Many people may not know that this past weekend marked the 400th anniversary of John Milton’s birth (he was born on December 9th, 1608). “But Milton remains incredibly relevant to us today,” says Shannon Miller, professor and chair of the English department at Temple University. 

Milton is the seventeenth-century English poet who is considered equal or superior to William Shakespeare. “He is important to us both for the issues of political revolution in which he was invested and for his poem Paradise Lost which explores issues of political revolution within a narrative about the fall from Eden,” says Miller.

Naturally, people found a way to link Milton to the recent election of Barack Obama - and one pundit even found a way to make John McCain into Satan.  

A supplement in the December 2008 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that reviews the history and development of high fructose corn syrup finds no scientific support for the hypothesis that high fructose corn syrup is causally linked to obesity in the United States or globally any more or less than other caloric sweeteners.

We've all had it happen; you're sitting in class, hopelessly unprepared because you've been writing a D&D campaign or plotting ways to take over the world when, out of nowhere, the teacher calls upon you to come to the front the room and solve a math problem. In front of everyone.

How you respond to that says a lot about you, and 'math anxiety' may be a real phenomenon, according to a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science.  University of Chicago psychologist Sian L. Beilock examines some recent research looking at why being stressed about math can result in poor performance in solving problems.

Imagine tiny cracks in your patio table healing by themselves, or the first small scratch on your new car disappearing by itself. This and more may be possible with self-healing coatings being developed at the University of Illinois. 

The new coatings are designed to better protect materials from the effects of environmental exposure. Applications range from automotive paints and marine varnishes to the thick, rubbery coatings on patio furniture and park benches. 

We all know how infants can act up during their terrible twos, but when these behaviors are accompanied by developmental setbacks, they could point to something more serious.

Researchers are currently learning more about regressive autistic spectrum disorder (RASD), which describes children who have been diagnosed with autism who demonstrate a history of a regression. The regression refers to a marked loss of previously acquired developmental skills such as language or social ability.

In 2006, astronomer Alice Quillen of the University of Rochester predicted that a planet of a particular size and orbit must lie within the dust of a nearby star. That planet has now been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, making it only the second planet ever imaged after an accurate prediction. The only other planet seen after an accurate prediction was Neptune, discovered more than 160 years ago. 

"It's remarkable," says Eugene Chiang, associate professor of astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley, and part of the team that imaged the new planet. "Alice saw the way the inner edge of the dust ring cut off sharply and recognized that a planet likely orbited just inside. The orbit we found was amazingly close to Alice's prediction." 

LONDON, December 9 /PRNewswire/ --

- Betting Company Won't Gamble with its Reputation

FinScan, a leading provider of sanctions list and PEP compliance screening solutions, today announced that William Hill PLC have implemented the FinScan Hosted compliance solution throughout the firm's internationally-recognized betting and gaming network. The FinScan solution encompasses a hosted screening service, a subscription to the FinScan List Management service and integration with the comprehensive Dow Jones Watchlist.

William Hill PLC is recognised as one of the world's leading bookmakers and online gaming providers, serving hundreds of thousands of clients through the UK's largest retail betting estate, as well as telephone and online services.

STOCKHOLM, December 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Sweden is a world leader in bioenergy and renewable vehicle fuels, and is the fastest growing windpower market in Europe. There are excellent investment opportunities for Indian investors, as Sweden can offer innovative and sustainable cleantech solutions for the future.

Major Swedish cities have integrated the planning of transport and traffic, water and sewage treatment, waste collection, and housing to create sustainable cities with low carbon footprints. Sweden lowered its carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions by up to 60 percent from 1990 to 2006, while the Swedish economy grew by some 40 percent during the same period.

Business opportunities

PLEASANTON, California, December 9 /PRNewswire/ --

- A sensitive and fully automated platform improves viral load testing in serum and plasma

SAN FRANCISCO and PETACH TIKVA, Israel, December 9 /PRNewswire/ --

- Client Protocols Work Hand-in-Hand With Network Intelligence to Save Costs and Improve Users' Internet Experience

BitTorrent, the global standard technology for the delivery of rich media on the Internet, and Oversi, a pioneer of over-the-top (OTT) caching and delivery solutions, today announced their collaboration to deliver an integrated solution that optimizes P2P traffic across the Internet Service Provider (ISP) network. In today's business climate, the joint solution brings clear benefits to ISPs: reduced bandwidth costs and deferred infrastructure investments together with a higher quality subscriber experience.