GOTHENBURG, Sweden, May 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Albireo, a pharmaceutical company focusing on the development of therapeutics for gastrointestinal diseases, announced today the appointment of Hans Graffner, M.D., Ph.D, as Chief Medical Officer (CMO).

Dr. Graffner will oversee the clinical development programs at Albireo with initial focus on the lead program A3309, a therapeutic with a novel mechanism of action targeting the treatment of patients with chronic constipation.

LONDON, May 15 /PRNewswire/ -- In a video interview, Steve Holliday, National Grid CEO, looks at the group's full year results which include, for the first time, contributions from the Keyspan acquisition. He discusses capital investment plans, the balance sheet and share buy-back and the outlook given the current economic climate. The interview, transcript, podcast and vodcast are available now on http://www.cantos.com. Cantos interviews are also available on our CEO Direct page in iTunes.

LONDON, May 15 /PRNewswire/ --

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Six Sigma is a business strategy designed to use smarter data and methodology to reduce defects - six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit. Statistically it is 3.4 defects per million.

Could this business practice be used to help turn companies green by reducing their energy use?

According to mechanical engineer Prabhakar Kaushik of NC College of Engineering in Haryana, India, and colleagues, energy conservation should be at the forefront of company efforts. In a global economy with environmental pressures high on the agenda, organizations are under increasing pressure to control costs, maintain high levels of safety and quality, and save energy. Energy conservation, of course, offers the parallel advantages of helping to reduce costs, improving efficiency, as well as reducing the carbon footprint.

New research appearing in the May issue of Psychological Science suggests that being put in a low-power role may impair a person’s basic cognitive functioning and thus, their ability to get ahead.

Pamela Smith of Radboud University Nijmegen and colleagues Nils B. Jostmann of VU University Amsterdam, Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Wilco W. van Dijk of VU University Amsterdam, focus on a set of cognitive processes called executive functions. Executive functions help people maintain and pursue their goals in difficult, distracting situations. The researchers found that lacking power impaired people’s ability to keep track of ever-changing information, to parse out irrelevant information, and to successfully plan ahead to achieve their goals.

On the 25th anniversary of the first scientific article linking a retrovirus to AIDS, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reflects on his experience treating and studying HIV/AIDS for the past quarter century.

Outlining the peaks and valleys of the scientific community’s journey so far, Dr. Fauci writes, “…we must learn from our mis-steps, build on our successes in treatment and prevention, and renew our commitment to developing the truly transforming tools that will one day put this scourge behind us.”

From the outset, AIDS was clearly more menacing than any other novel disease Dr. Fauci and his colleagues had previously encountered, he writes. The period when clinicians lacked the ability to diagnose and treat AIDS was the bleakest of his career. The discovery that HIV causes AIDS stimulated a burst of progress in both the clinic and the laboratory. But the 1987 debut of the first effective drug against HIV, zidovudine (AZT), generated excessive optimism, Dr. Fauci reflects, as the virus quickly and predictably developed drug resistance.

For the first time, a study combines measurements of abnormalities in the eye with models for assessing how well an individual can see, meaning it may be possible to program a machine to automatically produce prescriptions for corrective lenses.

The model for predicting visual clarity — based on measurements taken by today’s highly accurate aberrometers — could also enable surgeons to more accurately assess and correct the vision of patients undergoing lasik or refractive surgery.

New technology in aberrometers means ophthalmologists and others can accurately measure refractive error and other abnormalities in the eye’s optics. But these instruments cannot use these measurements to predict visual acuity, or how well a person can actually see. Usually, ophthalmologists and optometrists rely on a patient’s ability to identify characters on an eye chart to determine visual clarity.

Chemicals found in green tea may be able to stave off the cognitive deficits that occur with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), according to a new study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Researchers examined the effects green tea polyphenols (GTP), administered through drinking water, on rats who were intermittently deprived of oxygen during 12-hour “night” cycles, mimicking the intermittent hypoxia (IH) that humans with OSA experience.

People with OSA have been reported to have increased markers of oxidative stress and exhibit architectural changes in their brain tissue in areas involved in learning and memory. Chronic IH in rats produce similar neurological deficit patterns.

New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that the crust and upper mantle of Mars are stiffer and colder than previously thought.

The findings suggest any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water, would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.

"We found that the rocky surface of Mars is not bending under the load of the north polar ice cap," said Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Phillips is the lead author of a new report appearing in this week's online version of Science. "This implies that the planet's interior is more rigid, and thus colder, than we thought before."

BASKING RIDGE, New Jersey, May 15 /PRNewswire/ --

- Customers Globally Now Benefit From Cost Effective Local Conferencing Access From China

Verizon Business has further expanded global access to its audio-conferencing services, enabling even more of its multinational customers to realise cost efficiencies by accessing audio meetings through local dial-in numbers from around the globe.