green freight on the agenda of Asian governments and establishing the China Green Freight Initiative and Green Freight Asia. Sophie also worked at the United Nations, KPMG, the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment and Opus International Consultants on environmental management and corporate sustainability. She holds a Master of Science (Biology) and a Master of Environmental Management from the Netherlands.
New Zealand media outlets have reported broken glass falling from buildings posing potentially very serious risks to public safety. Over recent years there have been a number of such instances and some links to the articles are provided herein.
In many cases the breakage issue relates to toughened glass in buildings which when it breaks, breaks completely into small fragments and these can fall onto the street below posing a high risk of injury. The most common cause of these panes to suddenly explode and fall out of the frame without warning is attributed to Nickle Sulphide (NiS) inclusions in the glass. These particle inclusions are not visible to the human eye and exist in many panes of glass in buildings today. Often their presence in the glass does not lead to a breakage but sometimes tiny cracks can propagate from the inclusion overtime and eventually unbalance the forces in the toughened glass pane causing the whole pane to explode into fragments. Often following a pane explosion the fragments will fall from the window ‘clumped’ together so if falling from height onto a passer-by below then serious injury or worse is the risk. Glass manufacturers cannot avoid these particle inclusions during manufacturing and they cannot detect them without cost prohibitive examination so the result is millions of panes of glass with a potential spontaneous failure trigger.
On a particular high profile project in Australia, the window film manufacturer Saint-Gobain Solar Gard has been recently involved. In this instance a number of glass panes exploded in a high rise apartment building in Sydney over a period of 2 years from 2010 to 2012 inclusive. These panes of broken glass then fell many stories. Fortunately no one was hit by the falling glass but the risk of injury was deemed severe.
A remedial action involved Saint-Gobain Solar Gard working with engineers to design a method that included Solar Gard security film being applied to the glass combined with other retention methods that met the criteria set by the relevant insurance company for the building.
For such toughened glass breakage mitigation projects the product / technical solution involves two aspects: 1. Applying a clear security film onto the glass to hold the broken glass fragments together 2. Securing the security film to the window frame to hold the glass + film against falling (retention)
The Saint Gobain Solar Gard technical response team are experts in designing unique and custom designed film and retention solutions against spontaneous glass breakage risks in buildings.
As mentioned, over recent years there have been a number of media reports over New Zealand where glass has spontaneously broken. In the first three articles below the post breakage fracture pattern proves the pane was toughened glass. In the Dunedin Mall article there is no picture and the article mentions the pane breaking into two pieces which would not be toughened glass however this article still helps to highlight the dangers of overhead glass and if security film had been fitted this glass is unlikely to have fallen out; 1 - Central Wellington Apartment building 12th May 2016 http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/303649/glass-balcony-sheets-fall-from-wellington-high-rise 2 - Christchurch Public Hospital February 2016 http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/76638610/Glass-shatters-falls-from-canopy-at-Christchurch- Hospital-entrance 3 - Willis Street Escalators September 2015 http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/71927722/large-glass-pane-shatters-over-1-willis-st- escalators 4- Dunedin mall March 2015 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/334867/mall-glass-failure-not-structural
In the absence of the post breakage analysis for the above reports assuming that there has been analysis has even been carried out it cannot be categorically said that nickel sulphide inclusion is the cause of these failures however regardless of failure mode they all highlight the significant danger to the public and property from unsecured glass breaking and falling from height.
Retrofit to any glass, security film from Solar Gard can greatly improves the safety of existing buildings while being visually unobtrusive, quick and cost effective versus any other glass safety measure.
Distributed in New Zealand by:-Specialty Window Films 3D/89 Ellice Road Glenfield AucklandTel (09) 441 0040Contact:- Ross EathorneEmail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
A Solar Gard release - Wednesday 28 September 2016
Campaign will boost house prices –Depress Competitive Edge.
Napier industrialist Ken Evans is cautioning Come-to-Live in Hawkes Bay promoters that they run the risk of creating the very problems that their target market of Auckland residents are fleeing to escape. This is a property prices spiral along with associated pressure on education and health services.
Mr Evans warns that Napier especially is one of the nation’s leading repositories of engineering and technical skills and that this was sustained by affordable housing and the presence of high grade education along with health care.
“Competition for housing will make it hard for the Hawkes Bay productive sector to attract the skilled people that industry requires.”
He warned that this kind of civic boosting in New Zealand in the past had become effectively taken over by real estate interests.The result had been pressure on the existing infrastructure and also property inflation which in turn pushed house prices beyond the grasp of younger people needed by the area’s industry.
He noted also that this kind of property pressure meant that speculators entered the picture putting pressure on industrial sites as they sought to convert them into residential subdivisions.
Contrary to an impression being deliberately nurtured in Auckland, he said, Napier was not a dormitory city or a retirement haven.
