EU China solar panel trade war looms

It is considering imposing an average "anti-dumping" import tariff of 47%, with a decision expected by 5 June.

The EC argues China unfairly subsidises its solar panel firms, putting Europe's manufacturers at a disadvantage.

But some European solar panel makers are warning that such a move would amount to "dangerous protectionism".

"Protective duties are poisonous for the solar industry", said Udo Mohrstedt, chief executive of IBC Solar, a Germany-based global manufacturer.

"These guarding measures will endanger more than 70,000 jobs in medium-sized companies in Germany alone. The Commission must stop this dangerous protectionism."

Wouter Vermeersch, chief executive of the Belgian company Cleantec Trade, agrees.

"The solar business is very price sensitive", he said in a statement issued by the Alliance for Affordable Solar Energy, where Cleantec is a member.

"Solar companies already had to cope with continuously decreasing feed-in tariffs in the past.

"If prices are artificially increased by punitive tariffs, the European solar market would simply come to a standstill with disastrous effects on green jobs."

Trade dispute

Trade officials from all 27 countries in the European Union are expected to be briefed on the proposals at in meeting on 15 May.

The provisional tariffs would be imposed even though the EC's official investigation is only nine months into its 15-month duration.

The EC can do this if it considers there is clear evidence that companies are being harmed.

If the EC believes China has not altered its trade practices after the full 15-month investigation comes to an end in December, the provisional tariffs could be imposed for five years.

The case, involving over 100 Chinese companies exporting photovoltaic and solar panels worth 21bn euros (£17.8bn; £27.7bn) a year, is the EU's largest ever trade dispute.

The Chinese could appeal against the EU's decision to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and to the World Trade Organisation

Giant gas platform sinks below waves

It will house a giant compressor claimed to be the world’s biggest offshore machine.

The Statoil equipment has been designed to pump some $30bn worth of gas from a depleted gas field.

It’s a technological leap for Statoil to place the compressor on the sea bed instead of on a typical platform perched above the waves.But environmentalists say as a state-owned enterprise, Statoil should concentrate on saving carbon emissions rather than seeking more hydrocarbons.

This megaproject is a gamble. Statoil say for the same price as a compressor on a platform - $2bn - they can retrieve more gas using 30-50% less energy with a compressor on the sea floor, nearer to the gas deposit.

“We are very excited about this,” Margareth Ovrum, who’s overseeing the project, told me at the construction yard in Egersund near Stavangar.

“This is a really major leap in technology. We are very proud of it and we are confident that it’s going to work.”The underwater giant will be serviced by robots. The trickiest part of the operation will be keeping the electrics dry when the compressor’s plugged in.

If it all succeeds, Statoil engineers dream that one day they may dispense with oil and gas platforms altogether and place entire drilling operations on the sea bed.

This would open the possibility of drilling in ever deeper water, and also possibly in the Arctic where icebergs would pass overhead if the water is deep enough.Environmentalists in Norway are angry that Statoil is trying to retrieve more fossil fuels when experts say we can safely burn just a third of what we have already found.

Truls Gulowsen from Greenpeace, Norway, told BBC News: "It may make commercial logic for Statoil to maximise production from this field, but fossil fuel companies and governments are stuck in the mindset that they have to retrieve every last barrel.“Norway has been a leader in clean technology. The (Norwegian) government should insist that it turns its technology investments to renewable energy systems and doesn’t keep pressing ahead with a strategy that will destroy the climate.”

Statoil is actually a leader in developing carbon capture and storage technology that might allow the world to carry on burning fossil fuels, but the project is a poor relation compared with the prestigious adventure under the waves.

A couple of hours drive north of Stavanger lies the experimental Mongstat technology centre where a consortium of firms led by Statoil is testing two types of carbon capture equipment on two types of exhaust.

The units use amine and ammonia on exhausts from a gas-fired power station and an oil refinery (which has a similar composition to exhaust from a coal-fired power station).Frank Ellingsen, who runs the centre, says it needs much more investment in different types of technology from different companies to bring the costs down.He told me: “We know we can capture 90% of the CO2 (from the exhausts) but it’s far too expensive. If governments really want this technology to work they will have to put policies in place to make it work.”

But there appears little international will to force carbon capture into the mainstream and the technology is years behind schedule.

One of Frank’s colleagues at the technology centre put it in a nutshell: “There’s a clear commercial logic to the underwater compressor,” he told me. “We can make tens of billions of dollars."

“We’re an oil and gas company – of course people are excited by a massive operation like that on the sea bed. Do you see that level of excitement about capturing the CO2 that’s emitted? Of course you don’t.”

New Laser-Based Tool Could Dramatically Improve the Accuracy of Brain Tumor Surgery

A new laser-based technology may make brain tumor surgery much more accurate, allowing surgeons to tell cancer tissue from normal brain at the microscopic level while they are operating, and avoid leaving behind cells that could spawn a new tumor.

In a new paper, featured on the cover of the journal Science Translational Medicine, a team of University of Michigan Medical School and Harvard University researchers describes how the technique allows them to "see" the tiniest areas of tumor cells in brain tissue.

They used this technique to distinguish tumor from healthy tissue in the brains of living mice -- and then showed that the same was possible in tissue removed from a patient with glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most deadly brain tumors.

Now, the team is working to develop the approach, called SRS microscopy, for use during an operation to guide them in removing tissue, and test it in a clinical trial at U-M. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

A need for improvement in tumor removal

On average, patients diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme live only 18 months after diagnosis. Surgery is one of the most effective treatments for such tumors, but less than a quarter of patients' operations achieve the best possible results, according to a study published last fall in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

"Though brain tumor surgery has advanced in many ways, survival for many patients is still poor, in part because surgeons can't be sure that they've removed all tumor tissue before the operation is over," says co-lead author Daniel Orringer, M.D., a lecturer in the U-M Department of Neurosurgery who has worked with the Harvard team since a chance meeting with a team member during his U-M residency.

