Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
According to the Stanford report, the $10 million grant
will be spread over a period of five years and Professor Cui will be
expected to spend up to 3 months each year doing research at KAUST,
which is about 80 km north of the Saudi capital Jedda.
"KAUST officials hope that further development of
the technology will lead to incubation of new businesses in Saudi
Arabia. The research fits with KAUST's focus on developing energy
alternatives to oil," the Stanford report states.
While Professor Cui is jumping with excitement at the prospect of
having deep pockets funding his research for the next five years,
concerns are being raised in the blogosphere and on some sites devoted
to electric transport about the young researcher's new benefactors.
Popular green transport site, Autoblog Green, has run a story titled
"Saudis invest in silicon nanowires, trying to bury battery
breakthrough?", accompanied by a number of posts arguing over whether
the Saudis are trying to bury the new battery technology or merely
trying to diversify into new energy sources as the oil spiggots run
dry.
Many posters are applauding the Saudi backing of new energy research
and labelling the naysayers as tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.
However, others point to the fact that there is still a lot of money to
be made from oil and they are suspicious that an entity from the
world's biggest oil producing nation is funding an energy storage
system that could make oil redundant.
Perhaps the final irony, however, is that oil rich Saudi Arabia is also
rich in another natural resource that would be used in any battery
based storage system requiring large amounts of silicon - sand.
David Bass
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