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Phosphorus is just as important to agriculture as water. But a lack of availability and accessibility of phosphorus is an emerging problem that threatens our capacity to feed the global population. Like nitrogen and potassium, it is a nutrient that plants take up from the soil and it is crucial to soil fertility and crop growth.

In January this year, three-year-old Burntisland, Fife-based Burdica Biomed Ltd (BBL) signed a long-term partnership agreement with China giant, Sinopharm which has contracted to undertake the Chinese regulatory compliance process for products from the Burdica portfolio (expected to take a year or so to completion) and subsequently distribute the products in China, with Burdica marketing support.

Research has identified of a plant protein responsible for optimising light absorption during the photosynthetic process, adapting the photosynthetic apparatus to changes in environmental light conditions. It could have an important impact not only on improved plant productivity but on solar radiation absorption technologies.

Two solar research projects in which Edinburgh and Strathclyde University have parts will have a cast of 46 players in both UK and India covering excitonic cells and PV stability. It is against a background where IBM opts for 'earth abundance,' Mitsubishi pushes polysilicon solar as well as a new battery for the thriving Japanese solar batteries business.

Like global maps where borders shift, the landscape of the embryonic stem cell is still being defined. In the US, the current definition describes them as cells taken from the inner layer of a blastocyst, a days old hollow ball of cells. The new definition will now include earlier stage embryos.The US government is to broaden the definition of a human embryonic stem cell to help qualify several corporate and academic experiments for federal funding.

Hightech but eco building technology slowly attracting interest in Scotland is the potential of the J.Pod and Energyflo. The j.Pod is a Scottish-Japanese innovation, conceived and designed by Scottish architect, John Barr and developed in Kyoto University with Japanese construction companies and universities. The Energyflo technology, developed by a research team at Aberdeen University, creates "breathing buildings" through insulation cells which trap and recirculates warm or cool air within a building and trialled in Scotland and Dubai.

A three year project, running alongside TRAMS, aims to focus on improved productivity and reliability of semiconductor and electronic design, with IBM research to collaborate with seven other members in the DIAMOND ( Development of an Innovative, Accurate, Monolithic New Design?) consortium to create significant savings on chips and cut design time  .

Edinburgh, Dundee, Rosyth, Grangemouth and Aberdeen are potentially to opt for biomass power stations. The first of the four cities for biomass power stations planned by Forth Energy is proposed for Leith docks, Edinburgh, at an overall investment of £1.7bn. In a separate development Aberdeen City Council is to be asked to approve plans to heat that city's David Welch Winter Gardens with a biomass plant. The Gardens are currently heated by both oil and gas boilers at a cost of about £130,000 a year.

Two companies, US PowerFilm subsidiary Phicot and a Portugese company Displax are producing new polymer skins interfaces. In Phicot's case the skin is adapted from existing a cheap silicon solar cells embedded in printed polymer process, while Displax has based its polymer around capacitive technology on a thinner than paper film that turns glass, plastic, wood or curved surfaces into an interactive touch screen display.

Equipment is the largest segment of the ALD market, with a value of $120.8m in 2009. That is expected to rise at a 5-year CAGR of 36.8% to reach nearly $579m in 2014. The other segment, materials, is projected to reach a value of nearly $400m in 2014, after rising at a CAGR of 38.5% from its 2009 estimated value of more than $78m.

Materials specialist team up with fabrication facilities as French Soitec Group, lead supplier of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and other engineered substrates signed an agreement with Israel based TowerJazz semiconductor fab. The deal enables a turn-key solution for high-end backside illuminated (BSI) CMOS image sensors (CIS) for industrial, medical and automotive applications

As carbon nanotube manufacturer Nanocyl (Belgium) collaborate with distributor NRC - Nordmann, Rassmann GmbH to promote its NC 7000 multiwall carbon nanotubes (CNT) and Plasticyl thermoplastic concentrates into the German automotive market, it will be operating on Bayer Material Science Baytube doorstep, as Bayer opens its new pilot facility for production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) at CHEMPARK Leverkusen, Germany.

Back in November Fujitsu Laboratories developed technology that allowed for graphene to be formed on insulating film substrate via CVD at the low fabrication-temperature of 650°C, enabling graphene-based transistors to be directly formed on the entire surface of substrates. Although the test substrate employed was a 75-mm silicon substrate (wafer) with oxide film, the new technique is applicable to larger 300-mm wafers as well.

The research vessel Meteor embarks on a first expedition into the tropical Atlantic in early February, in search for trace metals (cadmium, copper, iron) dissolved in seawater, whose precise origin and distribution in the world's ocean, in particular in the deep sea, are not well known, but without which life in the oceans would not be possible.

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