"We need better tools for visualizing tumor during surgery, and SRS microscopy is highly promising," he continues. "With SRS we can see something that's invisible through conventional surgical microscopy."

The SRS in the technique's name stands for stimulated Raman scattering. Named for C.V. Raman, one of the Indian scientists who co-discovered the effect and shared a 1930 Nobel Prize in physics for it, Raman scattering involves allows researchers to measure the unique chemical signature of materials.

In the SRS technique, they can detect a weak light signal that comes out of a material after it's hit with light from a non-invasive laser. By carefully analyzing the spectrum of colors in the light signal, the researchers can tell a lot about the chemical makeup of the sample.

Over the past 15 years, Sunney Xie, Ph.D., of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University -- the senior author of the new paper -- has advanced the technique for high-speed chemical imaging. By amplifying the weak Raman signal by more than 10,000 times, it is now possible to make multicolor SRS images of living tissue or other materials. The team can even make 30 new images every second -- the rate needed to create videos of the tissue in real time.

Seeing the brain's microscopic architecture

A multidisciplinary team of chemists, neurosurgeons, pathologists and others worked to develop and test the tool. The new paper is the first time SRS microscopy has been used in a living organism to see the "margin" of a tumor -- the boundary area where tumor cells infiltrate among normal cells. That's the hardest area for a surgeon to operate -- especially when a tumor has invaded a region with an important function.

As the images in the paper show, the technique can distinguish brain tumor from normal tissue with remarkable accuracy, by detecting the difference between the signal given off by the dense cellular structure of tumor tissue, and the normal healthy grey and white matter.

The authors suggest that SRS microscopy may be as accurate for detecting tumor as the approach currently used in brain tumor diagnosis -- called H&E staining.

The paper contains data from a test that pitted H&E staining directly against SRS microscopy. Three surgical pathologists, trained in studying brain tissue and spotting tumor cells, had nearly the same level of accuracy no matter which images they studied. But unlike H&E staining, SRS microscopy can be done in real time, and without dyeing, removing or processing the tissue.

Next steps: A smaller laser, a clinical trial

The current SRS microscopy system is not yet small or stable enough to use in an operating room. The team is collaborating with a start-up company formed by members of Xie's group, called Invenio Imaging Inc., which is developing a laser to perform SRS through inexpensive fiber-optic components. The team is also working with AdvancedMEMS Inc. to reduce the size of the probe that makes the images possible.

A validation study, to examine tissue removed from consenting U-M brain tumor patients, may begin as soon as next year.

Biologists Uncover Surprising Connection Between Breast Cancer Cells and Surrounding Tissue

 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Biologist Lee Ligon has found a previously unknown connection between breast cancer tumor cells and the surrounding healthy tissue. The results provide new information on the earliest stages of breast cancer metastasis.

The results were published March 7, 2012, in the journal ,PLoS One. Ligon was joined in the research by Rensselaer doctoral student Maria Apostolopoulou. The research was funded by the American Cancer Society.

The research shows that a specialized type of molecule called Cadherin-23 can be found in and around breast cancer tumors. The molecule, which had never been associated with breast tissue or cancer, helps connect cancerous tumor cells to its neighboring healthy tissue, called the stroma.

"Something happens once cancerous cells enter the stroma and the cancer can very quickly become invasive," Ligon said. "Pathologists studying cancerous tissues have often noted that tumor cells make contact with the cells in the stroma, but they assumed the connections were unimportant."

Ligon and her team sought to uncover exactly what molecules were involved in attaching the tumor cells to the surrounding tissue to determine if those initial points of contact play a role in the progression of cancer through the body.

In the human breast, tumors most often originate in what are known as epithelial tissues. These tissues are made up of a specialized type of cell called epithelial cells. Epithelial cells line the interior of many structures and organs within the human body. In the breast, they line the interior of milk ducts. When epithelial cells start to divide uncontrollably, they eventually break out of the duct and literally spill into the surround tissue or stroma. The stroma is composed of cells called fibroblasts and extracellular material such as collagen fibers. In many cases, the invading cancerous epithelial cells will glom onto nearby fibroblasts in the stroma.

Ligon and Apostolopoulou worked to pick apart how the epithelial cells attached themselves to the fibroblasts. One of the primary tools the body uses to glue cells together is a family of molecules called cadherins. In the human genome there are over 80 different cadherin family members. In most cases, cadherins stick two cells of the same type together. In the case of the breast cancer tumor cells and fibroblasts, two very different cells were sticking together. Ligon sought to determine which cadherins were involved in this odd interaction.

At first, their findings were not surprising. They found cadherins associated with epithelial cells as well as cadherins associated with fibroblasts. It was the discovery of the highly specialized and unusual cadherin, Cadherin-23, that really surprised them, according to Ligon.

"Cadherin-23 has never before been associated with cancer," Ligon said. "In fact, it has previously only been shown in the sophisticated inner workings of the ear and retina."

It is still largely unknown what happens once the cells have made a connection, but the appearance of Cadherin-23 in elevated levels in cancerous tissues suggests that it might play a real role in the earliest stages of metastasis, according to Ligon. Cadherin-23 is a new and potentially very important new component in the progression of cancer for scientists to investigate, she said.

