Two research teams are announcing this month that they have successfully converted sugar-potentially derived from agricultural waste and non-food plants-into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and a range of other valuable chemicals.

Chemical engineer Randy Cortright and his colleagues at Virent Energy Systems of Madison, Wisc., and researchers led by NSF-supported chemical engineer James Dumesic of the University of Wisconsin at Madison are now announcing that sugars and carbohydrates can be processed like petroleum into the full suite of products that drive the fuel, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

MIT researchers have shown that cells from different people don't all react the same way when exposed to the same DNA-damaging agent, a finding that could help clinicians predict how patients will respond to chemotherapy.

The research team from MIT's Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) and the Departments of Biological Engineering and Biology, identified a group of 48 genes that can predict how susceptible an individual is to the toxic compound, known as MNNG. The work appears in Genes and Development.

MNNG, a DNA-damaging compound similar to toxic chemicals found in tobacco smoke and in common chemotherapy agents, usually kills cells by inducing irreparable DNA damage. However, the researchers found a wide range of susceptibility among cells taken from healthy people.

Vital components of modern medicine such as major surgery, organ transplantation, and cancer chemotherapy will be threatened if antibiotic resistance is not tackled urgently, warn experts on bmj.com today.

A global response is needed to address rising rates of bacterial resistance caused by the use and abuse of antibiotics or "we will return to the pre-antibiotic era", write Professor Otto Cars and colleagues in an editorial.

All antibiotic use "uses up" some of the effectiveness of that antibiotic, diminishing the ability to use it in the future, write the authors, and antibiotics can no longer be considered as a renewable source.

In the inaugural Big Ten Battleground Poll taken as the nation's financial crisis worsened this week, John McCain and Barack Obama were in a statistical dead heat in seven of the eight Midwest states included in the survey.

The individual surveys of 600 randomly selected registered voters in each of the states were conducted by phone from Sept. 14-17 and were co-directed by University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientists Charles Franklin and Ken Goldstein and colleagues from participating universities. The polls each have a margin of error of 4 percentage points. The states included in the poll were Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota.

HERZLIYA, Israel, September 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Teledata Networks, a leading provider of advanced multiservice access solutions won a $21 million deal from a major Central Asian telecommunications company to enhance their existing infrastructure with Teledata Networks' BroadAccess-1000 MSAG. The systems will provide a mix of voice, broadband data and IPTV services over Next Generation IP Network.

LONDON, September 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- UK-based Global Business Expects US$25 Million Savings Over Five Years on Communications Costs as Part of on-going Business Transformation Programme

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and Smiths Group plc (LSE: SMIN) today announced that the global technology business Smiths Group, has selected AT&T as its world-wide communications provider. The five year agreement reflects Smiths' ongoing business transformation programme and will help Smiths to leverage its global scale, delivering improved productivity and cost reductions across the group's five business divisions. The company expects to achieve annual savings of at least of at least US$5 million on its IT and related communications costs.

BANGKOK, Thailand, September 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- MEETING TO BE HELD AT RENEWABLE ENERGY ASIA in BANGKOK

With countries in Asia experiencing rapid economic growth, a dramatic increase in demand for new energy resources is under way. Although fossil fuels still contribute the largest share of total energy at 79%, renewable energy sources are growing by leaps and bounds and now account for around 20%. And, as oil prices have soared to over US$100 a barrel, that trend shows no sign of changing any time soon.

LONDON, September 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Study of Downton Service Management Consultants Identifies Successful Strategies

Using technology to provide technical services is an important engine of growth. Technical services can produce substantial revenue growth, but achieving profitable growth requires a smart service strategy.

A new study from Downton Service Management Consultants examines the strategies of successful service operations and how they produce revenue and profit growth.

Pregnancy is a biologically unusual situation where one organism lives and develops inside another that is genetically different.

Ordinarily, the immune system identifies and destroys the dissimilar tissue as if it were a parasite but in some early mammals changes 'turned down' the immune system, allowing the developing embryo to grow and thrive unchallenged by the maternal immune response.

Yale researchers npw say that the origin and evolution of the placenta and uterus in mammals is associated with evolutionary changes in a single regulatory protein.

GENEVA, Switzerland, September 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- ORACLE MS Phase III Trial Will Assess Effectiveness of Cladribine Tablets in Preventing Conversion to Definite Multiple Sclerosis in Addition to the Fully Enrolled Phase III Pivotal Trial - the CLARITY Study - for Treatment of Relapsing Forms of Multiple Sclerosis

Merck Serono, a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, announced today the initiation of a Phase III trial to evaluate the therapeutic effects of its proprietary oral formulation of cladribine (cladribine tablets) in patients at risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS).