Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says that a new solar energy plant will stimulate Australia's economy and make the country a leader in renewable energy.

US manufacturers and retailers that get products or components from China are increasingly concerned about quality, IP and rising costs in China, and more are looking at alternate sites, according to a study published on Thursday.

LDK Solar, a China-based maker of wafers for solar cells, has reported a loss of US$22.5 million, or 21 cents per American depositary share.

The Technical University of Dresden and Novaled AG have reached 90 lm/W at a brightness of 1.000 cd/m2 for a real lighting device and even 124 lm/W when using a 3D light extraction system.

Corning CFO Jim Flaws said growing demand for flat-screen televisions increases the chances that the specialty glass maker will boost its estimate for the LCD glass market. He also said the time may be right for Corning to consider acquisitions of small or medium-sized businesses.

Axcelis Technologies, a supplier of ion implantation and cleaning systems, has announced a global workforce reduction of approximately 235, or 20% of its employees, since year end 2008.

Nanometrics has begun shipping its Lynx cluster metrology systems, as a follow-on order to a leading memory manufacturer as part of its plan for high-volume manufacturing of its latest DRAM and flash memory technologies.

Tessera Technologies has said that it won a patent dispute over small-format semiconductor packaging products, with the International Trade Commission issuing a cease-and-desist order against rivals Motorola, Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor and Spansion.

A new optical recording method could pave the way for data discs with 300 times the storage capacity of standard DVDs, Nature journal reports. Researchers describe their method as "five-dimensional" optical recording and say it could be commercialized.