Uncovering Cancer's Inner Workings by Capturing Live Images of Growing Tumors

Scientists seeking new ways to fight cancer often try to understand the subtle, often invisible, changes to DNA, proteins, cells, and tissue that alter the body's normal biology and cause disease. Now, to aid in that fight, a team of researchers has developed a sophisticated new optical imaging tool that enables scientists to look deep within tumors and uncover their inner workings. In experiments that will be described at Frontiers in Optics (FiO), The Optical Society's (OSA) Annual Meeting, Dai Fukumura and his colleagues will present new optical imaging techniques to track the movement of molecules, cells, and fluids within tumors; examine abnormalities in the blood vessel network inside them; and observe how the tumors were affected by treatments.

These techniques, created by Fukumura and his long-term collaborators at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, combine two different high-tech optical imaging methods that were custom-built for the research. One is called multiphoton laser-scanning microscopy (MPLSM), which is an advanced fluorescence imaging technology that is now commercially available at the high end of the microscope market. The other is called optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI), which images tissues by their light scattering properties. According to Fukumura, OFDI is gaining popularity in the optical imaging field but has yet to become commercially available.

"MPLSM overcomes many of the limitations from which conventional microscopy and confocal microscopy suffer, and OFDI provides robust large volume imaging data," Fukumura said.

Fukumura will present their research at FiO 2013, taking place Oct. 6-10 in Orlando, Fla. There, he will describe how his unique technique can image tumors inside and out, and show detailed pictures of live tumors -- images that he and colleagues call "astonishing."

He added that while the new combined approach would be too expensive to be used for routine diagnostic purposes, it promises to help researchers better understand the intricate workings of human cancer and aid in drug discovery to treat cancer. "These optical imaging approaches can provide unprecedented insights in the biology and mechanisms of cancer," he said.

Will Cheap Natural Gas Change US Steel Production?

Cheap natural gas unleashed from previously unreachable shale sources could eventually provide a boost to U.S. steel manufacturers, but the benefits have not shown up in their bottom lines just yet.

A recent Credit Suisse Research Institute report, entitled “The Shale Revolution,” said ongoing development of shale natural gas “is set to unleash significant capital spending” that stands to benefit the steel industry and others in the long term. For one thing, steel piping is a key component in the exploration process, as it can take thousands of feet of pipe to reach underground shale rock formations. In addition, any future rebound in domestic manufacturing that occurs as a result of inexpensive, abundant natural gas could also increase demand for steel. Finally, steel companies could benefit in the long run if cheap natural gas lowers the cost of energy inputs.

“In terms of demand, steel will play an important part in both oil and gas infrastructure, including many specialist applications,” the report said. “On the supply side, steelmakers would benefit from using natural gas in the steel-making process, with potential material cost savings and margin enhancement if they can retain them.”

For now, though, the potential remains largely theoretical. An abundance of domestic shale resources has pushed natural gas prices down, and rig counts have actually been declining since late last year. The U.S. continues to import large amounts of steel, and new capacity is coming online domestically, creating oversupply issues that have kept steel prices weak.

Foreign competitors enjoy large steel inventories and low labor costs, making it likely that steel imports will continue. That is among the reasons industry players are cautious about domestic growth projections.

At the same time, large steel companies have made several significant investments in the United States recently. A $750 million plant built by North Carolina-based Nucor Corp is scheduled to start operating later this year in Louisiana. Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine AG plans to build a roughly $700 million plant to make an intermediate material for steel in Texas, and Vallourec SA’s V&M Star spent $650 million on an Ohio plant to supply tubular steel pipes specifically for oil and gas development.

The industry itself is hopeful about the potential natural gas holds.

“Natural gas is a game changer for our industry,” American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) President and CEO Thomas Gibson told The Financialist in an email. “The industry is developing new options and technologies for the production of steel as a result of natural gas availability.”

The steel industry is vulnerable to unforeseen economic pressures, such as rising energy costs, and some manufacturers have opted to explore alternative production methods, such as using natural gas instead of coal. Either energy source can be used to purify, or remove oxygen, from iron ore – a key ingredient in steel. Coal was the industry go-to method, but that’s changing as natural gas from shale sources becomes a cheaper option than coal.

“As an energy-intensive industry, the domestic steel industry’s international competitiveness depends on our ability to capitalize on the discovery and development of North America’s shale resources,” said Gibson, of the AISI. “Our industry consumes large amounts of natural gas and will benefit from the increased supply resulting from shale production, which keeps gas both reliable and available at a low cost.”

For the time being, the U.S. holds a competitive advantage in producing shale gas. The Boston Consulting Group expects U.S. natural gas to be about 50 to 70 percent cheaper than in other large developed economies such as Japan, China and Europe.

“The ability for Europe and China to get mass quantities over the next few years is unlikely, so the U.S. will have the advantage,” said Hal Sirkin, a senior partner in BCG’s Chicago office. Sirkin said it would take “many years” before other countries were able to mass-produce shale gas.

Sirkin said it is too early to anticipate what will happen with steel industry investments, partly because the prices of iron ore remain volatile. One thing, however, seems certain.

“There’s clearly going to be a reduction in steel production costs,” Sirkin said.

Oil Company Exposure to Egypt and Libya

With protests forcing shutdowns at key oil shipping ports in Libya and violent political upheaval roiling Egypt, Credit Suisse energy analysts assessed which oil and gas companies’ operations are most exposed to conditions in the two North African countries.

The energy companies most exposed in terms of value to Egypt and Libya are Vienna-based OMV, Houston-based Apache Corp., Spanish oil giant Repsol, Italian multinational ENI and British natural gas company BG Group, Credit Suisse integrated oil and gas analysts wrote in a note this week entitled “North African Summer: Egypt, Libya and the Companies.” Of the 13 major energy companies Credit Suisse analyzed, the ones that rely on Egypt for the highest percentage of their total oil and natural gas output are Apache and BG Group, which have an estimated 20 percent and 18 percent of total production in the country, respectively. OMV and Repsol have the highest production exposure to Libya, with operations in the country representing 11 percent and 10 percent of their respective total production.