The New Zealand pattern he noted was for wealth to be generated in the provinces such as Hawkes Bay and spent in places like Auckland and Wellington.
The productive capacity of Hawkes Bay should not be damaged by a self-created property boom and accompanying residential shortage, warned Mr Evans.
All this would have the effect of the region finding it increasingly harder to attract the skilled people required to underpin the local productive economy. He warned also that there had been early signs of district utilities failing to maintain required standards through failure to put in place adequate safeguards to cope with increased land-use.
It was often ignored he said that in industries such as process engineering that Hawkes Bay was in direct competition with Australia, not to mention Asia.
Attracting skilled employees through affordable housing remains a vital competitive edge in bringing them to Hawkes Bay, he said.
Mr Evans was reminded that in the Central District, notably Palmerston North, there had been several intense community – led such drives. He said though that Palmerston North’s development campaigns had been launched in order to balance the city’s predominantly state and public sector employment in the form of Massey University, various research institutes, and training establishments such as the Teachers training College.
This imbalance did not exist in the mainly enterprise Hawkes Bay he said. Therefore it was essential that the area retained its competitive edge in the form of providing younger families with affordable housing.
From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk - Wednesday 28 September 2016
Fox Solutions, a fresh produce packing house equipment supplier, is proud to announce the release of its full stainless steel construction Pouch Bagger.
The Pouch Bagger is custom built specifically for fresh produce handling, to support the growing trend of pouch bags in the industry while keeping food safety top of mind. In working with their customers to identify areas for operational efficiencies, Fox Solutions saw a need to simplify and streamline the pouch bagging process that has been a largely manual practice or been done with equipment retrofitted for fresh produce.
Port Otago continues to deliver, reporting an improved dividend of $7.3 million to its parent Otago Regional Council (ORC) for the year to June 2016.
Group profit was recorded as $34.1 million compared to $52.4 million for 2015, though last year’s results included $27.9 million from the sale of the Port’s strategic investment in the Lyttelton Port Company.
The performance came on the back of a 6% increase in export container volumes and higher investment property valuations. It wasn’t all plain sailing however, with lower log volumes, reduced containerised imports and less cruise vessels impacting the result.
Container throughput of 172,400 teu (twenty foot equivalent units) was slightly off prior year’s volumes, log exports from both Dunedin and Port Chalmers were at 813,000 tonnes from last year’s record 840,000 tonnes and cruise ship visits were down six from last season to 70 vessels.
Logs continued to represent more than 60% of total conventional tonnage of 1.3 million tonnes.
Rental income from Port Otago’s property investment subsidiary Chalmers Properties Limited (CPL) contributed $14 million to revenue of $77.8 million. CPL’s portfolio was valued at $296 million, an increase of $32 million from the previous year largely as a result of a 24% increase in the Auckland portfolio to $112 million. 50% of the value of the portfolio, however, remains in Dunedin.
Port operations capital expenditure of $30.7 million, funded through cash and a $1.1 million increase in borrowings, reflected the cost of the ‘Next Generation’ infrastructural work including channel and berth deepening of $4.7 million, warehouse expansions of $12.6 million and the purchase of the tug Arihi and barge Hapuka for a combined $8.2 million.
Presenting the results to the ORC today, Port Otago chairman David Faulkner said the results had been gratifying in light of some challenging economic circumstances during the year.
“Our improved export full container volume is a very good outcome considering that one of our most important exports, dairy, was down by 5%.”
Faulkner said that it was exciting to have 87 cruise vessels confirmed for the upcoming season, including the 348 metre Ovation of the Seas which would arrive this December. “It will be a busy time for the port but also for the greater economy of the region.”
Faulkner said a clear highlight of the year had been progress made across the $45 million ‘Next Generation’ infrastructural upgrade. “This programme will have massive benefits for our business and for exporters, allowing new generation vessels more flexibility to add more cargo and improve their efficiency because they can arrive deeper at Port Chalmers and then sail deeper too.”
“Port Otago is bang on target with the other elements of this programme, including extensions to the warehouse storage capacity at both Port Chalmers and Sawyers Bay, delivery of both the tug Arihi and barge Hapuka and work now commencing on dredging to the next stage 14-metre channel depth, which should be completed by this time next year.”
Port Otago also recently announced a $15 million, 135m extension to the existing 300m multipurpose wharf at Port Chalmers.
Faulkner confirmed that tenders for that work would go out next month with construction due to start from May next year.
“Driving all of this has been our executive management team, led by port CEO Geoff Plunket. Recently we announced Geoff’s intention to retire at the end of 2017, providing enough to time to recruit a new CEO. The board is well advanced in that process and would expect to make an announcement by November.
“Ahead of his retirement, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the board to thank Geoff for his leadership of the company over the past 12 years. Board member Ross Black also retired during the year, following a 21-year involvement with the company. Ross’s leadership was instrumental to the ongoing success of the port and the board wishes him well.”
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242