Could injecting a gene into a patient with severe heart failure reverse their disabling and life-threatening condition? Physician-scientists are setting out to answer that question in a first-ever clinical trial of gene therapy to treat severe heart failure.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center is the only center in the New York City area where the therapy is currently available.

Patients enrolled in the multicenter CUPID trial (Calcium Up-Regulation by Percutaneous Administration of Gene Therapy in Cardiac Disease) will undergo a minimally invasive cardiac catheterization procedure that will introduce a specially engineered gene that stimulates production of an enzyme necessary for the heart to pump more efficiently.

The International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) today released the Citation Statistics report. The report is written from a mathematical perspective and states that while citation-based statistics such as impact factor are often used to assess scientific research they are not the best measures of research quality.

The use of citations in assessing research quality is a topic that is of increasing interest throughout the world's scientific community. The report cautions against the over-reliance on citation statistics such as the impact factor and h-index. These are often promoted because of the belief in their accuracy, objectivity, and simplicity, but these beliefs are unfounded.

Among the report’s key findings:

LAS VEGAS, June 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Company Expands and Strengthens Key Components, Including VoIP and Conferencing, to Enable Unified Communications

Verizon Business is expanding and strengthening its unified communications services to help multinational companies, faced with dramatically rising travel costs, collaborate better and improve their business processes.

Unified communications (UC) uses Internet protocol networks to integrate various systems, media, devices and applications, allowing for more effective and efficient communications. At the NXTcomm'08 trade show today, Verizon Business is announcing the following new features and capabilities of the company's suite of unified communications and collaboration offerings:

DALIAN, China, June 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Neusoft Park (Hekou, Dalian) Officially Opens

SINGAPORE, June 18 /PRNewswire/ --

Mayors and senior officials around the world will join an expanding line-up of prominent speakers and delegates from governments, international organisations, private sector companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the first-ever World Cities Summit this month.

This international conference on public governance and the sustainable development of cities, will take place in Singapore from 23 to 25 June 2008. Practitioner focussed, it will discuss the challenges of urbanisation and examine effective practices in governance, urban planning, infrastructure development and environmental management so as to build "Liveable and Vibrant Cities", which is also the theme of the conference.

Male homosexuality is difficult to explain under strictly Darwinian evolutionary models, because carriers of genes predisposing towards male homosexuality would be likely to reproduce less than average, suggesting that alleles influencing homosexuality should progressively disappear from a population.

Partly due to that, homosexuality in males is thought to have both psycho-social factors and genetic components. This is suggested by the high concordance of sexual orientation in identical twins and the fact that homosexuality is more common in males belonging to the maternal line of male homosexuals. These effects have not been shown for female homosexuality, indicating that these two phenomena may have very different origins and dynamics.

An Italian research team, consisting of Andrea Camperio Ciani and Giovanni Zanzotto at the University of Padova and Paolo Cermelli at the University of Torino, found that the evolutionary origin and maintenance of male homosexuality in human populations could be explained by a model based around the idea of sexually antagonistic selection, in which genetic factors spread in the population by giving a reproductive advantage to one sex while disadvantaging the other.

Previous work by Camperio Ciani and collaborators, published in 2004, showed that females in the maternal line of male homosexuals were more fertile than average, giving less weight to the idea that alleles influencing homosexuality should progressively disappear from a population.

LONDON, June 18 /PRNewswire/ --

NHS members in Unite, the UK's largest trade union, have, in an unprecedented move, voted for a ballot on industrial action. The vote came alongside an overwhelming rejection of the government's 7.99% three year pay offer.

Unite members are angry at the imposition of a below inflation pay deal that equates to a pay cut. Despite calls from Unite the government have refused to get back around the table to discuss our members concerns.

Unite Assistant General Secretary Gail Cartmail said: "This call for a ballot on industrial action is unprecedented in the NHS. It sends a very clear message that our members are angry and frustrated at being asked to accept this woefully inadequate three year pay deal.

Want to get a male mouse excited? A group of steroids found in female mouse urine is all it takes, say researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. They found the compounds activate nerve cells in the male mouse's nose with unprecedented effectiveness.

"These particular steroids, known as glucocorticoids (GCCs), are involved in energy metabolism, stress and immune function," says senior author Timothy E. Holy, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy. "They control many important aspects of the mouse's physiology and theoretically could give any mouse that sniffs them a detailed insider's view of the health of the animal they came from."

Holy plans further research to see if activating the nerves in the male mouse's nose leads to particular behavioral responses. He probes the male mouse's reaction to chemical signals from female mice to advance understanding of pattern recognition and learning in the much more complex human brain. In 2005, he found that female mice or their odors cause male mice to sing. He doesn't know yet if the GCC steroids' effects on the male mouse nose help to trigger this behavior.

NEW YORK, June 17 /PRNewswire/ --

Industry professionals and academic specialists are invited to submit abstracts outlining potential presentations to be given during the 2009 conference program of PPI Transport Symposium 18, 7-9 October 2009, Liverpool, England, UK. PPI Transport Symposium is the forest products logistics industry's most comprehensive event, exclusively dedicated to the transport, handling, and distribution of forest products.

SCOPE OF THE PROGRAM

LONDON, June 17 /PRNewswire/ --

- Revenue increased to US$160.6 million, EBITDA increased to US$62.3 million, net profit increased to US$11.6 million - Year-over-year revenue from continuing operations up 33% to US$157.8 million - Year-over-year EBITDA from continuing operations up 17% to US$61.8 million - Year-over-year net profit from continuing operations up 29% to US$9.9 million

Cascal N.V. (NYSE: HOO) (the "Company"), a leading provider of water and wastewater services in seven countries, today announced unaudited financial results for fiscal year ended March 31, 2008 and the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2008. Cascal N.V. results are presented in U.S. dollars.

Results for Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 2008