carfax reports
As the 2011 Formula One season is upon us, it seems fitting to get more details of a film documentary of a legend from the sport’s past.
As previewed in our five petrolhead movies for 2011 piece earlier this year, Universal have finally announced that its rather awesome-looking biopic on one of F1′s legendary drivers, Ayrton Senna, will be released in cinemas on June 3rd.
SENNA is based entirely on archive footage of the swashbuckling F1 world champion, the film charts his physical and spiritual achievements on the track and off, his quest for perfection, and the mythical status he has attained since his death in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.
The documentary spans the racing legend’s years as an F1 driver, from his opening season in 1984 to his untimely death a decade later.
Far more than a film for F1 fans, SENNA doesn’t follow usual documentary techniques instead it follows a more cinematic approach, that makes full use of astounding footage, much of which is drawn from F1 archives and is previously unseen.
Check out the official trailer below:
Source:
:: The possibilities for farming innovation and diversification have been the subject of speculation in a recent edition of a well-known UK publication for farmers as part of a discussion on new skills that might attract the next generation of young people into farming.
Ideas included insect farming to provide for growing demand for food protein, providing a renewable energy production hub for local communities by installing wind farms for electricity generation and becoming animal therapists to ensuring the wellbeing of stock in response to public concerns for the welfare of animals raised for food.
While these are all imaginative ideas for the future a more immediate concern for UK farmers is the amount of bureaucracy and red tape they find themselves having to deal with.
Farmers have contributed suggestions for simplifying regulation, including a need for government to reduce and revamp paperwork, closer engagement with the EU and looking at changing planning regulations to allow farmers to be more adaptable and innovative.
The farming wish list also included improvement to the pesticides regulatory scheme, arguing that the UK government should push harder for harmonisation at EU level so that they can get access to the most effective pesticides.
This last has been a long-running issue since the EU introduced new legislation, the EU Plant Protection Products Regulations in December 2009. The deadline for member states to produce national action plans and present them to the European Commission is December 2012.
However predictions from researchers raised concerns about the effects of removing large numbers of the existing, traditional insecticides, herbicides and fungicides from the agricultural products available for crop protection would have a significant impact on both crop yields and food prices in the UK.
Biopesticides developers in laboratories particularly in the USA have also raised concerns about the cost and lengthy time required for the process of getting their new biopesticides, biofungicides and yield enhancers through trials, testing and eventually licensing.
They too have highlighted the difficulty of having to comply with the differing processes required in each EU member state and called for their harmonisation.
Such generally small research establishments rarely have sufficient funds to cover the lengthy process and some have teamed up with large, established agrochemical companies to deal with this.
However, while this may make it possible to fund the licensing process, it does not address the issue of the length of time it can all take, estimated at between five and eight years in the EU zone.
Commodity prices, such as those for basic grains, are currently rising dramatically. Consumers’ buying power is being increasingly squeezed by governments’ efforts to recover from the 2008 recession.
At the same time demand is rising both from population growth and for more natural, healthy and chemical free food. This all suggests that there needs to be much more urgency in addressing the situation.
Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/Alison-Withers-7267/Biopesticides-developers-183879.php
The mounds of cladding are off, giving us our first good look at the new BMW X6 that is essentially a crossover that tries to look like a coupe, but with four doors. We’re not sure we really get it.
Presumably, BMW has decided there are customers who want the look and performance of a 6-series but with off-road capability and a hatch and the cargo space associated with an SUV. The plunging roofline after the B-pillar means tall passengers should ride shotgun—or not at all—and we are leery as to how much gear can easily be stowed in back.
Some suggest the new X6, caught here by our spy photographers, has Dodge Caliber tendencies, something we doubt the Teutonic automaker was striving for. The new vehicle is obviously lower than the X5, whose platform it shares, but the X6 is said to be longer.
Although the windshield is more upright and the wheels are of course smaller than in the radical illustration we showed you a year ago, these photos suggest that the production model will keep the sharply rising beltline.
BMW will build the four-passenger X6 at its plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, starting next year. It straddles the space between the Mercedes-Benz CLS and R-class. BMW expects to build about 50,000 X6s a year.
We anticipate that the X6 will be offered with a choice of diesel or gasoline six-cylinder engines (including the new twin-turbo inline-six). And judging by the exhaust outlets and fat rear tires in the spy shots, we suspect a gasoline V-8 to be in the lineup as well.
Article source: http://www.caranddriver.com/news/spied/07q3/2009_bmw_x6-spied