But just because companies source a great deal of production from Egypt and Libya doesn’t mean that operations in those countries account for an equally large chunk of their income. “While the share of production to the group is high, these countries are somewhat lower profit areas for these corporates,” Credit Suisse’s energy analysts wrote. Libya, for example, has very high tax rates that reduce the cash flow to oil companies with operations there, they noted. The ratio between production and cash flow is not equal in Egypt, either. BG only earned 15 percent of its net income from Egypt last year despite the fact that 20 percent of its natural gas production took place in the country, the analysts noted.

Even in net asset value terms, however, Apache has the most exposure to Egypt, with the country accounting for 17 percent of the total estimated net asset value for this year. OMV has the most exposure to Libya, with its operations there accounting for 22 percent of its total estimated net asset value.So far, the biggest impact of the unrest in the region has been on Libyan oil exports. The OPEC member has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, estimated at roughly 47 billion barrels, according to the United States Energy Information Administration. Production has fallen by 1 million barrels per day to just 600,000 barrels per day since the end of June, when oil workers began striking. The strike has mainly impacted oil export infrastructure in the eastern part of the country, including the area around the Sirte Basin, which contains 75 percent of Libya’s commercial oil reserves, Credit Suisse commodities analysts wrote in a recent note, “Commodities Advantage: Fundamentals in the Driver’s Seat.”

Egypt is the largest non-OPEC oil producer, producing about 720,000 barrels of oil each year. But the country’s role as an energy transit route is more important than its actual production levels, Credit Suisse energy analysts pointed out, as the government operates both the Suez Canal and the Suez-Mediterranean pipeline. Three million barrels per day of oil – about 2.5 percent of the world’s crude oil trade – and 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas moved through these transit points in both directions last year. But even the revolution in 2011 that resulted in the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak didn’t do much to disrupt operations, and the current unrest hasn’t either. But Credit Suisse oil company analysts pointed out that turmoil does tend to impact things like getting permits approved and customers paying the bills on time. “It is fair to assume that the current uncertainties may somewhat delay payments to oil companies,” analysts wrote.

But Credit Suisse cautioned that the bigger concern when it comes to Egypt is the prospect of unrest there exacerbating problems in Libya and other neighboring countries. “It is worth mentioning the effect that the current unrest in Egypt may have on neighboring Middle East and North African countries, especially Libya, which has already been seeing disruption to oil production amidst oil sector protests,” analysts wrote. “If the conflict continues in Egypt, the number of people trying to cross into Libya may prove another issue for the Libyan government to deal with.” The bank’s commodity analysts went one step further, saying that Libya’s continued instability and proximity to Egypt “present a large upside risk to oil markets,” meaning that the situation threatens to drive oil prices higher.

Brent crude oil prices had already been heading north for reasons other than the Middle East unrest, Credit Suisse commodity analysts said in a recent note entitled “Fundamentals in the Driver’s Seat.” “After disappointing output from the North Sea and strangely low Urals availability in Europe, cuts in Nigeria and Algerian loading schedules have in the last few weeks been compounded by a sharp deterioration of Libya’s supplies.” How long that particular deterioration lasts – and whether or not it will get worse – remains unclear.

The Three Wheel Revolution

Millions of urban dwellers around the world have adopted the scooter as their primary means of negotiating the crowded streets and limited parking of 21st-century cities. Given the scooter’s popularity everywhere from Rome to Bangkok, it may seem like changing to the vehicle’s design would be a fool’s errand. But three-wheeled scooters first designed in 2006 are finally starting to make headway in the North American market after garnering a dedicated following in Europe. While these three-wheelers may look a bit like a lunar module for the urban set, they combine the nimble steering and fuel economy of standard two-wheelers with the balance and stability of an automobile.

In hindsight, adding a third wheel may seem like an obvious way to give riders better balance. But creating a design that provided more stability without sacrificing a scooter’s capacity to tilt and turn was inherently complicated. Piaggio engineers came up with a patented suspension and steering system that does exactly that, allowing drivers to turn as they would in a standard two-wheeled scooter, but with a reduced chance of tilting too far and losing control. A locking system also kicks in when the scooter is at a full stop, so riders don’t have to bring their feet to the ground to stabilize the vehicle.

The market has been getting more crowded since Piaggio launched the three-wheeled MP3. In 2007, Can-Am, the Canadian manufacturer of recreational vehicles, added its own twist to the three-wheel concept with the Spyder, a motorcycle crossover with a front-end, two-wheel Y-axis powered by a 100-horsepower engine. Italian scooter-maker Quadro Vehicles first entered the fray in 2010, but recently introduced an on- and off-road scooter. In May, French automaker Peugeot released the Metropolis, a three-wheeler powered by a 400 cc engine.

These companies are betting on the same trend as Piaggio ­– namely, that three-wheeled scooters will benefit from a growing demand for a safe and fuel-efficient way to commute in congested cities. According to Piaggio, the U.S. scooter market grew by 8 percent in 2012 to 34,000 vehicles. With more brands introducing three-wheelers into the market, The Financialist highlights the new designs that could reshape urban commutes around the world.

Companies join forces to bring VVER to UK

According to Fortum, the trio of companies are to begin preparatory work towards a Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of a VVER-type power plant and site licensing. First commercial contracts have been signed by the parties.

The agreement is supported by a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the nuclear power industry signed in Moscow by UK energy minister Michael Fallon and Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko. At the same time, Rolls-Royce signed a contract with Rosatom which will see the UK company undertake engineering and safety assessment work on Rosatom's VVER technology ahead of its potential entry in the GDA process.

