IndustryFeb. 21, 2013

Merck Advanced Technologies, the Korean affiliate of Germany’s Merck, said Thursday it would begin commercial supply of red nitride LED phosphors, used in lighting products, in the first half of this year, in addition to its green LuAG and more reliable silicate phosphors to meet rising demand in the LED market and diversify LED packaging.LED phosphors are used to coat blue light emitting diodes to transform the blue light into white light, as recognized by human eyes. More than 90 percent of th

IndustryFeb. 21, 2013

Tobacco manufacturer KT&G has put 1 million packs of The One Impact Maxim Edition on sale for a limited four-week period. The outer cover was designed in collaboration with Maxim, the world’s best-selling men’s monthly magazine, to attract young male smokers in their 20s and 30s ― who comprise about 70 percent of The One series sales ― the tobacco maker said. The One Impact Maxim Edition is the first limited-edition and sixth product from the low-tar, hard-filtered The One lineup since the brand

IndustryFeb. 21, 2013

Hyundai Motor’s Chung Mong-koo Foundation offered a new round of scholarships to some 1,400 talented underprivileged students on Thursday. The recipients included students who showed promise in basic science or cultural arts, those who lost their parents in car accidents and defector college students from North Korea. Since its creation in 2009, the scholarship program has provided 15 billion won to about 15,000 students as of 2012, the foundation said. The foundation was established in 2011 whe

IndustryFeb. 21, 2013

Korea’s free trade agreement with Colombia builds on a nexus of FTAs for the Andean nation and will facilitate a trading platform for Korean companies to export to other economies in the region, according to Colombia’s trade minister.“We have an important internal market with a population of 50 million people, but we also have an important nexus of FTAs with many of the surrounding economies giving Korean companies a platform for exports into those other markets,” said Sergio Diaz-Granados, mini

Feb. 21, 2013

Hycore Co., founded by Hanyang University Holdings, has developed a new dual compound motor system that reduces the energy consumption of existing electric motors. In the envisaged era of electric vehicles, electric motors and batteries would replace traditional engines in automobiles. Existing electric motors that are widely used in electric cars and bikes consume excessive energy when used for long periods. It also takes a lot of financial investment in order to improve their performance. Inst

IndustryFeb. 21, 2013

The inauguration of Korea’s new government may rev up cooperation between Korea and Russia, particularly in the energy field. President-elect Park Geun-hye, who is to take office on Monday, earlier pledged to stabilize domestic energy supplies and to achieve a logistics network covering Eurasia.Eying such potential, En+ Group, a Russia-based diversified mining, metals and energy group, is poised to seek more energy-related cooperation with Korea, including a cross-border electricity supply proje

Feb. 21, 2013

National Pension Service chairman Jun Kwang-woo said he would tender his resignation Friday.“Chairman Jun’s decision to step down from his post comes in line with the upcoming expiration of President Lee Myung-bak’s tenure (on Feb. 24),” a senior official at the NPS told The Korea Herald.Though Jun’s term was recently extended by one more year until December 2013, he has decided to resign before the Park Geun-hye administration takes office on Feb. 25, said the official.Jun, who worked as the na

Feb. 21, 2013

NASA says it Solar Dynamics Observatory has detected a giant sunspot that has grown to over six times the diameter of Earth in the last two days.Sunspots form on the sun‘s surface as magnetic fields rearrange and realign.Beginning Tuesday, instruments on the solar observatory detected a sunspot that grew to giant proportions in just under 48 hours, the space agency said Wednesday.The spot has quickly grown into what astronomers call a delta region, in which the lighter areas around the sunspot,

TechnologyFeb. 21, 2013

MobilityFeb. 21, 2013

The more people sit the more they are at risk for chronic diseases even if they had a similar body mass index with those who sat less, U.S. researchers say.Richard Rosenkranz, assistant professor of human nutrition, at Kansas State University and colleagues examined the associations of sitting time and chronic diseases in middle-aged Australian males. Rosenkranz, and Emma George and Gregory Kolt, both at the University of Western Sydney, said the study involved 63,048 men ages 45-65 from the Aus

TechnologyFeb. 21, 2013