Offshore exploration, seafloor mapping and seismic survey company SeaBird Exploration (SBX.OL) announced on Tuesday that it has secured new contracts for surveying off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, and extended a contract for exploring in the North Sea off the UK coast. The contracts are valued at a combined $9 million US Dollars and bring the company’s total backlog of contracts to around $70 million.
New Zealand recently increased its regulations on exploratory deep-sea drilling, adding the requirement that companies get approval from the Environmental Protection Authority. Previously it only required the Prime Minister’s approval.
“Deep-sea drilling in New Zealand waters is a new development, and I’d have thought that given the risk of something going wrong we should have best practice regulation and oversight to minimize those risks,” said Gary Taylor, chairperson of the Environmental Defence Society in New Zealand.
Two Alzheimer’s Breakthroughs
Alzheimer’s is one of the toughest diseases to deal with. The symptoms are clear and deliberate, yet there’s little that can be done to turn them around. However, a newly-developed bloodtest has been shown to predict Alzheimer’s up to three years before symptoms start showing up. With a rapidly aging population, this sort of test is going to be extremely valuable. That’s not all, either, because there’s also a drug in phase two clinical trials that has promise as a treatment.
