SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, France, February 8 /PRNewswire/ -- 3Roam announces the first microwave router to provide the WiMAX backhaul market with fiber like capabilities over the air. With 3Roam's MicrowaveRouter proven protocols such as IP/MPLS, already deployed in most operators' core networks, can now be extended to the backhaul network for enhancing quality of service and network availability.

By integrating microwave radio capabilities with full IP protocols, the 3Roam's MicrowaveRouter includes everything required for a complete backhaul network in areas where fiber is not available and too expensive to deploy.

PALO ALTO, California, February 8 /PRNewswire/ --

Facebook today announced the first step in a broad plan to internationalize the site with translation into Spanish. German and French versions of Facebook are expected in the coming weeks. Nearly 1,500 Spanish-speaking users on Facebook chose to be part of the effort and translated the site from English to Spanish in less than four weeks.

Current users who want to view Facebook in Spanish can change their language preference from their account settings. Beginning on Monday, Feb. 11, any person who goes to http://www.facebook.com from a Spanish-speaking country will see the site in Spanish. Facebook currently has more than 2.8 million active users in Latin America and Spain.

Anyone who has conducted field research knows that the very process of collecting data alters the system that you are studying. As you walk across a field, forest or stream to collect data, your footfalls trample vegetation, they compact the soil, they scrape algae off the rocks. Survey work usually involves a single visit to a site - as long as you avoid sampling from the areas you have trampled, it’s usually pretty safe to assume that your presence is unlikely to have affected the data that you have collected. Permanent plots are a different matter - because these plots are repeatedly sampled, there is cumulative damage. In larger plots, permanent trails may be established within plots.

Since we can’t avoid these effects, the real question is whether the effects are significant. Ecological systems are inherently heterogeneous. Does the effect of disturbance fall within the range of natural variability within the sample? That’s what really matters when it comes to data collection. In a forthcoming paper in the journal Biotropica, Liza Comita and Gregory Goldsmith “sought to quantify the significance and spatial extent of research trail impacts on the structure and dynamics of the seedling layer in the 50-ha permanent forest dynamics plot on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama”.

NEW YORK, February 7 /PRNewswire/ --

P\S\L Group is pleased to announce the appointment of Paul Barnes to the newly created position of Group President for P\S\L Research (PSLR).

In his new role, Mr. Barnes will lead the P\S\L Research Group, which consists of all existing research businesses: P\S\L Research International, P\S\L Research Europe and P\S\L Research Canada. His focus will be to ensure that the existing research businesses continue to realize their full potential, and also to develop new research and consulting services to support specific market-focused client needs.

There was a time when you had to be rich to be fat. Now you have to be rich to stay thin, says a new study.

Researchers led by Jennifer L. Black at New York University critically reviewed ninety studies published between 1997 through 2007 on neighborhood determinants of obesity through the PubMed and PsychInfo databases.

They found that neighborhoods with decreased economic and social resources have higher rates of obesity. They also found that residents in low-income urban areas are more likely to report greater neighborhood barriers to physical activity, such as limited opportunities for daily walking or physical activity and reduced access to stores that sell healthy foods, especially large supermarkets.

A study by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley says that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.

In addition, the findings show that society is more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of its broader inability to accept African Americans as fully human, according to the researchers.

Co-author Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford associate professor of psychology, said she was shocked by the results, particularly since they involved subjects born after Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. "This was actually some of the most depressing work I have done," she said. "This shook me up. You have suspicions when you do the work—intuitions—you have a hunch. But it was hard to prepare for how strong [the black-ape association] was—how we were able to pick it up every time."

LONDON, February 7 /PRNewswire/ --

Planalytics Inc., the global leader in Business Weather Intelligence(SM), released its January WeatherCall(SM) report today stating that favourable weather conditions at month's end will benefit retailers after an otherwise slow start due to above normal temperatures. January spawned a drastic difference in temperature between the northern and southern parts of the country. A series of rain bearing systems moved across the UK, resulting in cooler temperatures for Scotland, while England and Wales were experiencing more mild conditions.

MCKINNEY, Texas, February 7 /PRNewswire/ --

Torchmark Corporation (NYSE: TMK) announced today that its Chief Executive Officer, Mark McAndrew, and Chief Financial Officer, Gary Coleman, will present Tuesday, February 12, 2008 at the Merrill Lynch Insurance Investors Conference in New York City. Torchmark's presentation is scheduled to begin at 2:20 p.m. EST.

The presentation will be webcast live at: http://www.torchmarkcorp.com on the Investor Relations page, under "Management Presentations" or http://www.veracast.com/webcasts/ml/insurance08/35112276.cfm

Using the genetic equivalent of an ancient thermometer, a team of scientists has determined that the Earth endured a massive cooling period between 500 million and 3.5 billion years ago.

Reporting today (Feb. 7) in the journal Nature, researchers from the University of Florida, the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution and the biotechnology company DNA2.0 describe how they reconstructed proteins from ancient bacteria to measure the Earth’s temperature over the ages.