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19/10/2004
Airport security boosted by radioactive scanner project
A ground-breaking 'drive-through' scanner which screens for radioactive material is being developed to improve security at airports, ports and other significant buildings, it has been revealed.
The scanner is being developed through a £99,000 investment from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), the organisation which invests in UK innovation.
It comes as experts warn of inadequacies in existing techniques which detect radiation without identifying the source, resulting in frustrating, expensive and time-consuming false alarms.
"Current technology does not distinguish between a dirty bomb and a cancer patient, a truck load of ceramic tiles or a crate of bananas - all of which are radioactive, to some extent," said Dr Brian Lever, of Southampton-based Symetrica Ltd.
"That's not good enough in the world post 9/11, when security services need to accurately identify radioactive threat materials. Symetrica's unique technology discriminates between materials which do not pose a threat and those that do, offering a crucial new tool in the fight against terror."
The new equipment will be able to immediately distinguish materials which are a threat without the need to send anything off to a laboratory.
(gmcg)
The scanner is being developed through a £99,000 investment from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), the organisation which invests in UK innovation.
It comes as experts warn of inadequacies in existing techniques which detect radiation without identifying the source, resulting in frustrating, expensive and time-consuming false alarms.
"Current technology does not distinguish between a dirty bomb and a cancer patient, a truck load of ceramic tiles or a crate of bananas - all of which are radioactive, to some extent," said Dr Brian Lever, of Southampton-based Symetrica Ltd.
"That's not good enough in the world post 9/11, when security services need to accurately identify radioactive threat materials. Symetrica's unique technology discriminates between materials which do not pose a threat and those that do, offering a crucial new tool in the fight against terror."
The new equipment will be able to immediately distinguish materials which are a threat without the need to send anything off to a laboratory.
(gmcg)
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31 May 2013
A-Level Students Taught Wrong Exam Material
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A-Level Students Taught Wrong Exam Material
Pupils at a school in Suffolk have been told they have been taught the wrong text for their English A-level exam, just two weeks before they were due to sit the paper. Sixth-formers at Newmarket College were studying the Bram Stoker's Gothic text of Dracula, when they should have been studying Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
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