By Jo Bradley, Business Development Manager at Sparck Technologies.

Companies can be schizophrenic about packaging and its costs. On the one hand, product packaging is closely scrutinised – a battleground between buyers seeking to drive costs down and marketers looking for ever greater impact and ‘shelf appeal’.

SATO has launched its RAIN RFID1-based asset management solution ASETRA in Europe. The easy to deploy system comprising RFID tags, RFID printers and desktop reader/writers accurately and easily tracks and manages assets through the supply chain.

The Posiflex Group has responded to rising demand from customers in Europe by recruiting a seasoned executive to boost the European sales and marketing operations in its KIOSK subsidiary, a manufacturer of kiosks and interactive displays.

BIXOLON Europe GmbH, a subsidiary of BIXOLON, the manufacturer of advanced receipt, label and mobile printers, has entered into a partnership with ACS Postal Services (ACS), the Greek courier service provider.

This Earth Day, Brother International Europe is celebrating 15 years since first joining forces with the rainforest conservation charity, becoming their longest-serving commercial partner.

Ukraine dreamed of becoming "the key to the security of Europe's gas supply,” the gas hub of Europe. Moscow found this unnecessary. Ukraine wants to become EU's gas hub According to Deputy Minister of Energy of Ukraine Svetlana Grinchuk, imports usually account for up to 10 billion cubic meters of the total volume of Ukrainian storage facilities of 31 billion cubic meters. Ukraine stores gas from Poland, Norway, Hungary, and other countries, which they receive even from the Caspian region, as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG), which comes to Europe from the United States. "The EU aims to phase out the use of Russian gas and reduce the share of fossil fuels in the energy mix. Ukraine can help achieve these goals," Grinchuk told Euractiv.

The Ukrainian army will be able to hold out until the beginning of autumn at most. Most likely, though, everything will collapse in June-July, observers believe. France Presse wrote that Zelensky's office repeatedly used Western weapons to strike the Russian Federation. For the last time, Kyiv struck targets in the Krasnodar Territory (Southern Russia). The US has gauthorised Kyiv to use US-made weapons to strike deep into Russia too. Is further escalation with the West coming? "The real strategy of the West is logical and consistent. They understand it in the West very well that they will have to switch to strategic defense, because there are not enough troops and losses have been growing catastrophically. The Ukrainian army lacks weapons and military equipment. Therefore, they want the Armed Forces of Ukraine to hold out, and this is only possible by switching to strategic defense. In other words, they want Ukrainian to maintain relative stability at least for several months,” Director of the Center for Military-Political Studies of MGIMO Alexey Podberezkin told Ukraina.ru publication.

The International Safe Transit Association (ISTA), the industry developer of pre-shipment performance testing standards for packaged products, has announced programming for its annual European Packaging Symposium, which will be held 8-9 October at the Le Méridien Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany.

Minority Supplier Development UK (MSDUK) and the European Supplier Diversity Program (ESDP) have announced the final opportunity to register for 2024 Business Diversity Connect, the ethnic minority business (EMB) supplier diversity conference.

The largest vaccination station in Europe was opened in Moscow on the territory of the Gostiny Dvor shopping mall, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.  According to the message posted on Sobyanin's website, the station can take up to 6,000 people a day. This is the largest vaccination centre in Moscow, Sobyanin said.  The mayor added that the vaccination station in Moscow's iconic GUM department store on Red Square does not accommodate those who want to get vaccinated, nor is it possible to ensure social distance there due to small premises. The new vaccination station in Gostiny Dvor was opened instead of the one in GUM. 

The likelihood for monkeypox to appear in Russia is small, but the infection may find itself in Russia anyway, epidemiologists say. The pandemic potential of the disease is quite low. Representatives for French and Belgian authorities reported first cases of monkeypox infection in humans. According to the French Ministry of Health, the first case of the infection was recorded in the metropolitan region of Ile-de-France. Monkeypox was detected in a 29-year-old man. The individual was put in self-isolation. The patient says that he does not see any complications in how the illness develops. Monkeypox is prevalent in Western and Central Africa. The virus spreads mostly among animals such as rodents and non-human apes. It can be contagious to humans as well.

