Venture capital firms used to moan that business angels were unprofessional and hard to work with. But Europe's new breed of angel investor networks appears anything but that, says Mary Lisbeth D'Amico

The annual growth of biotech cultivation grew last year at its slowest pace since 1996, when biotech crops were first commercialised, according to a report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, a non-profit group that advocates the use of bio-crops.

Researchers at the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey recently reported that they have shown and observed a phenomenon called negative differential resistance - holding out the prospect of a new generation of cheap and fast semiconductors.

Venture capitalists are once again funding nanotech start-ups, but their overall investment is small compared with government funding and corporate R&D spending, says to a new report.

In his first interview since taking up the job, Bruno van Pottelsberghe, the 37-year-old newly appointed chief economist at the European Patent Office, bemoans the failure to create a single EU-wide patent.

"With engineering I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again...." Gordon E. Moore, co-founded Intel in 1968

Scientific Generics, the technology consultancy based in Cambridge, UK, has exported its 'Innovation Angels' methodology to Oslo in a pilot programme supported by the industrial development agency Innovation Norway.

Marc Van Montagu, Europe's founding father of genetically modified crops and a powerful advocate for their acceptance in Europe, speaks to Science|Business News Editor Thomas Lau.