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Four new centres of academe-industry collaboration, part of the Faraday Partnerships initiative, backed by almost Pounds 9 million from the government, were announced on Wednesday. They are:

* The Faraday Partnership in Aerospace and Automotive Materials, involving Oxford, Oxford Brookes and Cranfield universities in developing materials for cars and aircraft

* Faraday Plastics, linking Warwick University's manufacturing group with Rapra Technology to devise high-performance plastics

* The Smith Institute for Industrial Mathematics and System Engineering, to spread the use of mathematics and computer science in industrial processes

* The Technitex Faraday Partnership, bringing together the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Heriot-Watt and Leeds universities to exploit textile products.