New research supports conservation of fallow deer across Europe  British Geological Survey

Delivering a sustainable urban future for Europe through geoscience  British Geological Survey

The Materials Imaging and Dynamics (MID) instrument at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (EuXFEL) is equipped with a multipurpose diagnostic end-station (DES) at the end of the instrument. The imager unit in DES is a key tool for aligning the beam to a standard trajectory and for adjusting optical elements such as focusing lenses or the split-and-delay line. Furthermore, the DES features a bent-diamond-crystal spectrometer to disperse the spectrum of the direct beam to a line detector. This enables pulse-resolved characterization of the EuXFEL spectrum to provide X-ray energy calibration, and the spectrometer is particularly useful in commissioning special modes of the accelerator. Together with diamond-based intensity monitors, the imager and spectrometer form the DES unit which also contains a heavy-duty beamstop at the end of the MID instrument. Here, we describe the setup in detail and provide exemplary beam diagnostic results.

X-ray gas monitors (XGMs) are operated at the European XFEL for non-invasive single-shot pulse energy measurements and average beam-position monitoring. The underlying measurement principle is the photo-ionization of rare gas atoms at low gas pressures and the detection of the photo-ions and photo-electrons created. These are essential for tuning and sustaining self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) operation, machine radiation safety, and sorting single-shot experimental data according to pulse energy. In this paper, the first results from XGM operation at photon energies up to 30 keV are presented, which are far beyond the original specification of this device. Here, the Huge Aperture MultiPlier (HAMP) is used for single-shot pulse energy measurements since the standard X-ray gas monitor detectors (XGMDs) do not provide a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, even at the highest operating gas pressures. A single-shot correlation coefficient of 0.98 is measured between consecutive XGMs operated with HAMP, which is as good as measuring with the standard XGMD detectors. An intra-train non-linearity of the HAMP signal is discovered, and operation parameters to mitigate this effect are studied. The upper repetition rate limit of HAMP operation at 2.25 MHz is also determined. Finally, the possibilities and limits for future XGM operation at photon energies up to 50 keV are discussed.

A 1D imaging soft X-ray spectrometer installed on the small quantum systems (SQS) scientific instrument of the European XFEL is described. It uses movable cylindrical constant-line-spacing gratings in the Rowland configuration for energy dispersion in the vertical plane, and Wolter optics for simultaneous 1D imaging of the source in the horizontal plane. The soft X-ray fluorescence spectro-imaging capability will be exploited in pump–probe measurements and in investigations of propagation effects and other nonlinear phenomena.

The diagnostics of X-ray beam properties has a critical importance at the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility. Besides existing diagnostic components, utilization of a diamond sensor was proposed to achieve radiation-hard, non-invasive beam position and pulse energy measurements for hard X-rays. In particular, with very hard X-rays, diamond-based sensors become a useful complement to gas-based devices which lose sensitivity due to significantly reduced gas cross-sections. The measurements presented in this work were performed with diamond sensors consisting of an electronic-grade single-crystal chemical-vapor-deposition diamond with position-sensitive resistive electrodes in a duo-lateral configuration. The results show that the diamond sensor delivers pulse-resolved X-ray beam position data at 2.25 MHz with an uncertainty of less than 1% of the beam size. To our knowledge this is the first demonstration of pulse-resolved position measurements at the MHz rate using a transmissive diamond sensor at a free-electron laser facility. It can therefore be a valuable tool for X-ray free-electron lasers, especially for high-repetition-rate machines, enabling applications such as beam-based alignment and intra-pulse-train position feedback.

Xray free-electron lasers (XFELs) enable experiments that would have been impractical or impossible at conventional X-ray laser facilities. Indeed, more XFEL facilities are being built and planned, with their aim to deliver larger pulse energies and higher peak brilliance. While seeking to increase the pulse power, it is quintessential to consider the maximum pulse fluence that a grazing-incidence FEL mirror can withstand. To address this issue, several studies were conducted on grazing-incidence damage by soft X-ray FEL pulses at the European XFEL facility. Boron carbide (B4C) coatings on polished silicon substrate were investigated using 1 keV photon energy, similar to the X-ray mirrors currently installed at the soft X-ray beamlines (SASE3). The purpose of this study is to compare the damage threshold of B4C and Si to determine the advantages, tolerance and limits of using B4C coatings.

The development of instrumentation as well as applications for megahertz X-ray phase contrast imaging at the Single Particles, Clusters, and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography instrument of the European XFEL are introduced here.

We describe an ultra-compact setup for in situ X-ray diffraction on the inelastic X-ray scattering beamline ID20 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The main motivation for the design and construction of this setup is the increasing demand for on-the-fly sample characterization, as well as ease of navigation through a sample's phase diagram, for example subjected to high-pressure and/or high-temperature conditions. We provide technical details and demonstrate the performance of the setup.

