Rolls-Royce wins $1bn order from Scandinavian Airlines System

Rolls-Royce has won an order worth $1 billion, at list prices, from Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) for Trent XWB and Trent 700 engines and long term TotalCare® services.

The Trent XWBs will power eight Airbus A350-900 aircraft and the Trent 700s will power four A330-300s.

Rickard Gustafson, SAS Group President and CEO, said: “Today, we launch an extensive fleet renewal plan that gives SAS a state of the art long haul fleet. To maximize the fuel efficiency and reach of our aircraft, we have selected engines from Rolls-Royce. I’m very pleased with Rolls-Royce as our engine partner, who will contribute to offering our customers a comfortable and efficient journey.”

Eric Schulz, Rolls-Royce, President - Civil Large Engines, said: “This is a significant order for the Trent XWB, the most efficient engine in the world today, and the Trent 700, which is a clear market leader. We look forward to developing our relationship with SAS.”

The Trent XWB, specifically designed for the Airbus A350 XWB, is the fastest selling Trent engine ever, with more than 1,400 already on order. It powered the first test flight of the A350 XWB at Toulouse on 14 June this year.

The Trent 700 is the market leader on the A330 with more than 1,500 sold or on order. It has won 70 per cent of new orders in the last four years.

View the original article here

Dutch education system climbs up in the Universitas 21 rankings 2013

Universitas 21, a worldwide consortium of leading research universities, has issued the rankings of countries, which offer higher education for international students. Second year in a row these rankings evaluated various criteria of national education systems as well as their progress and global impact.

Compared to last year result, in 2013 the Netherlands improved its overall position by 2 places and was ranked 7th with 78.2 points, ahead of United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and France. United States and Sweden retained their first and second positions while Canada moved down by 1 place and let Switzerland to the 3rd place.

During this research Universitas 21 assessed education systems of 50 countries by 22 attributes, which were grouped into four main categories: resources (25%), environment (20%), connectivity (15%), and output (40%). First place in each category scored 100 points and the results of other countries were calculated as a fraction of the first place result.

Expenses of the government, private companies, and tertiary institutions spent on higher education define the resources category, which is calculated as an amount of funds per student. Among all categories this one has the highest impact on the output of higher education in a country. Here the Netherlands remained on the 9th place with 82.8 points, higher than France, Germany, and UK, while first three places belonged to Denmark (100), Canada (96.9), and Sweden (96.3).

In the environment category the Netherlands repeated last year success and became the top country in the ranking list. This category identifies how favourable policy and regulations are in a country and how efficiently national education draws assigned funds. Gender balance of students and staff is also taken into balance. The results are very compact here, containing 17 countries in a range from 90 to 100 points with New Zealand and United States on the 2nd and 3rd places.

Compared to 2012 value of the connectivity category in overall rankings was increased by 5% at the cost of even reduce of the environment’s value to include assessing of internet usage. Most important parameters here are still the number of overseas students and frequency of research publications, written in cooperation with international authors.

In the connectivity category Holland improved the result by 24 points since 2012 and was ranked 8th with 76.6 points, just after UK and ahead of US and most of European countries. Switzerland (100), Australia (96.7) and Singapore (94.4) became the first three leaders in this ranking.

Output category embodies such variables as quality and impact of academic research, presence of international universities, level of proficiency of staff and graduates, and employment rate. In this category the Netherlands concluded the first ten with the same scores (51.9) and position as in the last year ranking. Unquestionable leader here is the US, only two-third of this country’s points received UK(63) and Canada (60).

See the overall ranking list of the first 25 countries.

8 people have voted and like it 88%100Was this article useful for you?Thanks for your vote!
Voting results will be updated less then 3 hours.

View the original article here