Reigning Wimbledon Champion Petra Kvitova heads into the AEGON International tournament in a rich vein of form after reaching the semi-finals of the French Open earlier this month.
Kvitova was beaten in straight sets by eventual winner and new world number one Maria Sharapova, the same opponent whom she beat in last year’s Wimbledon final to take the crown.
The Czech, whose run to the semi-final was her best in the tournament to date, reached the final of the AEGON International last year but lost to Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli, who also returns to Eastbourne to try and defend her title.
Despite her recent success, Kvitova heads to Devonshire Park as the number two seed behind Agnieszka Radwanska.
Radwanska is currently enjoying the highest world ranking of her career at number three after a successful start to the year. She won the Dubai Tennis Championship and the Sony Ericsson Open, beating Venus Williams and current AEGON International champion Bartoli on the way. Former world number ones Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki have also announced their place in this year’s line-up.
Wozniacki won the tournament in 2009 and makes her return as number three seed after a shaky start to the year. She lost her world number one ranking to Victoria Azarenka in late January and has gone on to suffer defeats at the hands of Kvitova, Radwanska, Lucie Safarova, Ivanovic and Angelique Kerber since then – all of whom are competing in this year’s Eastbourne International.
The women will all battle it out on the Devonshire Park grass courts between 16 and 23 June for a $600,000 prize.
WOMEN’S DRAW: 1 Agnieszka Radwanska POL, 2 Petra Kvitova CZE, 3 Caroline Wozniacki DEN, 4 Marion Bartoli FRA, 5 Vera Zvonareva RUS, 6 Angelique Kerber GER, 7 Ana Ivanovic SRB, 8 Daniela Hantuchova SVK, Shuai Peng CHN, Lucie Safarova CZE, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova RUS, Kaia Kanepi EST, Svetlana Kuznetsova RUS, Petra Cetkovska CZE, Jie Zheng CHN, Mona Barthel GER, Christina Mchale USA, Marina Erakovic NZL, Ekaterina Makarova RUS, Galina, Voskoboeva KAZ, Tsvetana Pironkova BUL, Klara Zakopalova CZE, Carla Suarez Navarro ESP, Sorana Cirstea U
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Print this pageSource: www.eastbourneherald.co.uk
Inventors produce ‘the grey stuff’ (From The Northern Echo) - The Northern Echo
Inventors produce ‘the grey stuff’
6:10pm Monday 11th June 2012 in Business: Spotlight On 
Two multi-million-pound contracts, a plethora of awards and a new area of scientific research which is fascinating and baffling academics – not bad for a company that started in a garage behind Morrisons, in Darlington. Deputy Business Editor Lauren Pyrah meets Peratech’s chief technical officer, inventor David Lussey
IMAGINE a substance that could detect chemicals in the air given off by humans, that was both a conductor and insulator of electricity, and which is so sensitive it could determine not only pressure being applied to it, but the precise amount.
It might sound like something from a Hollywood movie, but imagination is not necessary here – the substance is science fact, and is being made in a quiet and unassuming rural corner in this very region.
Named quantum tunnelling composite (QTC), the material – which was originally dubbed simply “the grey stuff” by its inventors, David Lussey, 66, and his 37-year-old son, company chief executive Christopher – is so extraordinary and displays so many unusual and exciting characteristics, it has opened up a new area for science research.
Indeed, not even its inventors know exactly what hidden and undiscovered properties QTC holds, and are finding new characteristics all the time.
And if QTC is breaking scientific boundaries, it is equally commercially useful, not to mention lucrative.
Peratech, the company set up by the Lusseys following their discovery, has six active contracts for applications of the substance, including two multi-million-pound deals.
One of these is the creation of the world’s first threedimensional touch screen, which will allow users to not only pinpoint a spot on a vertical and horizontal axis, but be able to tell how hard they are pressing, opening up a new realm possibilities for software programmers.
Past Peratech contracts for QTC include a deal with a friend of the late Apple founder, Steve Jobs, to make skiing and snowboarding jackets which would allow users to control their iPods through the fabric.
Astonishingly, as you read this, QTC is being made and tested in the quiet and sleepy parish of Brompton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire.
It may not be the first place which springs to mind when cutting-edge technology is talked about, but the Old Repeater Centre houses the headquarters of Peratech, the technology company set up by the Lusseys.
Here, the team of scientists and designers make and rigorously test and re-test new versions and applications of QTC, to ensure the application not only works every time, but will continue to work when the device has been around for months.
Even more extraordinarily than this hive of high-tech activity going on in this quiet rural corner of the North-East is that QTC was an inadvertent invention.
“It was an accidental discovery,” said Mr Lussey Sr, a Liverpool-born, former RAF specialist officer, who used to train airmen in using high-tech munitions.
“I was trying to create a conductive adhesive for Teesside University, who were having a lot of problems with computers being stolen.
“What I got was something completely different – this curious grey stuff which we now call QTC.
“I am trained in electronics, physics and chemistry for the missiles systems. I was a technical man, but I had sufficient knowledge from that training to realise that we had something which was very interesting.
“When I came to test it, I realised it had some very strange qualities about it.
“I took to Professor David Bloor, an academic at Durham University, who still sits on our board to this day. He looked at it, tested it, and drew this graph. He said he’d never seen anything like it before.
“That’s when we decided to get the process patented and set up the company. We have just grown organically from there.”
From the humble beginnings of a garage on an industrial estate behind Morrisons, in North Road, Darlington, Peratech has become a small but mighty company, boasting 76 QTC process patents worldwide, winning a plethora of lucrative contracts and creating numerous different versions of the substance, including an ink form, a clear form and a versions which can detect different chemical smells.
The company’s success is reflected in its 21 industry awards, including The Queen’s Award for innovation in enterprise earlier this year, which are all proudly displayed at Peratech’s headquarters.
But it hasn’t always been easy.
“We have gone through the trials and tribulations of any small company. We have had some really rough times, but we have had some great times too,” said Mr Lussey.
“Times are now becoming rather exceptional. We have had people from around the world coming to our door, and we also got a very strong base involving the universities. They are a key relationship.
“It is great for them and it is great for us – if you can relate the science to life, it just makes it so much more interesting for both the staff and the students.
“We have a PHD at the London College of Fashion, a PHD at Leeds University and a PHD at Durham all working on different projects associated with QTC.”
The technology has now reached the stage where Peratech are preparing to put their electronic QTC nose into test clothing.
The nose, which can detect chemicals as quickly as humans, could potentially monitor either the environment around the wearer – to spot hazardous chemicals and their levels – or the chemicals the wearer is giving off, which could be useful for monitoring how hard the person is training.
The company is developing different types of QTC which can detect different chemicals, while the PHD at the London School of Fashion is also exploring the capabilities of the technology, spelling very exciting times for Peratech.
Indeed, the substance has so many unexplored potential uses and properties, it appears to have an almost endless number of applications, which means that if one trend or use ends, another soon opens up, meaning the business wears consumer trends well.
“Tablets are really big now, and touch screens are getting used in more and more domestic appliances, so that’s great for us,” said Mr Lussey.
“But QTC has so many uses.
It is essentially a new area of science. We are still finding new things it can do which still surprise us.
We don’t always understand why it does certain things, and many of the things it does are very useful and unusual. It is fascinating stuff.
“There is a lot more yet to come.”
Source: www.thenorthernecho.co.uk
Euro 2012: London fire safety posters translated - BBC News
Foreign language posters have been produced to target the problem of people causing kitchen fires while drunk during the Euro 2012 tournament.
London Fire Brigade (LFB) said it hoped to prevent the city's different nationalities leaving cooking unattended after drinking.
The posters come in seven foreign languages including Polish and Russian.
It is the first time translations have been used for an international competition, said LFB.
'Diverse city'The fire brigade's research shows drunk Londoners cause two fires a day.
It also shows a quarter of those who die in fires have alcohol in their systems and over half of alcohol-related fires happen because someone has fallen asleep.
Posters featuring the slogan "Goal" above a burger, will appear in pub lavatories across central London.
The posters have been produced in French, Polish, Ukrainian, German, Russian, Portuguese and Spanish.
They have been sent to different nationality newspapers in London, said LFB.
A spokesman for LFB said that the idea to translate posters was prompted by the BBC's story on London being considered France's sixth biggest city in terms of population.
He said: "London is a diverse city. It's not just England fans at risk.
"There was no extra cost and it will get the message out."
London Fire Brigade's commissioner, Ron Dobson, said: "During Euro 2012, many Londoners will go straight from work to the pub to watch the football.
"Our research shows cooking after having one too many plays a massive part in house fires and, sadly, one in every four fire deaths involves alcohol."
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
London 2012: Teenage weightlifter Zoe Smith makes Team GB - BBC News
Commonwealth bronze medallist Zoe Smith will make her Olympic debut this summer after being named in the five-strong GB weightlifting squad for London 2012.
Smith, 18, achieved the Olympic A standard twice and finished fourth at April's European Championships.
"I'm elated to have been selected for the team," said Greenwich-born Smith.
"It has been a nerve-wracking period ahead of selection, so I'm glad that I've secured my place to say I'll be representing Team GB!"
The teenager will be joined in the squad of five by veteran Welsh lifter Natasha Perdue.
GB weightlifter and Leeds City council worker Natasha Perdue
The 36-year-old who combines training with full time work at a refuse collection centre in Leeds will be following in the footsteps of her father, Terry, who competed at the 1968 and 1972 Olympics.
"I can't describe in words how happy I feel and I keep pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming," said Perdue.
"I waited two weeks for the call, and when it came I didn't want to answer it in case it was bad news.
"I asked them to repeat it about three times just to make sure."
Scotland's Commonwealth silver medallist -94kg Peter Kirkbride is the highest profile lifter in the three-strong men's squad.
The 24-year-old has endured a difficult 18 months after a series of injuries disrupted his training regime, but he hopes to be back to peak form by the Games.
GB weightlifting squad
Gareth Evans - Men's 69kg (26, Holyhead)
Peter Kirkbride - Men's 94kg (24, Hurlford)
Jack Oliver - Men's 77kg (21, Bexleyheath)
Natasha Perdue - Women's 69kg (36, Swansea)
Zoe Smith - Women's 58kg (18, London)
"I'm excited to find out about being selected as part of the team," said Kirkbride.
Winning Commonwealth silver was a great moment for me, and I hope to perform better than I did in Delhi."
Wales' -67kg lifter Gareth Evans, who left both his family and full-time job up to move to Leeds and train full-time with the GB squad, joins Kirkbride in the Olympic team.
"I'm ecstatic," he said. "It is testament to the sacrifice I have made and the hard work I have put in over the years.
"I would just like to thank everyone who has supported me so far."
Despite struggling at the Olympic trials in May, 20-year-old Jack Oliver is included in the team as a result of his promising displays over the past 18 months, which included British records at the World Championships.
"I feel ready to rise to the occasion and try to make my country proud," said Oliver.
The weightlifting events will take place between 28 July and 7 August at London's ExCel Centre at this summer's London 2012 Olympic Games.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
UK: Morrisons likely to report fall this year - FreshPlaza
City sources have warned that Morrisons is 'completely off colour.' Analyst Jonathan Pritchard at stockbroker Oriel said the City was yet to wake up to the prospect that Morrisons would most likely report a decline in profits for the full year to January. Downgrades to the stock are expected in the coming weeks.
Pritchard added: "The profits pool for the supermarket industry is going to shrink. Life will be very hard unless you can find a way to take market share from other retailers."
A reliance on discounting is failing to have the desired, long term effects.
"Bribing people to come into stores only works if lapsed shoppers arrive to find things have changed for the better," said one source.
Morrisons last month said sales fell for the first time since the departure of founder Sir Ken Morrison.
Morrisons has set about accelerating its strategy to improve stores, but has faced criticism that it may have gone too far upmarket for some of its shoppers.