XMDS Holding has launched XPP, a new umbrella organisation...

Mirakl has announced its partnership with

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Global financial platform Adyen has announced that it enabled...

Mollie, a financial service provider in Europe, has introduced Tap to Pay on iPhone, enabling businesses to accept contactless payments via the Mollie app.

The U.S. is losing ground in a second laser revolution of highly intense, ultrafast lasers that have broad applications in manufacturing, medicine, and national security, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The Digital Services Act aims to protect European users when it comes to privacy, transparency, and removal of harmful or illegal content.

TikTok has been fined $368 million by European regulators for breaching data privacy rules and failing to protect children's privacy. The investigation found that the app's sign-up process for teen users made their accounts public by default, posing a risk to underage users. The "family pairing" feature also allowed adults to turn on direct messaging for users aged 16 and 17 without their consent.

European telecoms firms, including Orange and Vodafone, are calling on the EU to make tech and streaming giants pay for the large amounts of bandwidth they consume. Telecoms companies argue that they need more money to maintain and update infrastructure to meet Europe's data needs, and believe it would be fairer for companies like Netflix to contribute.

DuPont receives approval from Switzerland’s Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) to market Danisco HOWARU Bifidobacterium lactis HN019 probiotic.

The Minnetonka, Minn.-based food solutions and potassium chloride supplier strikes a deal with Barentz Europe B.V., which is present in 26 countries in Europe, to distribute its Advanced Formula potassium chloride to food manufacturers in Europe. Nu-Tek says that governments in the U.K. and the Netherlands are close to making mandatory rules regarding sodium levels in food products with the aim to reduce high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Bread is a universal language. Nearly every culture has historical roots in forming judicious combinations of water and grains, seeds, pulses, starches, and other substrates, often functionally lightened with some sort of leavening, and perhaps a dash of salt for flavor. It’s the quintessential expression of science, art, and sustenance.

Sweegen’s footprint in Europe became stronger after the European Union Commission published its approval of Sweegen’s non-GMO Signature Bestevia Rebaudioside M (Reb M) for use in food and beverages.

Established as a foundry of brass fixtures in 1851, Oventrop has since evolved into a global manufacturer of balancing valves and thermostatic radiator valves for the building industries. The family-owned company is now expanding into the American market, and Plumbing & Mechanical Chief Editor Nicole Krawcke had the chance to chat with Nicola Schannath, CEO of Oventrop-US, about the company’s plans in the United States and current PHCP-PVF market trends.

OXEA, part of the Oman Oil Company, is a leading chemicals manufacturer with operations around the globe. Its specialist products go towards making high-quality coatings, lubricants, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, printing inks and plastics.

Dugan's Travels Marks a Quarter Century of Excellence with a Signature European River Cruise Experience for Independent Travel Agents

ISE is an annual trade show and conference for professional AV and electronic systems integration and is considered the largest AV show in the world.

Revelation prophecies and their fulfillment were revealed with over 7,000 participants including 1,000 pastors

Shincheonji's Chairman, Man-hee Lee, testified Revelation's Prophecies and Fulfillment to over 7,000 seminar attendees in France, including over 1,000 pastors.

Affinity Global Inc, a globally-diversified ad tech firm that provides privacy-friendly advertising solutions and SaaS platforms, has announced its acquisition of Opinary, a Berlin-based consumer engagement focused media tech company.

The NinaData buying intent platform is a near real-time contextual data platform for driving in-moment online results for brands. Using purpose-built AI for semantic analysis of content, NinaData builds sustainable data value and insights for brands.

MS Detection's sensors, products and solutions will increase the level of security in border control checkpoints, EOD units, aviation security and air cargo screening activities.

Revelation Prophecies and Their Fulfillment Revealed... Over 7,000 Participants Including 1,000 Pastors

Results from on-site test with Satelles and VIP demonstration in Italy exceed expectations for complementary technology to GNSS in Europe

Finding love in Eastern Europe has never been so easy on the leading Eastern European dating platform

Bridesandlovers.com is growing fast

MS Detection's sensors, products and solutions will increase the level of security and passenger throughput in aviation security, air cargo, border control and critical infrastructure sites.

Expanding Reach Across Europe with Strategic Office Openings to Enhance Client Support and Service Excellence

From award-winning 4K AI auto-tracking PTZ cameras to their latest 8K solutions, BZBGEAR will be putting on a spectacular show in Barcelona.