MOSCOW, February 21 /PRNewswire/ --

Mechel OAO (NYSE: MTL), one of the leading Russian mining and metals companies, announces that it has signed a contract and is starting construction of a railway spur track to the Elga coal deposit (Yakutia).

The contract for designing and constructing the railway spur track to connect Ulak railroad station of the Baikal-Amur Mainline with the Elga coal deposit (Yakutia) was signed between Mechel and Transstroy Engineering Corporation, a subsidiary of Transstroy Design and Construction Company, on February 19.

A University of British Columbia astronomer with an international team has discovered the largest structures of dark matter ever seen. Measuring 270 million light-years across, these dark matter structures criss-cross the night sky, each spanning an area that is eight times larger than the full moon.

“The results are a major leap forward since the presence of a cosmic dark matter web that extends over such large distances has never been observed before,” says Ludovic Van Waerbeke, an assistant professor in the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy.

To glimpse the unseen structures, the team of French and Canadian scientists “X-rayed” the dark matter, an invisible web that makes up more than 80 per cent of the mass of the universe.

Kevin Gardner sees green roads right around the corner.

“A lot of the infrastructure in this country needs to be re-built,” says Gardner, University of New Hampshire associate professor of civil engineering and director of the Environmental Research Group. “We have a real opportunity to re-build the infrastructure the right way with sustainable materials and socially sensitive designs that protect air, water, land, and human resources.”

Funded by the Federal Highway Administration and pooled state highway funds, as well as Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants for specific research projects, Gardner established the new Recycled Materials Resource Management Center (RMRC) at UNH on June 1, 2007. The RRMC is a collaboration between UNH environmental and social impact researchers and University Wisconsin-Madison geotechnical, or soil behavior, faculty. Working closely with a board of advisors composed of representatives from the EPA, the Federal Highway Administration and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, as well as numerous other stakeholders, one of the Center’s activities is to establish a green roads program that develops criteria for what makes a roadway green.

TOKYO, February 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- Environmental Technologies to be on Display at 20 Venues Around the World

Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., announced today that it will co-sponsor "The Science of Survival," the first exhibition of its kind, which opens at the Science Museum, London, on Saturday April 5. The London exhibition will last until Sunday Nov. 2 before embarking on a five-year global tour.

In this fun, interactive exhibition, which explores what our lifestyles could be in 2050, Nissan will showcase several of its environmental technologies in the "Moving" area, including its compact lithium-ion battery and a quarter scale model of the Pivo electric vehicle concept.

REDMOND, Washington, February 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- New interoperability principles and actions will increase openness of key products.

Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.

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A team of academic, industry and independent researchers has demonstrated a new class of computer attacks that compromise the contents of “secure” memory systems, particularly in laptops.

The attacks overcome a broad set of security measures called “disk encryption,” which are meant to secure information stored in a computer’s permanent memory. The researchers cracked several widely used technologies, including Microsoft’s BitLocker, Apple’s FileVault and Linux’s dm-crypt.

The team reports that these attacks are likely to be effective at cracking many other disk encryption systems because these technologies have architectural features in common.

There are lots of journals out there, more than I could name in any one article, but as you get into science communication, the number of peer-reviewed publications drops considerably.

That seems odd, since communicating with the public, and therefore with the voters on policy, is so crucial to keeping science funding in place.

A group of volunteers had that same thought, so they secured some funding from the European Space Agency's Hubble Space Telescope group and set out to fill that gap. CAP Journal was born. CAP Journal stands for Communicating Astronomy with the Public. It's a new magazine, in print and online, and the timing is excellent.

Venus, it turns out, is a planet of extraordinarily changeable and extremely large-scale weather. Bright hazes appear in a matter of days, reaching from the south pole to the low southern latitudes and disappearing just as quickly. This kind of ‘global weather’, unlike anything on Earth, has given scientists a new mystery to solve.

The cloud-covered world of Venus is all but a featureless, unchangeable globe at visible wavelengths of light. Switch to the ultraviolet and it reveals a truly dynamic nature. Transient dark and bright markings stripe the planet, indicating regions where solar ultraviolet radiation is absorbed or reflected, respectively.

In July 2007, the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) captured a series of images showing the development of a bright southern haze.

The first direct evidence of how and when tectonic plates move, that collision with one sliding below the other into the rocky mantle, could potentially improve their ability to assess earthquake risks.

A team of researchers writing in Nature found that, contrary to common scientific predictions, dense plates tend to be held in the upper mantle, while younger and lighter plates sink more readily into the lower mantle.

The mantle is a zone underneath the Earth's crust encompassing its super hot molten core. It is divided into an upper and lower area, and is made up of a 2,900 km circumference of churning, viscous rock. It is constantly fed with new material from parts of tectonic plates which slide down from the surface into it.

BASINGSTOKE, England and PHILADELPHIA, February 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Shire plc (LSE: SHP, NASDAQ: SHPGY) the global specialty biopharmaceutical company announces results for the twelve months to December 31, 2007 - a year which has seen significant growth in launched products.

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