FENCING OUT FELINES:
Stray cats in Japan
are in for a rude
shock when they
walk into private
gardens unsuspectingly. Japanese biochemists have come up with environment friendly chemicals that emit
odours disliked by cats. A single can
of Sunstar Inc's Noraneko Shinnyu
Kinshi ('Entry banned for stray cats)
spray covers, an area of three sq m
and is effective for about a month,
come rain or shine. The product is
plant-based and safe for animals and
its smell is not offensive to people,
according to the company. A four can set retails for US $39.60.
REPLICATING NATURE: Colours manufactured by Capsein Bio-Lab Ltd of
Madras would be a shade more natural than other colours. A Rs 9.18
crore project is being set up for the
production of "natural colours
(pigments) with a variety of botanicals like leaves, flowem
and rhizomes through extraction
technology," said E G Jagannath,
the company's technical director.
Colours would be produced with
super critical fluid extraction technology, wherein colours and other
extractables would be isolated with
highly pressurised liquefied carbon dioxide.
SUNNY VENTURE:
Investing in solar
power seems to
have become a
profitable venture
these days. XL
Telecom, which
sees a bleak future
in manufacturing heat-shrink cable
jointing kits, recently unveiled its
plans to diversify into the solar
energy sector. Estimated to cost
Rs, 25 crore, the project will be
implemented in three phases.
The company has entered into a
technical collaboration with Spire
Corporation of the US to supply
solar cell manufacturing machines.
SEEDS OF PROFIT: Intercorp Industries
Ltd will invest Rs 18.37 crore in a
biotech project coming up in Alwar
district of Rajasthan. State-of-the-art
technology will be used to produce
and export sunflower, soyabean and
mustard seeds to the tune of 5,000
tonnes per annum. The company had
imported parent seeds three years
back which found good response
am Iong Indian farmers as the seeds
were treated with fungicides and
coloured to repel birds. The seeds
meet the export standards with high
oil content, early maturity and disease repelling qualities.
CHIP'ING AHEAD: Fast, faster and
fastest seems to be the motto for
hardware engineers at Exponential
Technology Inc, US, who are going
for faster than the fastest microprocessor chips
with backing from
the US-based Apple
Computer Inc. The
chips, expected to
be out in early 1997,
will he two to three
times faster than
the other chips while running the
same software used on Apple's
Macintosh and IBM computers. The
chips, are likely to triple the internal
speed of the fastest Pentium from
Intel Corp, which operates at 133
cycles per second.
SHOOTING SNOWFLAKES: Skiers around
the world are in for a good skiing season thanks to a biotech product
called snomax. It is an 'ice nucleating' protein made by a bacterium
found abundantly in the environment) and is used in snow making
equipment. Genecor, an industrial
biotechnology company in the
US, manufactures snomax commercially. Ski resorters add the frozen
protein to water before firing it at
high pressure from a snow gun.
Water droplets crystallise around the
snomax particles in the cold air and
form artificial snowflakes. Genecor
sells 15,000-20,000 kg of snomax to
400 ski resorts worldwide.
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