Chief executive Dalton Philips said in January that this year would be characterised by "very low like-for-like sales" growth.
Source: thisismoney.co.uk
Publication date: 6/11/2012
Source: www.freshplaza.com
London Olympics 2012: get set for the gridlock games - Daily Telegraph
Yet even if there are no non-Olympic tourists at all (unlikely), and even if double the usual number of natives stay away from the office (less unlikely), almost half a million people will still need to converge on a small area of east London, including 300,000 spectators, 120,000 staff and volunteers, and 70,000 members of the “Games family” (competitors, sponsors, officials and media).
At peak capacity, the seven railway lines serving Stratford can handle 240,000 passengers an hour. That would be fine if Games demand was spread evenly through the day, and nobody else in London needed to use those services. But the demands of broadcasters mean that events in the most popular disciplines, such as athletics and swimming, tend to be scheduled in two blocks, one from roughly 10am to 1pm and the other from about 7pm to 10pm. So there will be sharp spikes in demand – and most people going to or from the Olympic Park will have to make at least one of their journeys in rush hour, just as the rest of the city is travelling, too. This is probably the moment to mention that the Underground has only had three entirely problem-free weekdays in the last year.
Even if it all works perfectly, the busiest stations will be swamped. At London Bridge, charts on the Games website show that you will have to queue for more than 30 minutes to board a Tube train during the morning and evening peaks, and up to 15 minutes even at 10.30pm. On the worst day, August 9, there will be six hours in total of half-hour-plus delays.
And don’t even think about driving: according to the TfL website, a journey from, say, Hammersmith (west) to St Paul’s (east) will take an extra 57 minutes. Some of the busiest roads in central London will be totally closed to normal traffic, including Whitehall, Constitution Hill and Birdcage Walk. Westminster Bridge will be one-way. The Mall, incredibly, will be off limits to everyone – including pedestrians and cyclists – for almost four months, starting this month and not reopening until the last day of September. It seems a high price to pay for beach volleyball.
Then there are the famous “Zil lanes” – 30 miles of Tarmac for the “Olympic family”, halving the capacity of key routes such as the Victoria Embankment, Knightsbridge and the Cromwell Road, and cutting Park Lane, the Westway and Euston and Marylebone Roads by a third. The Blackwall Tunnel southern approach, one of the busiest roads in London, will be partly shut throughout the morning rush hour, even though the only Olympic users will be a few hundred shooters and riders travelling from Stratford to Woolwich and Greenwich – and even they will be going the other way at the time.
Disruption is also happening far away from the Olympic sites: Russell Square, for instance, is being taken over as the media transport hub. Wanstead Flats has been commandeered as a police camp. A huge area of south-western suburbia will be closed over three days for the cycling. Thirty per cent of London’s road network will be affected in some way, often with restrictions that will stop you parking outside your own home or your customers parking outside your shop. Some firms nearest the Olympic Park are so worried about the effects on their recession-shrunk balance sheets that they believe the Games will put them out of business.
In the end, how these transport problems and restrictions go down will probably depend on how we feel about the Games themselves. The travel difficulties during the Jubilee went almost ignored: people put up with them because they loved the event and they love the Queen. The Olympics, so far, have often presented a much less likeable face: it seems improbable that a million people will line the streets to cheer the chief executives of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola as they sweep past in their Zil lanes.
Olympic organisers protest that sponsors who support the Games must be cherished. But that doesn’t seem to apply to the biggest sponsors of all: the taxpayers of Britain. Even the transport system itself is feasting from the buffet at our expense. Those striking busmen, demanding £750 extra for the favour of turning up to work during the Games, are just the latest in a line of greedy Tube, rail and Docklands Light Railway staff collecting bribes simply for doing their jobs.
