ASCOT, England, May 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The Micromachined Diamond Device Initiative (MIDDI) led by researchers at Element Six Ltd in collaboration with the Institute of Photonics at The University of Strathclyde has been completed successfully. The aim of MIDDI, which was part-funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry, was to develop world-leading technologies for diamond microelectronic device manufacturing to give European companies a competitive edge over Japan and the US.

WASHINGTON, May 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- Societe d'Articles Hygieniques to develop additional production facilities, increase exports

Emerging Capital Partners (ECP), an international private equity firm focused on investing across the African continent, today announced a U.S. $47.3 million investment in Societe d'Articles Hygieniques (SAH), Tunisia's leading personal care company and producer of absorbent hygiene products. The funds will be used to expand operations in SAH's existing North African markets, as well as to enter into new markets.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, May 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Wayport, a provider of converged network solutions to enable breakthrough network applications, has taken over one of the largest WLAN networks in Finland, the DNA WLAN network. The agreement includes the acquisition of DNA's complete WLAN business: network infrastructure, contracts with the venues as well as the end-subscribers. The acquired network consists mainly of hotels and congress centres, but also other venues, such as cafes and the Helsinki International Airport.

Two new exoplanets mean that the COROT mission(1) has now found a total of four new exoplanets in its 510 day journey. COROT started observations of its sixth star field at the beginning of May and, during this observation phase which will last 5 months, will simultaneously observe 12,000 stars.

The two new planets are gas giants of the hot Jupiter type, which orbit very close to their parent star and tend to have extensive atmospheres because heat from the nearby star gives them energy to expand. But an oddity dubbed ‘COROT-exo-3b’ has raised particular interest among astronomers. It appears to be something between a brown dwarf, a sub-stellar object without nuclear fusion at its core but with some stellar characteristics, and a planet. Its radius is too small for it to be a super-planet.

We all know that coffee can cure everything.

Now it turns out that even a coffee roasting process - torrefaction - could give biomass a power boost, increasing the energy content of some energy crops by up to 20 percent, making biofuels merely bad instead of awful.

The study, carried out by engineers from the University of Leeds, examined the combustion behavior of crops grown specifically for energy creation when put through the mild torrefaction thermal process usually associated with coffee production.

LONDON, May 21 /PRNewswire/ --

Cable operators with coaxial and HFC networks in Europe offering internet and analogue video are going digital along with plans to offer Voice over IP. While digitization enhances the revenue per subscriber it brings challenges of activating & deactivating of multiservices, rating of multiple usage types, managing prepaid & postpaid billing models and generating single bill for the subscriber. MagnaQuest has deployed its solution for several operators globally and is confident of supporting these new business plans of operators in Europe. MagnaQuest solution, MQSubscribe(TM) has powerful rating, service packaging, provisioning, tracking of cable modems, monthly billing, and customer care functionalities.

LONDON, May 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Unite the union strongly welcomes the Health & Safety Executive's (HSE) announcement that it has recruited 40 more inspectors but the UK's largest union believes the HSE needs more.

This move will bring the overall number of HSE inspectors to 720. Of the 40 inspectors recruited ten are construction specialists bringing the total of HSE construction inspectors dedicated to the industry to 134, as construction is one of the most dangerous industries where work-related ill health affects a significant number of workers.

Bob Blackman, Unite national officer, said:

"Construction is one of the most dangerous working environments in the land, so it is right that the HSE is placing great emphasis on increased inspection resources."

HILDEN, Germany, May 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- Research Supports Replacement of Pap With HPV Test as Front-line Screen

Long-term data from a study published in the International Journal of Cancer show that women screened only with a human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA test are half as likely to develop moderate to severe cervical disease over the next six years as those who get only conventional cytology (the Pap "smear"). The research followed nearly 3,000 women age 35 years and older, and assessed their HPV status using QIAGEN's digene(R) HPV Test - the only such test that is both CE-marked in Europe and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

LONDON, May 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Internet developments that brought us sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia are now set to revolutionise healthcare, according to a new research report from online news service and publisher, E-Health Insider.

Titled 'Web 2.0 in the Health Sector: Industry Review with a UK perspective' the report concludes that new applications based on social health networks and content generated by health service users themselves - such as reviews of doctors and hospitals - will rapidly evolve to challenge existing healthcare systems and create new ways of delivering our healthcare.

CAMBRIDGE, England, May 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- Toshiba Adopts Cortex-A9 MPCore Multicore Processor, Cortex-R4F Processor and Other ARM Technology

ARM [(LSE:ARM); (Nasdaq:ARMH)] , today announced a major technology licensing agreement with Toshiba Corporation encompassing the ARM(R) Cortex(TM) -A9 processor, the Cortex-R4F processor, NEON(TM) SIMD technology, PrimeCell(R) peripherals and CoreSight(TM) on-chip trace and debugging technology. This comprehensive adoption of ARM technology by Toshiba, and its Cortex-M3 processor license last year (see http://www.arm.com/news/18089.html ), will enable the company to provide an ARM Powered(R) system-on-chip portfolio across the full performance spectrum.