The GDA forms part of the approval process for new reactor projects in the UK, and allows regulators to assess the safety, security and environmental implications of new reactor designs, separately from applications to build them at specific sites. The UK's first GDA process began in 2007, when four designs were submitted for initial consideration by UK regulators. Areva's EPR became the first reactor design to complete the GDA process and receive a Design Acceptance Confirmation and Statement of Design Acceptability in December 2012. Earlier this year, a GDA was begun for Hitachi-GE's Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR).

The companies bring together various experiences and expertise. Rosatom's VVER reactors currently operate in 11 countries. Finnish nuclear utility Fortum brings to the table its experience of construction, operation and maintenance of VVERs at the Loviisa plant, which has operated for over 30 years, while Rolls-Royce contributes expertise as a provider of technology and services to the nuclear industry as well as knowledge of the UK licensing regime and its network of suppliers as a leading engineering company. Rosatom has been working closely with Rolls-Royce since the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding in 2011.

Rosatom has long expressed an interest in the potential new build market offered by the UK, where eight sites have been approved as suitable for new build. EDF has already earmarked two of them - Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C - as potential sites for EPRs, while ABWRs are proposed for Horizon's sites at Oldbury and Wylfa.

Fortum executive vice president Matti Ruotsala said that the UK provided a "really interesting opportunity." although the company emphasised that it has not yet made any investment decisions related to UK new build.

Fallon said that he welcomed the agreements signed by the three companies, adding that all reactor technologies adopted in the UK must meet the "stringent and independent" regulatory standards required in the UK and the EU.

Land of the tomb raiders- Bulgaria is trying to claw back tens of thousands of ancient artefacts plundered from its historic sites in a £25m-a-year export racket

Real-life vampires, giant rock vaginas, ancient sites to rival those of Greece and Rome – Bulgaria’s archaeologists are putting their country on the map of world history, but first they have to stop the mafia stealing its treasures.

The illegal diggers come at night with shovels and sacks, hunting through the places where they know the professionals have been. They’re looking for the tonnes of ancient artefacts that lie hidden in Bulgaria’s soil.

In the past two decades, Bulgarian law enforcement agencies say this plunder has turned into a €30m-a-year industry for local gangs, putting it a close third behind drugs and prostitution. The artefacts – gold Roman coins, ancient Greek silver, Thracian military helmets – wind up with falsified documents in auction houses in Europe and North America, or increasingly with wealthy Arab and Asian collectors.

“You cannot put a value on what is lost because the real loss is information,” says Professor Bozhidar Dimitrov, director of the National Museum of History in Sofia, who has spearheaded efforts to reclaim lost relics. “Even if we recover them, we don’t know where they were originally found, so our understanding of the history is gone.”

Police say there are 300 criminal treasure-hunting gangs in Bulgaria at present, but as many as 50,000 people are thought to be involved in illegal digging in some form. Entire villages have been known to take part in some impoverished corners of Bulgaria.

Belatedly waking up to the scale of the problem, Bulgarian authorities are trying to claw back some of their lost history from around the world.

“The record so far belongs to the Canadians,” said Prof Dimitrov. “A couple of years back, they returned 21,000 artefacts in one go.

“The Italians had so much to return that the minister of culture became worried about the cost of the shipment, so he ordered his entire delegation to carry two extra bags of luggage when they came here. He himself showed up at my office with two huge suitcases full of priceless artefacts.”

Prof Dimitrov’s huge office looks more like a Bond villain’s than that of a historian: wood-panelled walls and a long window staring up at the Vitosha mountains. “It was designed to intimidate guests”, he says between chain-smoked cigarettes – the museum was formerly the residence of Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov, who ruled Bulgaria for 35 years up to 1989.

The Communist legacy is part of the reason why only a quarter of Bulgaria’s treasures are thought to have been discovered so far. Trapped behind the Iron Curtain for half a century, Bulgaria had few tourists, which meant minimal investment in archaeology and preservation.

 This was followed by a decade of political confusion and economic crisis after the fall of Communism, when organised crime groups had almost completely free rein.

“In the Nineties, the police could stop only about 10 per cent of the stuff leaving the country,” estimates Prof Dimitrov. “Things have improved a lot. Now they get about 70 to 80 per cent. The police show up all the time with new hordes they have seized from shops in Sofia.”

As if to prove the point, the professor cuts the meeting short to receive the deputy director of the police, who says he has 2,000 artefacts to hand over, discovered in the basement of a local antiques store.

Historical discoveries have been one of the few bright spots for Bulgaria’s beleaguered economy in recent years, helping to convince the authorities of the need to protect their heritage.

Archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov – nicknamed “Bulgaria’s Indiana Jones” – has just started the final excavations at Perperikon, a 7,000-year-old sacred site deep in the Rhodope mountains whose highlight is a walk-in vagina.First discovered in the 1980s when ethnographers interviewed local villagers, Perperikon was in ancient times as famous as the oracle at Delphi in Greece, a place of wild bacchanalian rituals to the goddess Dionysus, and, according to legend, the birthplace of the Greek prophet Orpheus, which counted Alexander the Great among its visitors.

“It rivals Machu Picchu,” says Prof Ovcharov. “Bulgarian archaeology has enormous potential. It can change the way people think about this country. It can give us national pride as well as bringing in a lot of wealth.”

 One of the most extraordinary aspects of Perperikon is a nearby fertility shrine – a 10-metre vulva carved in the rock, leading into a womb-like cave. Around midday at the right time of year, a phallus-shaped ray of sunlight reaches an altar deep in the cave.

