LONDON, June 23 /PRNewswire/ --

IRVINE, California, June 23 /PRNewswire/ --

Relsys International, the leading provider of drug safety, pharmacovigilance and risk management solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, announces that Mr. Bruce Palsulich has joined the company as Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer, reporting directly to the CEO. In this role, he will oversee Relsys' future product development and direction, and drive corporate strategic initiatives.

The discovery of an ancient city buried beneath the sands of modern-day Syria has provided evidence for a Hellenistic settlement that existed for more than six centuries extending into the time of the Roman Empire. The site provides a unique insight into the structures of a pre-Roman Hellenistic settlement. The project, funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, sheds new light on city life in the Hellenistic period.

The Syrian deserts have long kept an important secret hidden deep beneath their sands ­ the remains of the pre-Roman Hellenistic settlement of Palmyra. Until now, the only evidence for the existence of such a settlement was to be found in historical writing. As part of an FWF-funded joint project, the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna, the German Archaeological Institute and the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums in Syria have been the first to track down the location of this early city.

Researchers have shown that the pre-hatching calls of baby Nile crocodiles actually mean something to their mothers - and even to their siblings.

To us, they sound like "umph! umph! umph!" but to the others in the nest it's a signal that it's time to hatch, according to the report in Current Biology. When the mother hears those cries, she also knows it's time to start digging up the nest.

The new findings, made from a series of "playback" experiments, confirm what had only been suspected on the basis of prior anecdotal observation, according to the researchers Amélie Vergne and Nicolas Mathevon of Université Jean Monnet in France. The researchers said that the calling behavior is probably critical to the early survival of the young crocodiles.

The hardiest plants and those most likely to survive the climatic shifts brought about by global warming are now easier to identify, thanks to new research findings by a team from Queen's University.

Populations of plants growing at the outer edges of their natural "geographic range" exist in a precarious balance between extinction of existing populations and founding of new populations, via seed dispersal into vacant but suitable habitat. "Policy makers concerned with preserving plant species should focus not only on conserving land where species are now, but also where they may be found in the future," says Queen's Biology professor Christopher Eckert.

ROAD TOWN, TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands, June 22 /PRNewswire/ --

Conference Call for media: CIC Energy Corp. TSX: ELC BSE: CIC Energy Monday June 23, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. EST, Toronto, Canada (16:00 SAST)

Greg Kinross, President, and Warren Newfield, CEO and Co-Chairman, will host a conference call for media to provide an update on CIC Energy Corp.'s Mmamabula Energy Project. A question and answer session will take place following the call. Access details are as follows:

Date: Monday June 23, 2008 Time: 10:00 a.m. EST, Toronto, Canada (16:00 SAST) Dial In: 1-800-814-4890 toll free in North America or 416-644-3419 for international callers. Please allow 10 minutes to be connected to the conference call.

LONDON, June 23 /PRNewswire/ --

- As Food Waste Awareness Week Starts, Ocado Reveals That Brits Throw Away Enough Food at Dinnertime to Feed 19 million.

The kitchen is the heart of the home but over-enthusiastic Brits are cooking up enough food at mealtimes to lay an extra place at the table in every one of the nation's homes(1). This waste food could feed the British Army 51 times over(2).

California thinks you shouldn’t be allowed to see your OWN fingerprints (of the DNA variety) without a doctor’s permission. Last week, the California Department of Public Health sent "Cease And Desist" orders to 13 private companies that were set up during the last several months to provide curious individuals with information about their own DNA.   The crux of the letter is that California regulations "prohibit the offering of a clinical laboratory test directly to the consumer without a physician order, unless specifically exempt.  Genetic tests are NOT exempt." According to Karen Nickel, the official who signed the letter, "the genetic tests have not been validated for clinical utility and accuracy, and they are scaring a lot of people to death."

Like several other insect orders, the Lepidoptera is staggeringly diverse -- there are about 180,000 described species in the order and an untold number that remain unknown to biologists. (For comparison, there are about 5,000 mammal species).

Most people know the Lepidoptera ("leps" to entomologists) as moths and butterflies. The incompleteness of their taxonomic descriptions reflects their sheer diversity rather than academic neglect -- leps have been collected and studied for centuries. As it turns out, the distinction between moths and butterflies probably is not phylogenetically meaningful, as the "butterflies" (which includes three superfamilies: true butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies), though probably monophyletic as a group, may represent a clade nested within the other moths. However, I won't complain if these terms survive as they are useful in non-phylogenetic contexts.

This material originates from volcanoes but in synthesized form it takes up around a third of the average packet of washing powder and it also helps refine 99 per cent of the world's petrol (*) - when it's not used to clean up nuclear waste.

You've probably never heard of it but this extremely useful material is a zeolite. A European team of scientists has revealed, for the first time, its chemical structure using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). This research opens door to more effective zeolites in the future.

Zeolites are crystalline white minerals, mostly made of aluminium, silicon and oxygen. Their structure is like molecular scaffolding, and thanks to this structure they are frequently used as a “molecular sieve.” This means that with their pores they can separate different molecules and cause different reactions, which are crucial in treating petrol and producing chemicals. Zeolites can also provoke ion exchange, which is useful in water softening or in the removal of nuclear waste (by filtering the radioactive components).