Persuade staff to toe the green line at work and tackle climate change:
that’s the challenge issued to the business community by researchers at Leeds University Business School.

Matt Davis, a researcher from Leeds’ Centre for Organisational Strategy, Learning and Change (COSLAC), says: “Despite an abundance of literature advising us on how to transform our personal lifestyles and make our homes more environmentally friendly, we have discovered a distinct lack of studies relating to greening the workplace.

A European project has created a powerful patent search service for SMEs. It is a major step forward as patents and patent information are extremely valuable.
We live in a knowledge economy, and patents are the legal tender. They define a company’s or individual’s stake and they are the mechanism by which ideas can be both exchanged and, at the same time, protected.

 But getting patent information can be difficult. There are many databases scattered across Europe and the rest of the world, and the search options are limited: they are either cheap but restricted, or effective but very expensive. You must either go through each source for information, or pay hefty fees to a specialist who does it for you.

Writing in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms to be published in January, Greek researchers describe a quick and easy artificial intelligence approach to working out heart attack risk.

Physicians could use their system to provide patients with a personal risk factor and so advise on lifestyle changes or medication to lower their risk.

It is well known that lifestyle factors including depression, education, smoking, diet, and obesity, play a part in the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, epidemiologists who study how health risks vary through populations have not found a way to extrapolate from such broad studies to individual risk levels.

Now, Hara Kostakis of the TEI Piraeus Research Centre, in Methonis, Greece, and colleagues have investigated patterns of cardiovascular risk factors in a large population. They obtained data for almost 1000 patients enrolled in the CARDIO 2000 study who had been hospitalised with the first symptoms of ACS, acute coronary syndrome. They recorded details of body mass index, family history, physical activity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes were recorded. They then matched the data against healthy individuals as a scientific control.

Ben Goossens worked for 35 years in his native Belgium as an ad agency art director. After retiring, Goossen’s turned to creating photo montages with a distinctive Surreal style reminiscent of his fellow countryman, Rene Magritte.

Goossens’ images have received awards in a number of prestigious international photography competitions including Gold and Silver medals at the Trierenberg Super Circuit, the world’s largest annual photography salon. Goossens has also seen his work widely published, including an in-depth 10 page exposition in the March 2007 edition of Photo Art International. His composite photos are remarkable for their seamless yet painterly renderings of Surreal dreamscapes.