“It felt very unusual standing in a vagina,” says Prof Ovcharov, remembering the moment he first saw the cave in 2002. “It was so unique. It still makes my hair stand on end.”

The big surprise for Bulgaria’s historians has been the global interest in its vampires.

A grave unearthed in the Black Sea resort of Sozopol last year turned up a skeleton with an iron stake through its rib cage. It belonged to a famous 14th-century pirate named Kirov, whose job was to attack the ships of illegal Venetian traders. He was later made governor of the town.

Locals believed the souls of evil men did not ascend to heaven and instead left their graves at night to drink the blood of the living. Although Kirov was given an aristocrat’s burial, locals evidently thought him a nasty piece of work, and snuck in after the funeral to drive a stake through the body in order to keep his soul from escaping. They pulled out his teeth, too, just to be safe.

The discovery reached the press almost by accident. Prof Dimitrov was sneaking a cigarette outside Sozopol’s town hall just after the grave was found and some journalists came up to tease him about his heavy smoking. He only mentioned the vampire to deflect attention.

“Suddenly, it became a huge international sensation,” he says at his office, lighting another cigarette. “Vampires are very common here – we’ve already found more than a hundred – so we hadn’t thought to publicise it. I didn’t know there was a vampire movie with Brad Pitt and that they were so popular. It was featured in over 1,200 publications. That’s more than covered the fall of our Communist dictator.”

The vampire has proved a great pull for tourists, and drawn further attention to the astounding discoveries being made in Sozopol.

In 2010, a marble box containing a tooth and bits of skull were found on an adjacent island which are said to be relics of St John the Baptist. Foreign experts dated them to the first century AD and said the DNA belonged to a Middle Eastern man, making the claims plausible enough to attract coach-loads of pilgrims.

Another site in the town has uncovered the ruins of Roman baths alongside a Greek temple to the God Poseidon and a medieval church – a rare chance to see the evolution of worship in a single spot.This is not so surprising for Bulgaria, a country whose strategic location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia has made it one of the world’s most sought-after territories throughout the ages. Greeks, Romans, Thracians, Byzantines and Ottomans all fought countless wars to gain control of its fertile lands – a bitter irony given the controversial emigration of young Bulgarians over the past two decades.

Not all are happy with the government’s efforts to control the trade in historical artefacts, however. Bulgaria’s small shopkeepers complain about restrictions on selling any pre-twentieth century objects.

“The police can shut me down for having just one old coin,” says Constantine Georgiev, owner of a small bric-a-brac store in Sofia. “But this just means the trade in antiques is controlled by around 10 very rich guys with political connections. No one goes after the big mafia bosses because they can afford the bribes.”

Efforts to increase sentences for illicit smugglers have started to change attitudes towards a crime that was not taken too seriously in the past.

“Many used to see it as a fun adventure,” says Prof Dimitrov. “The men dig while the women do a barbecue. You had police and even priests taking part.”

Indeed, a 41-year-old priest from the northern city of Vratsa was busted in 2010 after conducting over 1,000 illegal sales of ancient coins and jewellery over the internet.

 But despite these efforts, experts say that widespread corruption and the high demand from overseas means Bulgaria’s treasures will continue to disappear into private collections, while authorities face a relentless challenge trying to protect over 40,000 known archaeological sites across the country.

“We lobbied for an amnesty a few years back so that private owners could declare what they had on the condition it was not sold or exported. That was one of the first laws that was overturned when GERB [a right-wing Bulgarian political party] took power in 2009,” says Prof Ovcharov. “Rich collectors are a powerful lobby.”

Strain of HIV virus found in monkeys is cleared by vaccine

A vaccine designed to tackle SIV, the monkey equivalent of HIV, may have successfully cleared the virus from infected animals, paving the way for research into a HIV vaccine for humans. 

It was previously thought that both the human and simian immunodeficiency viruses could be managed with antiretroviral therapies, but not eradicated.

However, a study published in the science journal Nature showed that of 16 monkeys exposed to the virus who were injected with a vaccine, nine appeared to be able to clear their body of the disease.

US researchers from the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at Oregon Health and Science University are now hoping to use a similar approach to test for a vaccine equivalent in humans.

The team examined a strain of the virus called SIVmac239, which is up to 100 times more deadly than HIV.

Researchers first inoculated monkeys with the vaccine and then exposed them to SIV. The virus did not spread in over half of the inoculated monkeys, which usually die within two years of being infected.

The vaccine used a modified version of the cytomegalvirus (CMV), which belongs to the herpes family, to sweep through the monkey body and encourage the immune system to fight off SIV.

After being exposed to the virus, some monkey bodies began to respond by searching out and destroying signs of SIV. They remained clear up to three years after first being inoculated.

Prof. Louis Picker told the BBC: “It's always tough to claim eradication - there could always be a cell which we didn't analyse that has the virus in it. But for the most part, with very stringent criteria... there was no virus left in the body of these monkeys.”

However, he said the team were still trying to determine why the vaccine was only successful in nine monkeys.

“It could be the fact that SIV is so pathogenic that this is the best you are ever going to get", he explained.

“There is a battle going on, and half the time the vaccine wins and half the time it doesn't.”

Now, the team want to examine if the same technique could be developed and made safe enough to be successful in humans. Clinical human trials could start within two years if the vaccine is approved and the team receive permission from regulatory bodies, Prof Picker added.

Double nuclear by 2040 says Exxon

Exxon Mobil's 2013 Outlook for Energy bases its findings on data from 100 countries across the globe, looking at 15 demand centres and 20 fuel types. It also takes into consideration the technology and policy issues underpinning the world's energy situation, Exxon Mobil technology advisor David Khemakhem explained to delegates at the World Nuclear Association's Annual Symposium. Latest figures indicate that, with world population anticipated to be close to 9 billion by 2040, energy demand will continue to increase. Electricity demand will drive that growth.

