IN BRIEF

New year, new political party

January saw the founding by Simon Emil Ammitzbøll (MP) of a new Danish centre right party, Borgerligt Centrum. Its political agenda contains three main points:

• More funding for healthcare and education, raised by increasing total annual working hours, abolishing early retirement benefits and shortening the eligibility period for unemployment benefits.
• More skilled immigrants. The party wants to abolish a Danish law designed to cut down on forced-marriage and family-reunification immigration, thus making it easier to come to Denmark.
• Fewer prohibitions and regulations. The party contends that Denmark is becoming a “Big Mother” society and wants to “return moral responsibility to the citizens”.

Ammitzbøll was previously with Radikale Venstre (Social-Liberal Party) but left following disagreements with its leadership. For the new party to be able to contest the next general election, it needs to obtain around 20,000 supporting signatures from eligible voters.

Danes who made a difference

Worth knowing about

… either as a point of contact for business activity, or to add to your knowledge of what goes on in Denmark.

The Copenhagen Post

Who are they?
Founded in 1997, The Copenhagen Post is a weekly newspaper providing Danish news in English. It is available from news stands in the capital. An online edition covering daily news can be seen at the website http://www.cphpost.dk

How can they be useful to you?
In addition to its printed and online versions, The Copenhagen Post publishes a daily e-mail newsletter that can be subscribed to free of charge via the website. A PDF version of the weekly newspaper can be downloaded from the website by paying subscribers.

In addition to its news services, The Copenhagen Post provides other products and services including corporate subscriptions, an RSS newsfeed service and recruitment advertising especially targeted at foreigners living and working in the Danish capital.

Want to contact them?
Internet: http://www.cphpost.dk
E-mail: info@cphpost.dk
Tel: +45 3336 3300

YouTube for documents

Danish online publication portal Issuu, which anyone can use free of charge to upload a document and convert it into an instant online magazine format, has recently attracted both investment capital and media attention, reports Invest in Denmark.

While existing investor Sunstone Capital has injected a further DKK 25m (USD 4.3m), the fledgling firm has also caught the attention of renowned techniblog TechCrunch, which pithily describes Issuu as “one of the first services of its kind that doesn’t suck”. Praise indeed.

Following the latest product update from Issuu, TechCrunch maintains its positive impression, noting that the Danish portal now has an extra fistful dollars to fight it out with other competitors like Scribd and Docstoc for the title of “You-Tube for documents”, and opining on its website that “the released updates already make it a serious contender”.

http://www.issuu.com

Electrifying Danish design at 2009 Detroit Auto Show

Photos: Fisker Automotive

Danish automobile designer Henrik Fisker knows a thing or two about designing luxury cars, the Aston Martin DB9 and BMW Z8 providing ample proof. Now Mr Fisker’s own firm Fisker Automotive has showcased its first production vehicle at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit – a plug-in hybrid sports car called the Fisker Karma.

The company writes on its website that the luxury 4-seater is ready to go into production at the tail end of 2009, and will be assembled by the Finnish company Valmet Automotive, which already does assembly work for Porsche.

The sleek, low-slung Fisker Karma has two electric motors connected to the drive wheels, providing all-electric power for the first 80 km (50 miles). Thereafter a gasoline engine drives a generator to charge the lithium-ion battery, and the car functions as a normal hybrid vehicle.

The 408 hp Fisker Karma is said by the manufacturer to have a top speed of 200 kph (125 mph) and a 0-100 kph (0-60 mph) of 5.8 seconds. Not bad for a car that is nearly 5 metres long and weighs over 2 tons.

http://www.fiskerautomotive.com

A new feature in the landscape

Opening fanfare for Copenhagen Concert Hall

Photo: Scanpix

17 January 2009 saw the official opening of Danish broadcasting corporation DR’s new concert hall in the Ørestad district of the Danish capital. Designed by celebrated French architect Jean Nouvel, Copenhagen Concert Hall is daringly clad in a blue screen, on which live images from the auditoria can be projected at night.

The building’s vital statistics make impressive reading: Studio 1, the main auditorium, is constructed in 15 terraced sections with a ceiling height of 28 metres and can seat 1,800 people around a central stage; Studio 2 has walls fashioned from beech and can accommodate an audience of 500; Studio 3 has a piano-key colour scheme and seats 200; Studio 4 features striking red decor and also has a seating capacity of 200.

An immensely complex construction packed with cutting-edge acoustic technology, Copenhagen Concert Hall has also reached new heights, albeit unintentionally, in terms of budget overspend. Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende has written that in relation to seating capacity, it is one of the costliest concert halls ever built.

Did you know…
… that pigs outnumber people in Denmark by almost 3 to 1? Danish farms are home to 14 million pigs, while the nation’s population totals 5.4 million.
Statistics Denmark

Sweltering summers in the office?

