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Scottish academics have welcomed plans for a world-class research laboratory that they hope will boost graduate employment. Agilent Technologies, a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard, is to set up a lab at its South Queensferry site, to focus on innovations in telecommunications.

Agilent has already begun to establish links with higher education in Lausanne, Cambridge and St Andrews. It will create up to 40 jobs over the next two years, with researchers investigating next-generation communications such as broad-bandwidth.