Exxon's figures suggest that world nuclear capacity could be set to double to help meet that demand, as the cheapest form of low-CO2 electricity generation: other options such as onshore wind and solar photovoltaics have significant knock-on grid costs, Khemakhem remarked.

Exxon Mobil's figures spurred a lively and wide-ranging debate amongst Khemakhem's fellow speakers in a panel discussion on energy and nuclear power. Ron Cameron, head of nuclear development at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), led a call for greater transparency over prices across the energy sector. Growth in renewables of the scale seen in recent years had been made possible through subsidies, but the way subsidies had been handled in some countries had been an "economic disaster", he said. Consumers were effectively being asked to pay for the transition into renewables, he said, pleading for the hidden costs of renewables to be made clear, with no disconnect between wholesale cost of electricity and the price. "Affordability is an issue," he remarked.

Nuclear should be seen as complementary to rather than in competition with renewables, the panellists felt. Nuclear could play a vital role in providing affordable baseload power to support the intermittent nature of many renewables, in the absence of a truly effective and affordable means of storing electricity. Energy policy, climate change, and carbon trading expert Bryony Worthington, representing The Weinberg Foundation, urged the nuclear industry not to waste any energy "talking down" renewables, and pointed to the emergence of new third-party advocates opening up the nuclear debate to new audiences.

Also on the panel, moderated by MZ Consulting president Milton Caplan, were Areva UK CEO Robert Davies, UX Consulting Company senior vice president Jonathan Hinze and energy strategist John Licata. All joined in enthusiastically in a lively discussion on the shape the nuclear generation sector may take in the coming decades, from large-capacity reactors to the role of smaller reactors such as SMRs and the need for energy security, with Licata drawing on his own experience and analysis of the effects of "superstorm Sandy", which left large areas of the eastern USA without power in October 2012.

Osborne on EDF nuclear charm offensive

The Chancellor George Osborne has personally written to the board of French energy giant EDF to express his commitment to the UK’s nuclear programme.The letter was in part intended to further negotiations with EDF over the proposed £14bn nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that the purpose of the letter was to tell the company, led by chairman Henri Proglio, that the proposed Hinkley Point C reactor would be eligible for £10bn of financing guarantees.

The Chancellor’s intervention is said to have been well received by EDF, which had previously been frustrated by what it felt was an unreasonably tough negotiating stance adopted by the Treasury.

The guarantees scheme is key to the future of the project, and will see the Government act as guarantor if EDF were unable to repay its loans, thereby helping reduce risk for creditors, making them more willing to lend money to the project.

EDF remains locked in talks about the so-called “strike price” for electricity that the plant will generate, which will be guaranteed for more than 30 years.Whitehall is thought to be awaiting the next move from EDF. Both sides have described talks as “positive” but an agreement is understood to still be several weeks away. However confirmation of the strike price will not be enough to complete the deal. EDF will also need to attract partners to take up to a 49pc stake in the project.

Energy minister Michael Fallon held talks last month with China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, which has long been seen as a likely partner for EDF.

Ministers hope that China Guangdong will not only come in as a minority partner for the project but may also in future lead the construction of further UK reactors itself.

New study finds health kick can reverse the ageing process

The results of a study conducted by the University of California suggest that going on a health kick could reverse cell ageing, according to researchers.

The small pilot study, conducted by a team from the Preventative Medicine Research Institute, examined how telomere shortness in human beings acts as a "prognostic marker of ageing, disease and premature morbidity" .

Just as shoelace tips stop fraying, telomeres keep chromosomes stable and prevent mix-ups when cells divide.

But each time a cell divides, its telomeres shorten. In the end they can no longer ensure chromosomal stability and this is when genetic mistakes begin to occur.

Eventually the cell freezes and stops dividing, or destroys itself.

The speed at which telomeres shorten varies in individuals and biological ageing is faster in people who already have rapidly-shortening telomeres.

Short telomere length in white blood cells is especially associated with age-related diseases, including many types of cancer.

But the results of this study showed positive changes to diet and lifestyle encouraged longer telomeres.

Researchers followed 35 men who had suffered low-risk prostate cancer and had chosen to undergo active surveillance.

Twenty-five male participants placed in the "intervention group" underwent a series of lifestyle changes to their diet, activity, stress management, and social support such as counselling. Ten men in the control group did not undertake any life style changes and continued to live as they normally would.  

Blood samples were taken for analysis from both groups five years later.

Men in the intervention group who had switched to a strict vegetarian lifestyle, exercised and practiced yoga showed considerably genetically younger cells. Instead of the length of their telomeres shortening, they increased by ten per cent.

In contrast, the telomeres of men in the control group had shortened in length by 3 per cent.

It has been suggested as a trigger mechanism for the genetic scrambling associated with prostate cancer. Men with short telomeres in prostate cancer-associated cells are much more likely to die from the disease.

Professor Dean Ornish, from the Preventive Medicine Research Institute at the University of California in San Francisco, US, who led the team, said: “The implications of this relatively small pilot study may go beyond men with prostate cancer.

“If validated by large-scale randomised controlled trials, these comprehensive lifestyle changes may significantly reduce the risk of a wide variety of diseases and premature mortality.

“Our genes, and our telomeres, are a predisposition, but they are not necessarily our fate.”

“Our bodies often have a remarkable capacity to begin healing themselves, and much more quickly than we did once realize, if we simply make the lifestyle changes that are really the primary determinants of our health and well-being,” he said.

