Authors: Sharon Kelly, project manager, Network of Excellence for Functional Biomaterials (NFB); Carolyn Holladay, senior researcher, Vornia; and Keith Feerick, research associate, NFB According to the World Health Organization, nearly 500,000 people suffer a spinal-cord injury (SCI) per year worldwide (‘Spinal cord injury’, WHO fact sheet N°384, November 2013). As a consequence of mobility barriers, people who experience injury to their spinal cord largely become dependent on ...

  Killaloe in Co Clare is in the news this year on the 1,000th anniversary of the death in 1014 of High King Brian Boru, at the Battle of Clontarf. He ruled the country from his castle in Kincora. Killaloe was then the capital of Ireland. It was the capital of water skiing in the 1950s and 1960s when I lived there as a boy, a teenager and a young adult. And today it is arguably the capital of Ireland’s inland waterways. Killaloe, with its twin ‘heritage’ town Ballina in Co Tipperary, ...

  Author: Dr William Finnegan, College of Engineering & Informatics and the Ryan Institute, NUI Galway The abolishment of milk quotas in 2015 is expected to result in a 50% increase in milk production in Ireland by 2020. This increase in the volume of milk being processed, along with stringent measures on emissions from the industry and growing commercial drive for operational efficiencies, is driving the need for innovative technological and operational solutions within the dairy ...

  Researchers at IT Sligo are leading a €1 million EU-funded project that could pave the way for more people to receive better and cheaper medical implants faster. According to the team involved in Bio-PolyTec, greater use of bioresorbable polymer material is set to have a significant impact the future development of implantable medical devices, with important benefits for patients and manufacturers. Bioresorbable polymers have key advantages over traditional metal implants. They ...

  The longest tunnel ever built in Ireland has just been completed in Co Mayo. The 4.9km tunnel (which is 300m longer than Dublin’s Port Tunnel) has been under construction since January 2013. The tunnel runs under Sruwaddacon Bay, a special area of conservation (SAC) and will house a key onshore section of the Corrib gas pipeline. The tunnel will be used to connect the previously laid 83km offshore pipeline from the Corrib Field to the Bellanaboy Bridge Gas Processing ...

  Author: Pádraic Ó hUiginn, communications programme manager, Technology Centre for Biorefining and Bioenergy  A closed landfill site outside Cologne and Bonn in north-west Germany was where Prof Michael Bongards of Cologne University of Applied Sciences’ Institute for Automation & Industrial IT welcomed the ReNEW Network to its April work session on developing the circular economy in North West Europe. [caption id="attachment_13646" align="alignright" width="1024"] Circular ...