Projects win grants for equipment

* Details of nearly Pounds 70 million funding for research were announced this week. Under the 1999 round of the Joint Research Equipment Initiative, 230 awards have been made to projects in 53 universities to improve research infrastructure.

Among those successful are: Cardiff University (Pounds 234,000 for a spectrometer); the University of Leicester (Pounds 2.6 million for computers for an astrophysical fluids facility); the Institute of Cancer Research (Pounds 64,000 for a laser-scanning cytometer); and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (Pounds 444,000 to help monitor global environment change).

Thirty-eight of those receiving awards are in England, seven in Scotland, five in Wales and three in Northern Ireland. More than half the funding comes from external sponsors, with an extra Pounds 21.2 million from the funding councils and Pounds 12.1 million from the Office of Science and Technology and research councils.