Did Columbus and his men introduce the syphilis pathogen into Renaissance Europe after contracting it during their voyage to the New World? Or does syphilis have a much longer history in the Old World?

The most comprehensive comparative genetic analysis conducted on the family of bacteria (the treponemes) that cause syphilis and related diseases such as yaws, published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, supports the so-called “Columbian theory” of syphilis’s origins.

Kristin Harper (Emory University, Atlanta, USA) approached this centuries-old debate by using phylogenetics — the study of the evolutionary relatedness between organisms — to study 26 geographically disparate strains of treponemes.

A 53-page study designed to provide a comparison between the KC-767 Advanced Tanker (AT), based on the 767, and its major competitor in the U.S. Air Force's KC-135 Tanker Replacement Program states that a commercial 767 airplane is substantially more fuel efficient than the larger Airbus 330 - the 767 fleet burned 24 percent less fuel than the A-330s and would save approximately $14.6 billion in fuel costs.

That number is significant since the Air Force spent approximately $6.6 billion on aviation fuel costs in 2006.

The study used published data to calculate the fuel consumption of flying a fleet of 179 767-200ER and Airbus 330-200 airplanes over a 40-year service life.

It's a marketing expert's dream; if you want people to like your product more, charge a higher price.

Hilke Plassmann, et al, writing in PNAS, had test subjects undergo functional MRIs while they sipped wine. They were given 5 wines at 5 different prices.

Except there were only 3 wines. 2 were identical and just had different prices. People enjoyed the $90 wine more than they did when told the price was $10. Likewise a $5 wine was better when told it cost $45.

Dinosaurs had pregnancies as early as age 8, far before they reached their maximum adult size, a new study finds.

Researchers at Ohio University and University of California at Berkeley have found medullary bone – the same tissue that allows birds to develop eggshells – in two new dinosaur specimens: the meat-eater Allosaurus and the plant-eater Tenontosaurus. It’s also been found in Tyrannosaurus rex.

The discovery allowed researchers to pinpoint the age of these pregnant dinosaurs, which were 8, 10 and 18. That suggests that the creatures reached sexual maturity earlier than previously thought, according to the scientists.

Writing in Genes & Development, a research team led by Dr. Richard Behringer at MD Anderson Cancer Center report they they switched the mouse Prx1 gene regulatory element with the Prx1 gene regulatory region from a bat and the resulting transgenic mice displayed abnormally long forelimbs despite being separated by millions of years of evolution.

While forelimb length is just one of several key morphological changes that occurred during the evolution of the bat wing, this unprecedented finding demonstrates that evolution can be driven by changes in the patterns of gene expression, rather than solely by changes in the genes, themselves.

Prx1 is a paired-box homeodomain transcription factor, with an established role in limb bone growth. Dr.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, January 14 /PRNewswire/ --

www.voeveo.com and Aardvark Records are pleased to announce London-based act Riveraire as the grand prize winner in the audio category of the voeveo incubator competition. voeveo's incubator programme is all about supporting and helping creative people learn skills to build their mobile business.

The winning mobile fulltrack was "Down To The Ground", a rousing acoustic pop track with a bitter sweet lyric. Riveraire wins global digital distribution and promotion with the Cornwall-based independent record label Aardvark Records as part of the audio Grand Prize. Aardvark will license the winning track.

Psychotherapies such as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) are under-regulated in the UK and should be subject to the same standards of evidence as drugs, assert two experts in psychological medicine writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

NEW YORK, January 14 /PRNewswire/ --

In a recent TV segment broadcast to more than 31 million homes in the US via News Corp's Fox Business network, market leaders MySpace, Google and FunkySexyCool were interviewed, including Aussie CEO Tim O'Connor from FunkySexyCool.

Social networking has been largely dominated by two players, Facebook and MySpace, but now FunkySexyCool, a company established in Australia, is earning international media interest for its innovative approach to the social networking phenomenon.

"FunkySexyCool is a fun, fast and easy way to socialise via a mobile phone or the web. It's a cool and exciting way in which anyone, anywhere in the world, can meet someone with the same interests in seconds," says O'Connor.

WINDSOR, England, January 14 /PRNewswire/ --

- DataFlux(R) dfPower(R) Studio Will Analyse, Improve and Control Data Within the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity Donations Database That Contains Over 3.5 Million Records

LONDON, January 14 /PRNewswire/ --

Perenco has completed the acquisition of Barrett Resources (Peru) LLC, a company holding oil and gas licences in Peru. The principal asset of Barrett, which will in future be known as Perenco Peru Limited, is its 100% interest in the licence contract for Block 67 in the Maranon Basin. Block 67 contains the Paiche, Dorado and Pirana Fields which together hold estimated 2P resources of over 300 million barrels. When the development is completed it is estimated that these fields will have potential to produce up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day.