ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, August 26 /PRNewswire/ --

- Six days left to submit nominations before August 31st deadline

WHAT: Masdar, Abu Dhabi's landmark program to develop sustainable solutions to meet the world's future energy demand, has established an international awards program designed to recognize innovation and leadership in the global search for future energy solutions -- the Zayed Future Energy Prize.

The Zayed Future Energy Prize recognizes individuals, organizations, companies and NGOs who are advancing innovation in the field of clean energy and sustainable development.

Conservation zones, or 'No-take areas' (NTAs), that were set up to protect fish in the late 1960s and early 1970s are in the wrong place to protect vulnerable coral reefs from the effects of global warming, an international team of scientists warned today.

Now the team, led jointly by Newcastle University and the Wildlife Conservation Society, say that urgent action is needed to prevent the collapse of this important marine ecosystem.

The research is the largest study of its kind to have been carried out, covering 66 sites across seven countries and spanning over a decade in the Indian Ocean.

LONDON, August 26 /PRNewswire/ --

IDIS, the world leader in the development and implementation of pre-launch Named Patient Programmes (NPPs), announces the opening of a new regional office in Iselin, New Jersey, USA. This office places IDIS in a stronger position to support US based pharmaceutical companies in the implementation of programmes to support early access of their medicines.

Contrary to stereotypes about masculinity, men interviewed in a large international study reported that being seen as honorable, self-reliant and respected was more important to their idea of masculinity than being seen as attractive, sexually active or successful with women.

The study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine included interviews with more than 27,000 randomly selected men from eight countries (Germany, U.S., U.K., Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and France), with about 16 percent of the men reporting erectile problems.

Regardless of age or nationality, the men more frequently ranked good health, harmonious family life and good relationships with their wife or partner as more important to their quality of life than material, self-fulfilling or purely sexual concerns. There was no significant difference in rankings of masculinity and quality of life characteristics between men who experienced erectile dysfunction and those who did not.

Do babies says "mama" and "papa" because they recognize their parents or did those words become terms for parents because that's what babies first say?

The human brain may be hard-wired to recognize certain repetition patterns, according to a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using the latest optical brain imaging techniques, University of British Columbia post-doctoral fellow Judit Gervain and a team of researchers from Italy and Chile documented brain activities of 22 newborns (2-3 days old) when exposed to recordings of made-up words.

How do galaxies form? The most widely accepted answer to this fundamental question is the model of 'hierarchical formation', a step-wise process in which small galaxies merge to build larger ones. One can think of the galaxies forming in a similar way to how streams merge to form rivers, and how these rivers, in turn, merge to form an even larger river.

This theoretical model predicts that massive galaxies grow through many merging events in their lifetime. But when did their cosmological growth spurts finish? When did the most massive galaxies get most of their mass?

JERUSALEM and NEEDHAM, Massachusetts, August 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Oridion Systems Ltd. (SWX: ORIDN) today announced an OEM agreement with Spacelabs Healthcare, a leading global medical device and service company. With this agreement, Spacelabs now employs Oridion Microstream(R) capnography technology in its new, compact and ultra-lightweight patient monitoring system, élance.

Hydrogen will be one of the most important fuels of the future, if it can be obtained by efficiently splitting water. Today the electrolysis of water is a very energy intensive process, making it both expensive and unsustainable if the electricity necessary to generate it comes from the burning of fossil fuels anyway.

Photolysis, the splitting of water by light, is a highly promising alternative. A team of Australian and American researchers has now developed a catalyst that effectively catalyzes one of the necessary half reactions, the photooxidation of water. As it reports in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the core of the catalyst is a manganese-containing complex modeled after those found in photosynthetic organisms.

A new study from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University sheds light on why smokers' intentions to quit “cold turkey” often fizzle out within days or even hours.

If a smoker isn't yearning for a cigarette when he makes the decision to kick the habit-and most aren't-he isn't able to foresee how he will feel when he's in need of a nicotine buzz.

Published in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the study, “Exploring the Cold-to-Hot Empathy Gap in Smokers,” bolsters the theory that smokers not in a state of craving a cigarette will underestimate and underpredict the intensity of their future urge to smoke.

LONDON, August 25 /PRNewswire/ --

Cascal N.V. (NYSE: HOO), a leading provider of water and wastewater services in seven countries, today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Aquas de Panama, SA, ("APSA") has filed for an "amparo" with the Supreme Court in Panama. An "amparo" is a constitutional action that seeks to protect the right to private property and due process.