180m€ for ESS Bilbao confirmed

It was announced today on the news.

To understand what ESS Bilbao is, please see this video distrubted by them:

ESS Bilbao - Introductory Video from infobasque on Vimeo.

Petroleum, chemical and biofuels research in the Basque Country

Today we just heard that Intertek has opened another research center in Bilbao:

"The new Intertek laboratory will give support to all those companies working in the energy sector, whether at state or European level, collaborating on complex R+D+i projects as well as helping in the compliance with the EU Directives on renewable energies”, stated Mr Ben Fontán, Managing Director of Intertek España.

Read more here and here.

Basque Firm DMP to provide landing gear for Airbus and Boeing

Basque firm DMP announced yesterday that

they would become the "single supplier for the suspension of the three most important programs and volume for the French manufacturer, such as the Boeing 787, A350 and A330 and A340, which share a common train".

We also heard in October that:

"The Spanish company Desarrollos Mecánicos de Precisión (DMP) has signed a contract to produce the shock absorbers for the new Airbus A350 passenger plane."

The engineering department uses:

Computer assisted design (Catia V5, Unigraphics, AutoCAD, etc.). Finite element calculation & simulation (Nastran, Patran & Dytran). Process engineering & CNC programming assisted by CAM systems (Powermill, Unigraphics, etc.). Technical document management, configuration management. Personnel skilled in the development of aeronautical processes. Certification in special processes.

Basque Firm Progenika sources Wikileaks' US critical listed firm Grifols

As per indicated here the agreement is:

"Basque biotechnology company Progenika Biopharma, specialised in the development of personal medicine technology, has granted Grifols exclusive worldwide distribution rights for its BLOODchip® molecular biology product."

"For Victor Grifols, President and CEO of Grifols “this agreement will allow us to strengthen our Diagnostic Division and consolidate our global position in the field of blood grouping with a new innovative tool that increases transfusion safety.”


Grifols was recently listed as part of the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative revelated by Wikileaks.

HOWTO - Transportation - Biarritz to San Sebastian and Bilbao Airport to Bilbao

To get to San Sebastian from those two airports -by BUS-:

NEW LINK between San-Sebastian/Donostia and Biarritz airport is run by Basque transportation firm PESA. Search for the timetable -due to increase- here:

http://pesa.net/pesa/horariosBD/ctrl_horarios.php

-Choose Origin "Aeropuerto BIARRITZ" for the airport and destination "DONOSTIA-SAN SEBASTIAN" for San Sebastian.

-Same from Bilbao choose "'Aeropuerto LOIU" for Bilbao airport and destination same "DONOSTIA/SAN SEBASTIAN".

THIS LINK IS NEW AND IS NOT HIGHLIGHTED BY AIRLINERS OR AIRPORTS YET!

There are not combinations -yet- from Biarritz airport to Bilbao.

Fly Biarritz from/to:

AirFrance (Paris Orly - Lyon - Nice - Geneva)
EasyJet (Paris Charles de Gaulle - Lyon - London Gatwick)
RyanAir (London - Dublin - Birmingham - Marseille)
Baboo (Geneva)
Transavia (Amsterdam)

The timetables from Bilbao airport -Loiu- to Bilbao BUS are here:

http://www.termibus.es/horarios.php?idi=en

Choose origin "LOIU(Aeropuerto)" and destination "BILBAO"

Fly Bilbao from/to (check the airliner link) :

AIR NOSTRUM L.A. MEDITERRANEO: A CORUÑA, ALICANTE, SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, SEVILLA, VALENCIA, VIGO
VUELING: AMSTERDAM/SCHIPHOL (AMS) BARCELONA, LONDON HEATHROW, MALAGA, MILAN /MALPENSA, SEVILLA
SPANAIR: BARCELONA, GRAN CANARIA , LANZAROTE , MADRID-BARAJAS, TENERIFE SUR
IBERIA: BARCELONA, MADRID-BARAJAS
BRUSSELS AIRLINES N.V./S.A. : BRUSSELS
AIR BERLIN : DUSSELDORF, PALMA DE MALLORCA
LUFTHANSA : DUSSELDORF, FRANKFURT, MUNICH, STUTTGART
AIR EUROPA : FUERTEVENTURA , GRAN CANARIA , LANZAROTE , MALAGA, PALMA DE MALLORCA, TENERIFE NORTE , TENERIFE SUR
TAP PORTUGAL : LISBOA
EASYJET : LONDON STANSTED, ROMA /FIUMICINO
AIR FRANCE : PARIS /CHARLES DE GAULLE

Apartments and accomodation for Researchers

In San Sebastian, The Talent House aims to solve one of researchers' and their families' most common problems: accomodation. The House of Talent is an integrated space for researchers that relocate to Basque Country's San Sebastian-Donostia. It is about to be inaugurated.

Further information and applications here.

The video with more promotional details here:

The users' competitive advantage

I was revisiting some of Europe's recent supercomputing centers' achievements. It turns very interesting to see how some of them started to claim the achievements of their users -that is to say external users from another institution, that apply for computing power.

This is indeed a very dangerous problem for newly formed centers: it does not reflect any of their own research! of none of its researchers. To be very clear: these centers have huge costs but research function is not working as it should. Scientific representants in the government or science policy managers which are really pressed by IMF will have to justify this.

Since the begining of this blog I have claimed that this is not the way to go. Today, unfortunately these centers know that they may become target of bailouts.

What makes it even more exceptional is: why when we had money, we though that competing for the TOP500 would give us scientific competitive advantage ? Just for having an F1 chassis, we can run in the F1? Buying computing parts is something ANY government can do.

I believe that in the forthcoming years, we may see some of these baby places merging or disappearing in favour of places that DO real science or engineering. The rest only need one thing: extremely efficient management with large efficiency ratios for their systems. IMF will shutdown the rest.