HOUSTON, October 29 /PRNewswire/ --

Reduced transaction costs, faster cycle times and fewer errors are among the eCommerce benefits for upstream oil and gas suppliers and service providers in today's economy that will be highlighted at the 2008 International EU Autumn Meeting of PIDX, the American Petroleum Institute e-business standards development body for the oil and natural gas industry.

SINGAPORE, October 29 /PRNewswire/ --

- Security Providers Join Forces to Deliver Consolidated Solution to Meet Latest IBTRM Requirements

Tata Communications, a leading provider of the new world of communications, announced the launch of the first Security Compliance Consortium to simplify the process of meeting compliance needs for the banking and finance sector. This initiative follows the new Internet Banking and Technology Risk Management (IBRTM) guidelines released by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in June 2008. The guidelines outline a set of best practices that mandate risk management processes and security controls for financial systems, including Internet banking.

GENEVA, October 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Earth Council Geneva was a major contributor this summer in an effort to clean marine debris from the shores of Alaska. Teaming with the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation (financially backed by the US Federal government) ECG spearheaded a project focusing on the wild beaches of Shelikof Strait in south central Alaska. ECG Chairman, Reto Braun, enlisted the help of a local non-profit organization, Earth Tabs, and its vessel to retrieve derelict nets, lines, buoys and trash from the Alaskan coastline.

LONDON, October 29 /PRNewswire/ --

- Organisations Grapple With Challenges of Managing Multi-Provider/ Multiple Outsourcing Efforts

Despite the fact organisations worldwide are deferring capital expenditures, outsourcing continues to be the number one tool chosen to drive organisational change, according to EquaTerra's Advisor and BPO/ITO Service Provider Pulse Survey 3Q08.* The findings show demand for outsourcing is outpacing business investments in areas such as hardware, software or other types of more discretionary project-based services.

CAEN, France, October 29 /PRNewswire/ --

- NXP Semiconductors Selects ATREG as its Agent in the Sale of their IPD Business and 150mm Fab in France

NXP Semiconductors, a global leader in the development and fabrication of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced it has retained ATREG, the semiconductor sales division of Colliers International, to sell its Integrated Passives Device business (IPD) and related operational 150mm semiconductor manufacturing facility in Caen, France.

SAN FRANCISCO, October 29 /PRNewswire/ --

blinkx, the world's largest and most advanced video search engine, today announced that it has been named a winner of Hitwise's Top 10 Award for the quarter ending September 2008. During this period, http://www.blinkx.com ranked 7th Web site in the Hitwise Entertainment-Multimedia industry category.

Each quarter, Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, awards the 10 most popular Web sites in over 160 Hitwise categories. Top 10 Web site Awards are based on popularity according to the market share of user visits a Web site receives compared to other Web sites in their industry during a specific period. blinkx's high traffic earned it a top spot on Hitwise's list for Web sites of its kind.

UC San Diego computer scientists have built a software program that can perform key duplication without having the key. Instead, the computer scientists only need a photograph of the key.

"We built our key duplication software system to show people that their keys are not inherently secret," said Stefan Savage, the computer science professor from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering who led the student-run project. "Perhaps this was once a reasonable assumption, but advances in digital imaging and optics have made it easy to duplicate someone's keys from a distance without them even noticing."

We all experience memory errors from time to time and research has suggested that 'false' memories may be a result of having too many other things to remember or perhaps if too much time has passed.

In a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal, researchers describe a discovery that may allow some obese people avoid common obesity-related metabolic problems until they can lose weight: make a common antioxidant, melanin, in excess.  Melanin is a common antioxidant responsible for skin and eye color.

Most promising is that some of the antioxidant drugs that can mimic the melanin effect are FDA-approved and available. This availability would greatly speed the development of new treatments, should they prove effective in clinical trials.

NOVATO, California, October 29 /PRNewswire/ --

Raptor Pharmaceuticals Corp. (OTC Bulletin Board: RPTP), today announced that senior management will present a corporate overview and clinical pipeline updates at two upcoming healthcare investor conferences:

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20071022/NYM074LOGO )