The usual history of the Olympics is that the worries beforehand die down as people get caught up in the excitement. If Britain is winning lots of golds, if the sun is shining and there are things to go to for those without tickets, Londoners probably will decide to roll with the punches and take extra holiday. So the real key figures in how the capital is seen to manage may not be the hapless, fluorescent-jacketed transport officials, but Rebecca Adlington, Chris Hoy and all Britain’s other medal hopes. No pressure then, guys.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
London Hit by Flooding Following Heavy Rain - lbc.co.uk
Monday 11th June 2012
London Fire Brigade had already dealt with more than thirty cases of flooding by early afternoon after some areas saw the average rainfall for the whole of June fall in just 12 hours.
The number is more than double the usual daily calll outs for flood related reasons.
The brigade says it has 15 tonnes of sand ready to be sent out from its distribution centre in Croydon in the event of serious flooding.
The Environment Agency has issued 11 flood alerts for London while the Met Office has issued an Amber warning - the second highest possible - with surface water flooding, localised river flooding and very difficult driving conditions likely.
The flooding caused difficulties for drivers and trains in and around the capital this morning.
Head of road policy at the AA - Paul Watters - has been telling LBC 97.3 it is unpredictable.
"The trouble is with flooding is it can be clear in one place and very deep water in the next, which causes major gridlock," he explained.
"Also drivers braking down, of course, which adds to the problem. We certainly did know about it, we certainly did have the authorities ready for but the system can't cope. It's just like snow in a way."
Source: www.lbc.co.uk
REFILE-London leading destination city in 2012-study - Reuters UK
(Fixes headlne)
By Peter Myers
LONDON, June 11 (Reuters) - The home of this summer's Olympic Games and the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Britain's Queen Elizabeth is also the world's top destination this year, according to an index released by global credit card company MasterCard on Monday.
MasterCard's "Worldwide Index of Global Destination Cities" predicted that London will see 16.9 million people arrive by air compared with a million less for second place city Paris and airmiles ahead of New York at 13th place with 7.6 million arrivals.
The index also said that London, for the second year running, will attract the highest international visitor spend at $21.1 million, just ahead of New York at $19.4 million.
"London offers better value for money than New York," MasterCard Worldwide's global economic advisor Yuwa Hedrick-Wong told Reuters.
The queen's diamond jubilee saw London fill with visitors from abroad and around Britain for four days of celebrations at the start of June and the Olympics which will take place at venues in and around London from July 27 to August 12 is expected to pull in visitors from all over the planet.
"As our fantastic Diamond Jubilee celebrations demonstrated, London knows how to throw a party and, as we prepare to host the greatest Games the world has ever seen, it is no surprise our capital is the top choice for tourists," London Mayor Boris Johnson said in a statement along with Mastercard's index.
Well established international destination Bangkok was the other big winner in the index at third place with 12.2 million visitors who will spend $19.3 million.
"Bangkok's advantage is that it's a very tolerant culture," Hedrick-Wong told Reuters. "That explains its durability, especially attracting Europeans and Americans. I cannot imagine Western visitors doing the same thing in Malaysia, even China."
The Index, which encompasses 132 of the world's most important cities, is being marketed as a new map for understanding global connectivity.
Businesses and investors might find the Index's list of city growth rates of more interest than current rankings. Brazilian and Chinese cities also featured highly in the survey for both visitor numbers and spend.
"The growth patterns show how important cities are," says Hedrick-Wong, "and they're popping up from everywhere. They take on some really important local or regional significance overnight because of a new development."
Expect to hear much more about Recife and Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and Chengdu, Harbin, Xian and Guangzhou in China.
Using information gleaned from 87 airlines, national tourism boards, the United Nations and other global agencies, the MasterCard Index offers an optimistic overall forecast.
Total visitor numbers and cross-border spending will increase by 5.7 percent and 10.6 percent respectively for the top 20 destination cities in 2012.
The result is a bright spot in a period of slow world economic output, a persistent euro zone crisis and increased uncertainty in the financial sector.
"The growing need and desire to travel, especially by air, are set to expand in spite of the ups and downs of the business cycles," MasterCard's report said.
In a survey also out on Monday, by Mercer, London was ranked the 25th most expensive city in the world and the most expensive city for expatriates. (Editing by Paul Casciato)
Source: uk.reuters.com
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