"It's not the fountain of youth, but it certainly is a step in the right direction. Until now we thought that only telomeres could get shorter. Now we found that they actually can get longer."

Results were published in the Lancet Oncology Journal on Monday. However, some experts are arguing that as the group were only monitored for a five year period, it was too soon to draw definite conclusions from the results.

Biochemist Dr Lynne Cox, from Oxford University, said: "This new study suggests that reducing stress, improving diet and increasing exercise have the effect of not only preventing telomere loss but also of leading to small but significant increases in telomere length, as measured in circulating white blood cells.

"It is perhaps too soon to judge whether this increase in telomere length will correlate with increased longevity or healthspan.

"There are two things to bear in mind here. Firstly, short telomeres that occur as result of chronic stress are highly associated with poor health, and studies in mice have shown improved tissue health when telomeres are restored experimentally. Secondly, by contrast, globally increasing telomere length in cancer-prone mice actually predisposes to more aggressive cancers.

"The small increases in telomere length in this new human study are more likely to correlate with improved health than cancer risk, though it is too early to be definite."

The studies authors also concluded that: "Larger randomised controlled trials are warranted" to confirm their findings. 

Exchange trip for nuclear industry heads

American chief nuclear officers have completed a week-long technical visit to Japan, learning from their counterparts' experiences of the Fukushima accident and recovery.

The trip to Japan was coordinated by the US Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and its counterpart the Japan Nuclear Safety Institute (JANSI). Both bodies provide a forum for operators of nuclear power plants to share experience and learn from each other.

Some 24 chief nuclear officers (CNOs) from US power companies took part. With responsibility for nuclear safety, these board-level experts in nuclear operation have a leading role in ensuring the proper technical and cultural conditions are in place for safe operation. In total the group spent over ten hours touring the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the site of the accident two years ago. They also visited Fukushima Daini, which experienced an emergency but was able to avoid an accident, while a sub-group was able to visit the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power plant and see repairs after a 2007 earthquake as well as post-Fukushima improvements to tsunami defence and emergency response.The group heard from Japanese workers such as Takeyugi Inagaki, who was working in the control room of Fukushima Daiichi 1 and later in the plant's emergency response centre during the first 100 hours of the crisis. He and his colleagues remained at the plant site for long periods, unaware of the status of their families or homes and this caused the US delegation to consider the establishment of a protocol to communicate this important family information to US workers in a similar situation. Existing protocols, for example during hurricanes, are not immediately transferable due to the ability to forecast and plan for the event. The families of some Fukushima workers have also suffered harassment and bullying from embittered former neighbours.

On their first day in Japan the CNOs visited Tomioka on the coast about nine kilometres south of Fukushima Daiichi. The evacuated town now experiences annual radiation dose rates of 8-26 milliSieverts per year, compared to previous background levels of about 2 milliSieverts per year. The elevated doses are not high enough to be connected to any effect on people's health, but government rules allow people only to return during daylight hours to maintain their property and not to return on a permanent basis until after a clean-up operation that could take another four years.

John Keeley of trade group the Nuclear Energy Institute was travelling with the CNOs and blogging the groups experiences. He called the town a "sobering wreck of abandonment" and noted that the executives "wanted to see with their own eyes the ultimate consequences of a day gone very wrong at the plant." The NEI's own CNO, Tony Petrangelo, said, "Seeing the devastation in person provides a greater understanding of the significance of the event and its effects on people in the area."

The visit was the idea of Randy Edington, the CNO of Arizona Public Service's Pale Verde nuclear power plant. He said: "We came here to learn, to put eyes on the problem, to learn from each other and increase unity in the US but also to learn and share with our counterparts, the CNOs of Japan."

"The actions that we perform every single day at our plant can have US-wide or even worldwide consequences. I can't say enough about the importance of what we do, how important electricity is to all of our economies, to all our people. As we continue to learn and move forward in this industry, I'd like to re-emphasise our theme, which is: knowledge is fundamental; share it."

International links for African nuclear

African nuclear safety regulators are to step up their cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency as the continent makes increasing use of nuclear energy.

Only one nuclear power plant operates in Africa, at Koeberg in South Africa, but there are eight research reactors across the continent and major uranium mining operations. Radioactive sources are increasingly used for science, agriculture, industry, water management and healthcare.

A group counting 30 national authorities has been assembled by the African Union. Called the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa (FNRBA), it has the goal of enabling those countries to improve nuclear regulation, by dealing with outdated practices, gaps in legislation, gaps in compliance and ensuring adequate regulatory independence.

Yesterday at the IAEA General Conference in Vienna the FNRBA signed practical arrangements with the IAEA to step up their cooperation. Both the organisations agreed to "support efforts to enhance and strengthen radiation protection, nuclear safety and security, and regulatory infrastructure... and to harmonize best practices." They will "support capacity building and promotion of knowledge management... as a key to stimulating human resource development and knowledge transfer."The FNRBA is one result of the 1996 Pelidaba Treaty, in which African nations vowed to forego nuclear weapons, but affirmed their determination to "promote regional cooperation for the development and practical application of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in the interest of sustainable social and economic development."

Speaking late last year at the second conference of the treaty, FNRBA chair Augustin Simo noted "an increased will and political commitment by the African countries to advance the application of nuclear technology for power generation." Leading the continent is South Africa, which already operates two nuclear power reactors and is planning to vastly increase its capacity by up to 9600 MWe by 2030. Its National Nuclear Regulator has a leading role in the FNRBA. Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, is seen as making real progress towards the introduction of nuclear power, having started up its first research reactor at Ahmadu Bello University in 2004.

States that began to develop nuclear plans but have put these on the back-burner include Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Other African nations with rapidly growing power demand and a declared interest in nuclear energy include Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Sudan and Yemen.