Number News

200

Boeing’s largest commercial aircraft, the 747-8, has been approved for operations at 200 airports around the world, with the addition of London Heathrow marking the milestone. To date, 63 airports are supporting revenue flights from 14 in-service 747-8 freighters operated by five carriers. The first passenger version was delivered to an undisclosed VIP customer in February and will be fitted out internally before entering service in 2014.

39.4 per cent

The proportion of professionally qualified engineers and technicians on the Engineering Council register aged 60 and over has risen from 37.4 per cent in 2010 to 39.4 per cent in 2011, reflecting the UK’s ageing population.

There were more new registrations than in 2010, but not enough to offset losses that have brought the total number of registrants down to 223,088, of whom just under 80 per cent are Chartered Engineers (CEng). The other registers are for Incorporated Engineer, Engineering Technician and ICT Technician.

365 TWh

The UK generated 365.3TWh of electricity in 2011, 4.2 per cent less than in 2010, reflecting lower domestic and industrial consumption in all sectors. Figures published by DECC show that ‘low-carbon’ generation accounted for 28.4 per cent of the total, compared to 23.3 per cent a year earlier, as a result of increased nuclear availability and much higher rainfall and wind speeds.

13m

Over 13 million UK searches were conducted online for consumer electronics in February according to research from digital marketing agency Greenlight. ‘Kindle’ was the most queried term, attracting 823,000 searches, followed by BlackBerry with 673,000.

Greenlight’s research ‘Brown Goods Sector Report - Issue 11’ profiled UK search behaviour covering audio & accessories, cameras and camcorders, PCs, laptops and tablets, phones and accessories and TVs and DVD players.

More than seven million searches (54 per cent) were for PC and laptop terms, while phones and mobile accessories accounted for a 26 per cent share.

244,000

The European Patent Office reported a record 244,000 patent filings in 2011, with 33 per cent of applications coming from Asia, 38 per cent from EPO members and 24 per cent from the USA - the largest individual country of origin.

The most prolific applicant was Siemens, which filed 2,235 applications in fields ranging from medical technology and energy to transport and clean energy.

Four other European companies were in the top ten: Philips (1,759), BASF (1,638), Bosch (1,192) and Ericsson (1,148).

24

The BBC will make 24 HD-quality live Olympic streams available to cable and satellite providers for the London 2012 Games, as well as streaming the same content live on the BBC Sport website.

Millions of UK viewers will be able to watch live from every venue on their TVs, through the Electronic Programme Guide and BBC Red Button as well as on all four screens online.

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