Photo: Scanpix

Large glass facades are very much the norm for office buildings these days. This can be both a blessing and a curse in summer, since lots of natural light is inescapably accompanied by lots of natural heat, not to mention sizeable indoor climate control costs.

Now the Danish firm PhotoSolar has developed an ingenious solution to the problem: self-shading glass. Explained in simple terms, the pane contains foil slats like a Venetian blind, only miniaturized so that the glass appears transparent to the eye. Without impeding the outlook, the pane reflects away solar heat, making the interior more comfortable as well as helping reduce climate control costs.

PhotoSolar is developing the concept a stage further with a glass pane which also contains transparent photovoltaics that can convert shaded-off solar radiation into solar power that can be used to generate electricity for the building.

http://www.photosolar.dk

Among Europe’s finest universities

Photo: Scanpix

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has been ranked 5th out of Europe’s top 100 universities on the highly respected Leiden Ranking 2008, reports Newsmarket. Cambridge and Oxford universities in the UK top the list which is based on a size-independent bibliometric indicator applied to Web of Science publications in the period 2003-2007.

The bibliometric indicator applied in the Leiden Ranking to give a size-independent, field-normalized average impact is the so-called crown indicator, which prevents non-generalist universities such as technical universities like DTU, from being penalised by the usual citations-per-publication calculation.

The Leiden Ranking’s acknowledged scientific rigour gives DTU solid reasons to be well pleased with its position, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Oxford, Cambridge, Lausanne and Zurich in the top scientific echelon of the European university league. The photo above shows a DTU developed and built DiMethylEther car at the Shell Eco Marathon in France in 2008.

http://www.dtu.dk

Partners sought to develop solar cell

Denmark’s National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Risø DTU, has developed a solar cell material made of plastic which can be produced in rolls like plastic film, reports financial daily newspaper Børsen. It is cheaper to manufacture than silicon-based solar cells, but investment is needed to develop performance and durability to a commercially competitive level.

Risø DTU is taking a stepwise approach, and is seeking business partners who can see smaller-scale application opportunities for the current material, while the technology is further developed for larger-scale applications and ultimately full-scale green energy production.

Business development scientist Torben Damgaard Nielsen told Børsen: “We reckon it will require an investment of USD 27-36 million to set up a production facility. This is a necessary step in order to drive the technology forward.”

http://www.risoe.dk

If there’s an event in your interest area, why not bookmark it to attend? Denmark is a great place to visit!

Bin-Picking robot picks up an award

Scape Technologies, a Danish company which specialises in bin-picking robots, has scooped the 2008 “Kuka Application Award” from the world-leading German robot producer, reports professional journal Ingeniøren (The Engineer).

“Getting such an award opens a lot of doors for us,” says Scape Technologies’ director Rune Larsen. “It is mainly suppliers in the metal industry who are interested but we have also talked to representatives from the European automotive industry.”

Bin-picking is a production task that occurs when products or components are taken from a bin or pallet to be processed. Scape Technologies’ patented vision technology enables the robot to “see” and pick individual parts from a jumble of haphazardly piled parts in a container, and move them to the required position on the production line.

http://www.scapetechnologies.com

Bookmark Denmark

Health Sciences
ORPHEUS 2009
23-25 April 2009
Fourth European Conference on PhD Education in Health Sciences University of Aarhus

Setting Standards for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences. A conference for all those interested in developing the PhD degree as a cornerstone of European biomedical and health science research.

For more information on programme, venue, registration and contact visit: http://www.orpheus2009.org

Climate Change
LOCAL GOVERNMENT CLIMATE CHANGE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT
2-4 June 2009
Bella Center
Copenhagen

In the run-up to COP15, local governments from over 160 countries around the world will meet to discuss local greenhouse gas reduction measures and potentials, and set out the framework conditions needed from national governments in order to be effective.

Host: Local Government Denmark
http://www.lgdk.dk
Tel. + 45 3370 3370

Computational Systems Biology
SIXTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEMS BIOLOGY WCSB 2009
10-12 June 2009
The University of Aarhus

WCSB aims to bring together all those involved in the different aspects of computational systems biology research, e.g. experimental biology, machine learning, signal processing, mathematics, statistics, and theoretical physics.

For more information on programme, venue, registration and contact visit: http://www.cs.tut.fi/wcsb09/index.html

Food and Chemistry
EURO FOOD CHEM XV - FOOD FOR THE FUTURE
5-8 July 2009
Faculty of Life Sciences,
University of Copenhagen

Organised by the Food Chemistry Division of the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences, this conference focuses on how chemistry can help improve food quality, from the nutrition, enjoyment, and health protection perspectives.

For more information on programme, venue, registration and contact visit: http://www.eurofoodchemxv.life.ku.dk/