BARCELONA, February 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Joikusoft Oy Ltd. today announces JoikuSpot, a free mobile software solution that turns a Symbian S60 Smartphone to a Wi-Fi HotSpot.

According to the Joikusoft Oy Founder and CEO Mr. Lasse Maki "Internet should be easily and cost-efficiently accessible everywhere, and Joikusoft aims to enable that with the JoikuSpot innovation."

JoikuSpot enables S60 Smartphone to share it's 3G internet connection wirelessly over WLAN with any compatible WLAN device such as laptop, other Smartphone or e.g. Apple iPod touch. Multiple devices can connect to JoikuSpot in parallel and seamlessly share the same 3G internet connection. JoikuSpot acts thus as an internet gateway to external WLAN devices.

DUBLIN, February 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Web based trading company, gsmExchange.com has been commissioned by Vodafone to develop a business-to-business platform that enhances the purchase and distribution of mobile handsets worldwide.

Vodafone, expressed a need for an intra-company-platform that would help them gain a competitive edge. This platform will ensure that Vodafone operating companies coming across unexpected high demands for particular handsets will have an internal exchange or channel to turn to when sourcing stock to meet these demands. In turn, Vodafone operating companies that find themselves over stocked use this site to promote their stock to other Vodafone operating company's world wide.

PLANEGG-MARTINSRIED, Germany, February 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Martinsried drug discovery and development company 4SC AG (Frankfurt, Prime Standard: VSC) and the Wuppertal-based AiCuris GmbH & Co KG today announced that they have entered into a research collaboration. The long-term goal of this collaboration is to jointly set-up a product pipeline with innovative, anti-infective drug candidates.

It has been agreed in a first step that 4SC AG will, within the context of its collaboration business segment, provide extensive resources from its medicinal chemistry to AiCuris, for research purposes. In return 4SC AG is to receive relevant research funds, of an undisclosed amount, which are to be used for further development of its own project pipeline.

VIENNA, Austria, February 5 /PRNewswire/ -- A workshop organized by the International Scientific Working Group on Tick-Borne Encephalitis (ISW-TBE), held in Baden/Vienna, aims at raising public awareness of TBE and informs on the effectiveness of vaccination. Tick-borne encephalitis, a viral disease transmitted by infected ticks, can leave infected persons with permanent sequelae. The case fatality rate is 1-2%.

Event tourism and TBE

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands and CAMBRIDGE, England, February 5 /PRNewswire/ --

- Agreement Includes ARM Cortex-M3 Processor for Microcontrollers

NXP Semiconductors, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, and ARM (LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMHY) today announced that they have expanded their strategic relationship with a new licensing agreement, including the high-performance, low-power ARM(R) Cortex(TM)-M3 processor, as well as other ARM technology. NXP will introduce a new family of microcontrollers based on the ARM Cortex-M3 processor starting in 2008, further expanding its broad portfolio of 56 ARM7(TM) and ARM9(TM) family-based MCUs.

A compound that naturally occurs in grapefruit and other citrus fruits may be able to block the secretion of hepatitis C virus (HCV) from infected cells, a process required to maintain chronic infection.

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Engineering in Medicine (MGH-CEM) report that HCV is bound to very low-density lipoprotein (vLDL, a so-called “bad” cholesterol) when it is secreted from liver cells and that the viral secretion required to pass infection to other cells may be blocked by the common flavonoid naringenin.

If the results of this study extend to human patients, a combination of naringenin and antiviral medication might allow patient to clear the virus from their livers.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Arizona State University have sequenced the genome of a rare bacterium that harvests light energy by making an even rarer form of chlorophyll, chlorophyll d. Chlorophyll d absorbs “red edge,” near infrared, long wave length light, invisible to the naked eye.

In so doing, the cyanobacterium Acaryochloris marina, competes with virtually no other plant or bacterium in the world for sunlight. As a result, its genome is massive for a cyanobacterium, comprising 8.3 million base pairs, and sophisticated. The genome is among the very largest of 55 cyanobacterial strains in the world sequenced thus far, and it is the first chlorophyll d –containing organism to be sequenced .

For the first time, scientists have described the transition of the flat, disc-shaped heart field into the primary linear heart tube. The investigations on zebrafish embryos were made by Stefan Rohr and Cécile Otten, members of the research group of Dr. Salim Abdelilah-Seyfried of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany.

Currently, one of the most important areas to explore in developmental biology is how cellular transformation processes lead to the three-dimensional formation (morphogenesis) of organs. A better understanding of these processes is a basic requirement for elucidating congenital malformation of organs.

The heart, for instance, develops in the embryo from a flat disc, the so-called heart field. The tissue of this two-dimensional structure consists of a thin layer of epithelial cells. Similar cells line all inner organs, but also the skin and blood vessels.

Yulex Corporation, a Maricopa, Arizona company that develops clean technologies to derive bio-based materials and products including natural latex, rubber and renewable energy sources from the desert plant guayule (why-YOU-lee), has added two experts in its efforts to create new industrial products from the crop.

Dr. Lauren Johnson, a leading expert in plant breeding, joins Yulex Corporation as Agricultural Research Director and Jim Mitchell joins as Senior Director of Technology Development respectively.